Three Things: A Three-Ring Circus

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Under the enormous canvas tent of the United States, come see the mightiest extant amusement organization, superior in character, regal in appointment, magnificent in conception, omnipotent in strength, with hundreds of witnesses, a plethora of attorneys and paralegals, the promise of the wild beast-like Chansley, multiple frustrated judges…

And one orange-tinted slack-bottomed kack-handed clown unseen off the stage entantrumed in the wings.

Ladies, Gentlemen, and those of pronouns without and within, welcome to the American circus.

I can’t even begin to imagine what all of this looks like from abroad.

~ 3 ~

Arguments just wrapped up in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit regarding former president Trump’s claim of executive privilege over testimony and materials subpoenaed by the House January 6 Committee. Twitter threads covering the hearing’s progress:

For BuzzFeed:


For DailyKos:

Stream the audio of the arguments on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/DcMnkpZOpxo

I have to admit this hearing is making me grit my teeth. No one is above the law; the executive’s job is to execute what Congress legislates, and Congress cannot do its job effectively without oversight of the executive’s work when its work product is not related to classified national security issues. There’s zero executive privilege for testimony and materials related to campaigning if performed in and by the White House.

~ 2 ~

Convicted shaman insurrectionist perp Jacob Chansley filed an appeal today.

Good luck with that, buddy. What a waste of a lengthy mea culpa in court.

Chansley wasn’t the only lower level perp on the agenda today — check Scott MacFarlane’s Twitter feed for more including another perp charged and another arraigned today.

~ 1 ~

Washington Post published an article today about Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who until now has completely resisted compliance with a House January 6 Committee subpoena. Here’s the timeline of related events:

September 23, 2021 — House January 6 Committee issued a subpoena to Meadows;
October 7, 2021 — Due date for records subpoenaed;
October 15, 2021 — Deposition deadline;
November 11, 2021 — White House Deputy Counsel sent a letter to Meadow’s attorney advising that President Biden would not exert executive privilege over any testimony or records the House January 6 Committee subpoenaed;
November 11, 2021 — U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit blocked handover of National Archives’ presidential records responsive to a January 6 committee’s subpoena;
November 12, 2021 — Meadow’s attorney issued a statement which said Meadows would not cooperate with the committee until after the legality of the subpoenas was settled in court;
November 30, 2021 — See Thing 3 above, Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit hearing today regarding subpoena of testimony and records over which Trump claims executive privilege.

Hed and subhed of WaPo’s article today:

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows cooperating with Jan. 6 committee
Meadows has provided records to the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and will give a deposition.

“Cooperating” is rather broadly used. Committee chair Bennie Thompson issued a statement today about Meadows:

“Mr. Meadows has been engaging with the Select Committee through his attorney. He has produced records to the committee and will soon appear for an initial deposition. The Select Committee expects all witnesses, including Mr. Meadows, to provide all information requested and that the Select Committee is lawfully entitled to receive. The committee will continue to assess his degree of compliance with our subpoena after the deposition.”

“has been engaging” isn’t the same as cooperating; an “initial” deposition doesn’t mean anything until Meadows has actually answered questions put to him without prevarication.

As Marcy tweeted, “Meadows could invoke a bunch of things and avoid testifying and avoid contempt that way.”

Betting this “cooperating” is a stall tactic which won’t end until the Department of Justice indicts Meadows for contempt of Congress as they did Steve Bannon.

But perhaps there will be more than two charges if Meadows “has been engaging” in a little light obstruction.

Sure hope for his own sake Meadows turned information related to his phone records.

~ 0 ~

What other hearing(s) did I miss? Share in comments.

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81 replies
  1. Rayne says:

    Funny how Meadows popped up in reporting today, the same day as the court hearing about executive privilege. That’s an amusing trick.

    • bmaz says:

      Three things – 1) And I think I said this before, but Chansley is going nowhere with that appeal. Ineffective assistance is his only possible ground. Very hard to succeed on that. And the plea colloquy pretty much kills any chance at all. Watkins is a bit goofy too, but he actually seemed to do a decent job on Chansley, especially at the sentencing. Also, Pierce is a dope. Who is paying Pierce for this nonsense?

