Give evangelicals a nanometer and they will steal a light-year from under our noses.
In regards to the partial building collapse at 1915 Billingsley Terrace, the @FDNY is focused on life. We have no report of injuries at this time but our members, including our K-9 team, are looking for any people trapped. pic.twitter.com/USXndfRwlx
Meanwhile this Roman building built in 753 BCE still stands
My family made this a while back and it still works good. Don’t they have any Mexican construction workers in NYC?
Also something to watch in case SCOTUS decides not to take the motion ultimately.
The fact that the Supreme Court has granted Jack Smith’s motion to promptly decide if a president can commit all crimes w/absolute immunity is a good sign, IMO. Consider this: if the Supremes say a president can commit all crimes w/impunity, Biden will never need to leave office.
Read the full article. Missouri is one of 27 states with the death penalty and has carried out around two dozen executions in the last decade. State Rep. Mike Moon recently appeared here for saying that 12-year-olds should be able to marry with parental permission. In February 2023, Moon introduced a K-12 “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Moon first appeared here in 2017 when he slaughtered a chicken on Facebook Live because abortion is bad.
“Missouri Republican lawmakers are pushing a pair of bills that would allow for women to be charged with murder for getting an abortion in the state.” https://t.co/7u6JuH9ssW
Republicans just keep doubling down on this issue that clearly is not what the public wants and then claim voter fraud when elections don’t go their way.
My mother had a potentially fatal miscarriage around late 1965. Abortion was a crime in California at the time, but she was able to get a medical exemption and had the termination. Had she not, she likely would have died; if she survived, she certainly would not have been able to have more children. Because of the termination, she went on to have me and three younger siblings. Four children alive because of that one necessary abortion.
Republicans would rather have seen my mom dead and the rest of us never born.
Just last year I was prepared to drive my sister-in-law out of state to have a fetus that had been dead for two weeks removed from her uterus. The Republicans here are morally bankrupt.
Same thing with my mom when I was 16, right around 1970. There was no way she would have lived if she had carried that fetus to term. I would have ended up taking care of it…
Yes. See the great writer Ursula K. LeGuin on how the abortion she had at age 20 or so resulted in her having three loved and happy children and a brilliant career, rather than one miserable unloved fatherless child and absolutely no career (at that time, lovely Radcliffe would have expelled her had she had a BAY-BEE.).
I was once told a story by my mother, concerning a relative who had a level of developmental disability. Back in the 40’s she was taken advantage of, impregnated, and the father skipped town. Her parents found a back alley abortionist. Things did not go well, and he ended up dying horribly from sepsis. That has stuck in my mind all these years.
And where do they get those rights they would give to fetuses? They rip them away from the women of Missouri. Time to take to the streets, ladies of Missouri. Dismantle the state capitol building, brick by brick.
To anti-choice pro-forced-birth people, fetuses are infinitely more important than the people who carry them. They’re also more important than children.
Don’t stop there. Charge men with murder if they masturbate and “spill their seed.” Those little sperms are basically pre-born babies. So masturbation is akin to killing babies. (Their logic, not mine.)
Its why its called seed. Back in the old times they hadnt discovered women have eggs that need to be fertilized. The womb was just a patch of dirt waiting for its seed.
“We’ve got ‘In God We Trust’ on our money. It’s a Christian country. Most people are Christian. It’s just a Christian country. There’s no other way to put it.Elagabalusa day ago
Before the “illegals” arrived in 1620 from across the seas, the native population was decidedly NOT Christian. So there.
and the Pilgrims of the Plymouth colony were different than the Puritan founders of the Mass Bay Colony who were different than the Roger Williams who was kicked out, and formed Rhode Island, let alone the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Catholics in Maryland, and the Anglicans of Virginia.
(and of course, assorted early Jewish synagogues.)
Didn’t some states even ban Catholics? Even the idea of what is “Christianity” is up for debate. Catholics, Protestants, Othodox and even Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses disagree on what a “Christian” is.
And the fact that the 1607 Virginia colony was founded earlier and solely as a commercial venture.
And yes, those Puritans & Separatists who set themselves up in Massachusetts Bay & Plymouth didn’t set up “our country.” They set up a religious dictatorship that executed and exiled other sects, like Quakers and Baptists. And, oh yeah, witches too.
This is what happens when the Internet effectively lowers the barriers of entry to zero and anyone with a microphone can potentially draw millions of listeners – and millions of dollars. Networks of decades past wouldn’t have given this kind of bullshit air and it would have been limited to fringe pamphlets handed out at Bircher rallies.
That’s exactly it. The very democratization of information that was supposed to be the liberating part about the internet has instead opened the floodgates to fascist propaganda and disinformation. Any smooth talker with some inexpensive equipment and decent production sense can become an instant thought leader despite having no discernible expertise or talent.
It’s worth noting that it was the rapid spread of new communication technology that enabled the last rise of fascism too.
The Volksempfänger (“people’s receiver”) was a range of low-cost German radio receivers developed by engineer Otto Griessing at the request of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda of the Nazi regime. Its purpose was to make radio reception technology affordable to the general public. Goebbels realized the great propaganda potential of this relatively new medium and thus considered widespread availability of receivers highly important.
1936 Nazi propaganda poster, promoting the use of the Volksempfänger. The text can be translated as, “All of Germany hears the Führer with the People’s Receiver.”