      2) Meadows cooperation. Yeah, we will see about that. Every standard Capitol press beater was falling over themselves to report this in the morning. I am FAR more skeptical. Meadows has produced a few docs apparently and agreed to a “deposition”. But will he cough up all the docs? Will he testify truthfully and fully as to all questions? My bet is no, this is yet another stalling tactic and the Committee will have to start the enforcement process again down the road. All while time is wasted. Full doc production and deposition within one week, or start the enforcement process.

      3) As to the Trump EP assertion, from what I could tell from others, the panel was extremely dubious of Trump’s claim.

        • Bobby Gladd says:

          So, Trump’s lawyer was asked whether a prior president could prevent a current president from accessing prior information needed for a valid current national security purpose?

          This shit needs to be laughed out of court.

      • P J Evans says:

        The claim that former presidents should be protected from embarrassing information in their own administration’s papers should be tossed with as much prejudice as possible. (They didn’t act to prevent that embarrassment; the president whose lawyer made that claim caused much of it with his own actions.)

      • Troutwaxer says:

        On the subject of Chansley, is there any chance that his appeal will result in a longer sentence, or is that not going to happen as long as he sticks to claiming ineffective assistance of counsel?

        Agreed on Meadows. On one hand, maybe he’s trying to run out the clock. On the other side, maybe the commission has shown him a couple of their hole cards and he’s willing to spill anything that doesn’t involve him – and just that much testimony would vastly improve the commissions results… but there’s no way to know except perhaps to see whether the right throws a fit.

        • bmaz says:

          Possible? Yes, but you would hope not. Defendants are free to exercise their Constitutional and procedural rights, and should not be penalized for doing so. Occasionally that happens, even if it should not.

        • nord dakota says:

          I know of a situation in which it definitely did result in a harsher sentence, as a result of a second trial. Defendant was the brother of my sister-in-law-s sister’s ex husband (she was a battered wife, and her ex later was convicted of raping an 80 year old woman in the nursing home where he worked). He had killed his girlfriend and burned her body in a ditch–this in ND where things are pretty flat and you can see a ditch fire from quite a ways away, and the fire was discovered during daylight hours. He was arrested on the same road, entered a plea conditional on appeal whether officers had probable cause for the original arrest. His plea agreement gave him 20 years. State supreme court overturned and remanded for new trial, which left him with a life sentence.

          The brothers’ parents (they had adopted the brothers as infants) forever insisted on the brothers’ innocence and paid for all their legal representation.

        • Leoghann says:

          The only thing I can see that would cause him to be resentenced would be if it were determined that he really didn’t show contrition, because he backed out of it.

      • skua says:

        For bmaz: If part of the global kleptocrat elite, I’d happily pay Pierce to enlarge on that child-man martyrdom.
        For Rayne: The American Spectacle is as obvious as a streaker at a pro-sports event and gets a similar amount of attention from most – a distraction from what they consider important – there own past-times and struggles. The positive is that the USA provides such a lit stage where democracy will be seen to stand or fall. There is some chance of significant learning either way.

        • Rayne says:

          I hope other democracies and democracy-wannabes are taking copious notes about what not to do. They’re just as vulnerable if they allow Facebook and Fox to run unfettered propaganda.

          UK is likewise instructive. If PM terms of office were only 4-6 years under a democracy, UK citizens might have been able to save lives and jobs by ditching BoJo. But no…UK is still a constitutional monarchy and that grossly negligent mass democide in a fright wig continues to serve at the will of an unelected 95-year-old woman.

        • mospeck says:

          “..positive is that the USA provides such a lit stage where democracy will be seen to stand or fall..”
          yes, absolutely. We’re under the spotlight and so we gotta deliver and hang tough in the clinches. It’s vg totally ruthless games players that we face and young Russians and Belarusians and the Hong Kong Kids still listen to the Radio Free Europe and are counting on us.

          https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59415885
          https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59528864
          Fingers crossed Sleepy Joe green lighted the spooks to give the javs to Zelensky (but like all quiet on the western front). Built by Lockheed Martin, who’s otherwise known for gouging the American taxpayer, javs cost over $100k each, but the good side of the FM-148s is that they don’t miss. Nobody wants to see a bunch of dead Russian tank crews, but if vlad chooses to use his poor soldier joes as pawns in his king of the world game, well then light ’em up and that’s the way the wild wind blows. The only good part of this whole terrible thing, coming soon to a theatre near you in the Spring, will be that it’ll be the end of vlad. vid number jFUQ_7nojGM doesn’t show up on the great goog.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFUQ_7nojGM

      • Arabiflora Q. Public says:

        Since the obvious and overriding strateegery of TFG’s EP claims are based in a presumption that the Rs will kill the Jan 6 commission in 2022, isn’t it an equally obvious response for the Garland DOJ/Biden admin to appoint a Special Prosecutor? It’s not as if the 2020 election killed Durham’s gig.

      • Leoghann says:

        I was pleasantly surprised when Jeffrey Clark made an appearance in front of the committee. But that died quickly when he flounced out. Like you, I expect Meadows to do something similar. Unlike Clark and Bannon, though, Meadows is none too sharp. He’s mostly adept at sycophancy.

  2. harpie says:

    SELECT COMMITTEE SUBPOENAS INDIVIDUALS TIED TO THE FORMER PRESIDENT IN THE DAYS SURROUNDING JANUARY 6TH https://january6th.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-committee-subpoenas-individuals-tied-former-president-days-surrounding Sep 23, 2021

    MEADOWS letter:

    […] You were the President’s Chief of Staff and have critical information regarding many elements of our inquiry. It appears that you were with or in the vicinity of President Trump on January 6, had communications with the President and others on January 6 regarding events at the Capitol, and are a witness regarding activities of that day.

    Moreover, it has been reported that you were engaged in multiple elements of the planning and preparation of efforts to contest the presidential election and delay the counting of electoral votes.

    In addition, according to documents provided by the Department of Justice, while you were the President’s Chief of Staff, you directly communicated with the highest officials at the Department of Justice requesting investigations into election fraud matters in several states.1 We understand that in the weeks after the November 2020 election, you contacted several state officials to encourage investigation of allegations of election fraud, even after such allegations had been dismissed by state and federal courts, and after the Electoral College had met and voted on December 14, 2020.2

    Moreover, at least one press report indicates you were in communication with organizers of the January 6 rally, including Amy Kremer of Women for America First.3

    Accordingly, the Select Committee seeks both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the Select Committee’s inquiry. […]

    MEADOWS also shows up communicating with Kash PATEL [from Patel’s letter]:

    […] In addition, you were quoted by a reporter as saying that you were talking to the President’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, “nonstop that day.”4 […]

    • harpie says:

      More Calls:
      4:27 PM DONOGHUE call from CIPOLLONE [3m]
      [Approx] 4:30 PM From the CAPITOL, PENCE Aide Marc SHORT calls MEADOWS late that afternoon to alert the WHITE HOUSE chief of staff that the PENCE plans to push through with certifying the election results as soon as the Capitol could be cleared and Congress could reconvene.
      “I think that’s the right thing to do,” MEADOWS told SHORT. [WaPo]

      4:31 PM ROSEN call from DONOGHUE [3m]
      4:34 PM ROSEN call from WHITE HOUSE Phone Number [7m]

      [I think DONOHUE is at the Capitol at this point;
      CIPOLLONE and MEADOWS are at the WH;
      ROSEN is at DOJ]

  3. Kevin Bullough says:

    What does all this look like from abroad, you ask? Well, from here in Canada, to this sixty-one year old who has always been keenly interested in your politics, culture, and enormous sway over those of us who are quite literally close enough to spit across the border, I can personally respond that for the last four years we’ve been shaking our heads in disbelief. We’ve been scratching our heads, wondering what happened to our friends to our south. Where has the leadership gone? Where has decorum gone? Where has the sanity gone? What happened that allowed the least-enlightened narrow-minded conservative religious morons to take over? We fear for your future, understanding that our proximity places us potentially in harm’s way, economically and politically. If you fail, in any number of ways, it affects us. We used to jokingly say “only in America” about all sorts of things, but now we use it with genuine worry.

    • Tracy Lynn says:

      Reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) translated quote attributed to Porfirio Diaz (7-time president of Mexico), “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.”

    • dimmsdale says:

      Yeah, I used to use your same incredulous tone about the citizens of Nazi Germany—right up until I watched a third of my country’s voters get infected by Fox News and immersed in a cult of violence and hatred by repeated exposure to the basest, most vile, most racist propaganda a network can spew. I observe the same thing going on, thanks to the Murdochian media, in the UK. My conclusion is that citizens of ANY country, including Canada, will react exactly the same when exposed to that sort of stuff repetitively. So if I were you, I’d focus on keeping Fox and its concentrated hate speech off the Canadian airwaves at all costs, since the rise of Fox News in the US seems to be the ONE thing that tracks with the rise of American fascism.

      • skua says:

        Australia has Murdoch’s Sky News. Daytimes abideable. Night-times: poisoning. And very effective -Trumpists pop up in many unexpected places.

        • timbo says:

          Australia has been a more racist place than America for quite some time. It’s only in the past 25 years or so that things have begun changing there drastically. Just look at where large number of whites from SA and Rhodesia fled to after those racist regimes failed…

    • russell penner says:

      During the 1/6/21 debacle, my son in AB compared the situation in Canada to ” living above a meth lab. ” As a first responder, he’s quite familiar with meth labs…

    • punaise says:

      Our son-in-law, who hales from the Maritime Provinces, is very plugged into US politics. (My feeble attempts to keep up on things Canadian can’t compete, so we share like-minded analysis and opinions about the decline and fall of the American empire). BTW, not by choice, he has to live (suffer) in the largest city in California that voted for Trump in 2020.

  4. Rugger9 says:

    There is a collection of cartoons by Herbert Block (of the WashPo) from the Eisenhower years called “Here and Now”. It may be out of print, but my mother had a copy and it is eerie how little things have changed from the early-mid-50s to now in attitudes, methods and drivers for the GQP. I have it floating around somewhere, but one of the cartoons was about the View from Abroad, with Uncle Sam spinning The Bomb (H, that is) red-baiting xenophobia, etc. which would not be out of place now. Maybe the Internet has it archived.

    (3) Talking Points Memo also has a blow-by-blow account, and FWIW it did not go that well for DJT’s claim. Recall that one of the things the DCC wanted briefing on was the question about jurisdiction on Archivist decisions (the US Code section I had pointed to earlier in another thread appears to say they probably don’t) but it sure seemed to me that the panel was not receptive at all. However, the damage to the GQP is likely to be immense if these docs see the light of day, so I would bet that the SCOTUS conservatives parachute in to protect their party.

    (2) Chansley’s pulling a Flynn, but it’s going to fail as bmaz noted, to which I would observe that Former AG Barr isn’t pulling the rug out from under the government as he did for Flynn. That means the USA isn’t going to let it go.

    (1) Meadows’ actual cooperation remains to be seen, I would expect he’ll pull a Clark and try to dodge questions and have amnesia. Unless the Select Committee has some leverage, I do not think this MAGA cultist gives up Dear Leader Individual-1.

    (0) Well, we do have the Holmes (Theranos) and Maxwell (general scumbaggery) trials. Apparently the pilot of Epstein’s jet rattled off a list of passengers which included who was already in the news. Salon had an article about how both Holmes and Maxwell were busy playing the victim feminist cards which makes my engineer wife furious because they knew what they were doing.

    • Ginevra diBenci says:

      I was already writing about Ghislaine Maxwell, so I’ve been following that trial as closely as possible, which isn’t easy given the restrictions. Having read absolutely everything I can find about her, I suspect Maxwell is probably a sociopath (not a psychopath) with a permanently damaged personality. Her father, a monster, did her no favors when he made her his favorite. Mary Shelley could write a great novel about the effect his death had on her. If she was capable of empathy before that 1991 rupture, no sign of it remained once she tied herself to Epstein. Culturally we resist seeing women this way, but that’s an essential barrier to overcome for everyone’s best interest.

      That said, I believe Audrey Strauss will have a hard time making these specific charges stick–not if the jury pays attention and the defense does their job. The DOJ’s mistakes with Epstein crippled this trial. I do not think Maxwell is “innocent” by any stretch of that word, but convicting her using these four witnesses and on these counts? It shouldn’t happen. (I don’t like the “ever since Eve” argument either, just FTR. I find Elizabeth Holmes creepy but I’m not following that case.)

    • nord dakota says:

      Does anyone know what voice Holmes is using to testify? The one she claims her Pygmalian forced her to acquire, or her pre-Theranos voice?

  5. harpie says:

    CHENEY statement, for what it’s worth:

    Liz Cheney says the Jan. 6 panel will take a deposition from Mark Meadows “next week.”
    It’s unclear how cooperative Meadows will be when he goes under oath.
    https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/11-30-2021/meadows-desposition-coming/ 11/30/21

    […]
    “We’re in a situation where he is under subpoena. He’s produced documents. He’s coming in for a deposition. We anticipate that this will be an initial deposition, and we’ll make a determination as we go about the extent of his compliance. He’s under a legal obligation, and we anticipate that he will fulfill that legal obligation.”— Rep. Liz Cheney
    […]

  6. Mike Burns says:

    “I can’t even begin to imagine what all this looks like from abroad”

    A resident but not a citizen, my family and friends question my decision to remain.
    They are elsewhere on this planet, watching aghast, worried for me, for our family, for our children.
    I question it myself.
    And yet I hope, for the world’s sake, that the cracks and flaws in the American dream can be patched.
    Without accountability for the chaos and havoc of Donny Two Times’ attempted sedition, I fear greatly.

  7. Leoghann says:

    This wasn’t a hearing, but a firing of a Tucson officer after a particularly egregious shooting.
    https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-breaking/2021/11/30/tucson-officer-fired-after-fatally-shooting-man-9-times-behind/8815159002/

    And to follow up on something from one of your earlier threads, I said I had cancelled my NYTimes subscription. I did this online, and imagine my surprise when, one week later, they attempted to deduct the price of a one year subscription from my account. I’m hoping that’s taken care of now.

  8. d4v1d says:

    “No one is above the law”

    Would that this were true, but we are an exceptional country in that our courts create exceptions for the people who appointed them. My expectations are low, I’ll admit, and none of the lower court opinions will matter; those who are above the law will inevitably present their case to their handpicked judges.

    • Rayne says:

      Every person of color in this country knows the system constructed of, by, and for whites of European heritage doesn’t live up to its billing. But the choice is rolling over and going ass up for this bullshit, or continuing to fight for accountability.

  9. Eureka says:

    Montgomery County, PA this week petitioned to SCOTUS the PA Supreme Court decision which nullified Bill Cosby’s conviction. From what I understand* they seek clarity / dispute that a (in this case, former) D.A.’s press release or post-facto claims about verbal statements** could constitute a non-prosecution agreement where none was actually done in writing.

    The vacation decision was bullshit in that the majority _manufactured_ Cosby’s reliance on this thing that did not exist when giving his civil deposition testimony (which was later unsealed and then used towards conviction in his criminal case). I read everything in this (and the related) cases in realtime for over 1.5 decades: *I* did not forget the document-, fact-, and argument trails from the various parties which were elided in the PA SC decision.

    While I agree with bmaz (tweets at the time of vacation) that a defendant should be able to rely on an NPA, I vehemently disagree that Cosby relied on anything more than his power and the good fortune that obtains to certain predators in some sexual assault investigations in this culture. What Cosby relied on was that the civil dep. would remain sealed (and the unsealing of same is what ended his career/royalties/whatnot — all of which occurred prior to the filing of any criminal charges, a point of pragmatic import for negotiating his theory of mind beyond other timelined events).

    —
    * I don’t have the filing to review its meritoriousness in re implications for defendants generally, so that is a separate, unaddressed if important matter.

    **To do this topic justice would take a generous batch of Marcy-style posts, you know — where the serial source monitoring of facts matter instead of the glosses of blurred history. The DA at the time of the alleged assault, Bruce Castor, declined to file charges. He’s made any number of conflicting statements over the years which weren’t fully accounted for in the decision. Castor’s ADA at the time of the alleged crime, Risa Vetri Ferman (who ultimately filed the case that her own ADA-and-to-be-DA, Kevin Steele, prosecuted), disputed Castor’s latter-day claim (where he tried to recruit her into the backdated story) that any NPA existed.

    I have no idea why I brought this up — I don’t have time for a giant argument and this all really pisses me off. /my opinion

  10. Epicurus says:

    I imagine you brought up the Cosby situation because you deeply believe our government should be pointed toward justice for all. Our legal system is set up for something different where one party wins and one party loses. It is not about justice in the sense you see it. To the extent our political system has morphed into a polarized, party agenda first condition, it too is set up for winners and losers and not about justice in a larger society. Increasingly, the legal system at the Supreme Court level is being used by political parties and the justices themselves to solidify political party or individual agendas and away from justice in an equitable sense. I call it an institutional unbalancing of the balance of powers

    I don’t know how you define justice. I think of it as equitableness for all parties, especially society. So Cosby used procedural aspects of the legal system to “win”. It was according to Hoyle. But there was no “justice” for the women wronged by Cosby in Cosby’s release or, more importantly, no real consideration or any thought that there should be any justice for them at all. It as all about Cosby. It was unjust. I believe you are reacting to that, triggered by the situations of Trump, Chansley, and Meadows noted above.

    • bmaz says:

      Yeah, about that, the “justice system” has always been an adversarial system in which one side wins and the other loses. It is not about “equitableness for all parties, especially society”. It is about individual cases and controversies. The Cosby trial was never about “justice for the women wronged”, because it was only about one woman, Andrea Constand. That’s it. Making it about anything else is ridiculous.

      Individual cases are not about the personal hopes and dreams of every member of society, and it is false to make them so. And, by the way, “procedural aspects” are critical. You may have heard about such things as fundamental fairness and due process, derogating them like they are some technicality not worthy of a decision being based on is beyond ludicrous and very dangerous.

    • Eureka says:

      This is some patronizing, infantilizing telegraphy:

      I imagine you brought up the Cosby situation because you deeply believe our government should be pointed toward justice for all. Our legal system is set up for something different where one party wins and one party loses. It is not about justice in the sense you see it.

      No need to make up stories (but thanks for sharing a bit more about yourself), the clues are right there in my words.

      I brought it up because Rayne solicited comments about other hearings/cases (this one should be docketed at SCOTUS tomorrow or the next day, for those interested). I “[didn’t] know why” I brought it up due to time constraints in reviving copious factual nuances attendant to the single criminal case wrt victim Constand which — as I’d just said, in multiple ways — were even too much for some of the judges to not have lost-glossed.

      FOH with this “sense you see it”.

  11. harpie says:

    RAFFENSPERGER interviewed by J6 Committee:

    House committee probing Jan. 6 riot interviews Georgia’s top elections official
    https://www.ajc.com/politics/house-committee-probing-jan-6-riot-interviews-georgias-top-elections-official/NHKH42CBORH4JPDYYQZW3Q6QPA/ 11/30/21

    Georgia’s top elections official [Brad RAFFENSPERGER] was interviewed for more than four hours Tuesday [11/30/21] by a panel of U.S. House lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Donald Trump mob as it widens a probe into the causes of the insurrection. […]

    Mark MEADOWS was heavily involved in the High Pressure on Georgia campaign.

  12. harpie says:

    Charles Pierce tweeting about SCOTUS arguments TODAY:

    https://twitter.com/CharlesPPierce/status/1466064082683977733
    10:18 AM · Dec 1, 2021

    Mississippi AG floundering on what the “medical advances” are that call for Roe to be abandoned.
    Sotomayor eviscerates his fetal-pain argument.
    #SupremeCourt […]

    But…he doesn’t thread his tweets. The next two are:

    1] “There are spontaneous actions by dead-brain people.”
    Sotomayor.
    2] Sotomayor now explaining how things that aren’t specifically in the Constitution still exist in law.

    Added: HOW can EVERY. FCKN. THING. be SO MESSED UP?

    • harpie says:

      <<< That added bit was a harpie screeching.

      PIERCE cont'd:

      3] Sotomayor, with her teeth down to the bone:
      "Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?"

      4] Sotomayor has maneuvered the Mississippi AG into admitting that the right to privacy also is under assault. Barrett tries to bail him out. Fails.

      5] "I'm not sure that your answer makes any sense."
      — Sotomayor

      • Rugger9 says:

        The conservative fanatics seem to be trying to justify overruling Roe because it’s been done before (Kavanaugh went on a rant enumerating examples) and/or trying to push this into a new de novo question as if Roe didn’t exist. Roberts made a half-hearted attempt to pin the MS AG down on the question about the question before the court now (it’s about viability) whereupon the AG said ‘things change between the cert petition and oral argument’ (paraphrasing).

        Lots of questions to womens’ attorneys about whether the egregiously wrong decisions should be overruled. Roe’s not going to survive IMHO, and it’s only a question whether it is overturned or gutted like the VRA.

        Griswold v. Connecticut is next.

        Stare decisis only applies for conservative causes. Everything else is optional, and FWIW this oral argument session tells me that SCOTUS conservatives will parachute in to protect DJT’s papers if the DCC doesn’t do it, on a cert petition that can be slow walked if nothing else.

        • Eureka says:

          Kav basically told us this in his confirmation hearings in how he cited Plessy — I recall remarking at the time — and today he merely “elaborated”.

  13. earlofhuntingdon says:

    The NYT, as it often does, undoes a writer’s work with a headline: “Mississippi Asks: If Women Have It All, Is Roe Necessary?”

    Nominally objective, the NYT’s headline – the reporter argues the opposite – is asserting that women do have it all, and it’s just pondering the implications of it. If that were true, why is there no ERA, and no equal pay for equal work? Why are there glass ceilings and why are sexual discrimination suits as commonplace as school shootings? Why does the GOP put sexual and racial discrimination and guns at the top of its agenda? The NYT’s management is as corrupt as Mitch McConnell and the average Trump judge.

    https://twitter.com/aubreyhirsch/status/1466041125676933126

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      The headline, of course, ignores that Griswold will be the next case after Roe that the Barrett Court overturns. It ignores the difference between contraceptive care and the complex, costly, and sometimes dangerous circumstances of forcing a pregnancy to term.

      • BobCon says:

        Right on the heels is going to be a shredding of First Amendment protections for reporters and publishers, and if Sulzberger, Bezos, Bloomberg and the rest don’t see this, they’re bigger fools than they look right now.

        It will be trivial for the right wingers on the Supreme Court to step aside and let a ruinous state defamation case verdict stand despite whatever longstanding tests are currently in place.

        If these publishers — and their reporters — think an explicit right in the Constitution is more stable than the right to privacy, they aren’t paying attention.

    • BobCon says:

      The Times ran a few days ago a blatantly false headline claiming murders “doubled overnight” in NYC, and then tried to quietly backtrack without a correction.

      https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1464647227650019331

      The reporter, Ali Watkins, may be known to readers here because she was conducting an affair with a source, James Wolfe, who was later convicted of lying to the FBI.

      https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/06/08/on-the-james-wolfe-indictment-dont-forget-carter-page/

      DOJ was invasive, but Watkins also appears to have some major problems as a reporter.

  14. BobCon says:

    This contrast shows the sick state of the US media.

    Yesterday Mark Leibovich wrote this stupid, unilluminating gossip fest in the NY Times about Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan. Leibovitch continues the drumbeat of complaints about the end of war in Afghanistan without providing any meaningful details about how events have actually unfolded.

    Meanwhile, Ryan Cooper cites actual stats to note that Biden has vastly shrunk the US drone strike program, without note by any major US press outlet.

    https://theweek.com/foreign-policy/1007579/biden-nearly-ended-the-drone-war-and-nobody-noticed

    The two articles highlight how the press operates. If something comes down to paying attention to actual data and facts, the NY Times is essentially blind. But if someone like Richard Haass pushes an agenda, the Times snaps to attention and doesn’t bother to dig any more.

    • bmaz says:

      Ryan is a friend, and his natural inclination would be to blast Biden, so that is fairly notable. And he is right.

      • BobCon says:

        And Biden deserves flak for some of the things he’s done.

        But if the NY Times has used the phrase “raises questions” over and over again for years about the use of drones, it’s unacceptable to fail to even notice the policy change and how it responds to those questions and doubts.

  15. Quake says:

    As someone living overseas, I’m happy to report that the local TV media aren’t reporting on the ‘circus’ at all because there aren’t good visuals and it’s too ‘inside baseball’ anyway.

  16. Tom says:

    Of course, if it was men who carried and gave birth to babies, abortion rights wouldn’t even be an issue. They’d be sacrosanct, a matter of male reproductive rights not to be infringed upon in any way. Who would dare question a man’s right to do what he wanted with his own body? Freedom! The Gadsden flag would have a different one-eyed snake on it and any attempt to interfere with a man’s right to an abortion would be met with the defiant reply, “Over my cold, dead penis!”

  17. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Given the odds that the Amy Coney Barrett Court will effectively overturn Roe, is it time for a Lysistrata Withdrawal? We seem to be at a take-the-gloves-off moment, as is Poland. Polite conversation and dickering appear unlikely to change the outcome for a generation, by which time democratic governance might be as quaint and outdated as freedom of the press.

      • Ginevra diBenci says:

        EOH, the rollback of women’s right to bodily autonomy is indeed transnational. Mike Pence recently observed (favorably) how Hungary’s abortion rate under Orban has declined–one of many signs that autocracies around the world have benefited from the marriage of extreme rightwing Catholics (those who can’t wait to get rid of the current pope and the social justice agenda) and regressive evangelical Protestants. The latter see in the dogma of Opus Dei et. al. an exploitable mirror of their “complementarian” theosophy. Our SCOTUS represents the acme of these forces: elect a (nominally) Protestant president whose sole function was to appoint extremist judges to the court. Leonard Leo sits at the fulcrum, funneling all the money from mostly faceless Protestant donors into the coffers feeding theocracy’s fire.

  20. harpie says:

    #J6TL

    https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1466552045834358785
    6:37 PM · Dec 2, 2021

    Likely most people have heard how Twitter’s new “safety” rules about posting pictures are being used against investigators – see WaPo article. No #SeditionHunters accounts affected yet, but it’s safest to archive Tweet histories – tips to follow 1/ [IMFORMATIVE THREAD]

    A Weisburd [WebRadius] links to a PHOTO of Jack DORSEY and Ali ALEXANDER from March, 2021, here:

    https://twitter.com/webradius/status/1465347865723744268
    10:52 AM · Nov 29, 2021

    Any questions? [LINK][PHOTO]

  21. Lawnboy says:

    As I Come from Away….my observation FWIW,
    Im thinking of the last 4 year sh@&t show as “Jumanji”. This game is going to on until it’s done, and in so many ways.

    Elephants and Donkeys running wild, in the courts, or courtyards, and when we adjust to a new normal, the game changes….
    Eyes wide shut.

Comments are closed.