Word Salad for breakfast. Half that lot stayed behind, and the passenger list had to be made up from scraping the streets of London in order to make the trip profitable on that old scow.
The colony was very much a mix of “Saints” and “Strangers”. My ancestor Edward Bumpus, who arrived on the ship Fortune in 1621, was very much of the latter category, and notable as America’s first welfare deadbeat. His origins are uncertain, and one theory is that he was one of the “lusty young men” of the Southwark docks.
As long as we’re sharing lusty progenitors, Ahem: John Howland arrived as the indentured servent to the Carvers, a childless couple who then very conveniently died the very next Sping. Of course, this broke the indenture, and he somehow inherited the entire lot. He then proceeded to marry Elizabeth Tilley, another Mayflower passenger, producing ten children, each of whom married in turn, spewing another 8-10 apiece. By the third generation, then, we’re dealing with some 75+ people. John also brought over his brothers Henry and Arthur, each of whom appeared nearly as busy between the sheets. The real kicker on the last two is that they turned Quaker by mid-century, and promptly got booted to Dartmouth Township, a tract purchased from the Natives, and extending from Fairhaven to the RI border. The Joke was on the Plymouth Colony when New Bedford became fabulously wealthy from whaling, including Howland descendant Henrietta Howland Greene!
No, you idiot. It was “founded,” after a fashion, in 1607, when English settlers built Jamestown, in what is now Virginia. Religion had nothing much to do with that one; they were looking to make a profit. They didn’t, but the settlement held, unlike the earlier effort at Roanoke, in what is now NC. The pilgrims were latecomers in 1620; slavery had already arrived in Virginia, in 1619.
Our Founding Fathers made sure that the country they were creating was NOT Christian. They rejected an established church, did not mention Christianity in any of our founding documents, and made their intentions clear in both letters and treaties. Some individuals, certainly, were ardent Christians, like William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Others, like Thomas Jefferson, rejected the divinity of Jesus. He removed the supernatural happenings and miracles from the Bible, creating a work he called “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” Most of the Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christian. We are, thanks to them, a secular nation, Mr. Knowles–welcoming all faiths and none–and we need to stay that way.
We’re 40th on the list of longevity by nation. All of the top 39 have more socialistic style of healthcare. That’s cuz all of those other countries care for their poor citizens more than we do. The poor are figured in those stats whether you want it or not.
And who was it who is the namesake of the christian religion, and who walked among the poor and implored his followers to care for the poor? Well that would be their christ.
The 60 attempts to kill the Affordable Care Act prove conclusively to me that those Care Killers are as far away from the teachings of their “moral” leader as the Andromeda galaxy is away from our own galaxy. And those “Care Killers” are working hard to make the lives of the poor among us, even more difficult. You can hardly get farther away from a so-called Christian view than that.
Amazing how many people here are certain that only they know the “real” definition of christian. As we all know (those of us who read history, anyway) christians have frequently slaughtered other christians over their differences, and all christians claim to follow the “one true christianity” – but they have over 20,000 different sects, so that is laughable. And they all get extremely upset if outsiders look at the whole herd of them and say “yup, you’re all christians”.
As I previously reported, the ADF first filed its lawsuit in May 2021 and lost in US district court in September 2021 before losing again before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2022. According to Brian Tingley’s resume, he’s led seminars on “authentic manhood” and “true masculinity.” Before that, he wrote and produced commercials for car dealerships, bingo halls, and county fairs. As I’ve reported many times over the years, ex-gay torture therapists often end up rejecting their work and coming out as gay themselves. And sometimes, they are arrested for sexually assaulting their clients.
Then there are the ones that are busted trolling online for gay sex, such as the nationally prominent therapist caught cruising Manhunt in 2018 as HotNHairy72. The Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lead attorney was once House Speaker Mike Johnson, has advocated for criminalizing homosexuality in the United States and has provided free legal support to foreign groups seeking the same in their own countries.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Christian therapist’s free speech challenge to a Washington state ban on so-called conversion therapy aimed at changing a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.https://t.co/ZiLMCeHH0G
Given that Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh all voted to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of Washington's ban on so-called "conversion therapy," we know that no other justice wanted to take up this case. Gorsuch's vote is somewhat surprising. https://t.co/EWShUNArYI
My sexuality is not a “debate.” It’s a fact of life, just as a straight person’s sexuality is a fact of life. Just because these religious whack jobs are too stupid to understand that should not be my problem.
No one is stopping him from saying his beliefs. What they are doing is preventing him from imposing them on others through the guise of medical treatment and accepting money for it. You can also believe massage cures cancer but you can not put out a medical shingle and take money for curing cancer through massage.
Or you can believe blood letting cures depression but you can not charge for this as a medical treatment. We have medical standards based on science.
The more right wingers are silenced, the louder they get all over social media and right wing tv and radio. They are the only silenced people who are deafeningly loud.
Brian Tingley, a licensed marriage and family counselor, said the law violates his free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment because the government is seeking to dictate what he says.
No, the gov’t is still letting you “say” anything you want. They are regulating how you conduct your business so that you don’t harm your patients.
What the government is saying they are not going to pay for the mumbo jumbo via Medicaid or approve it for reimbursement by insurance companies. It is not banned, you just have to pay for the religious practice yourself.
Exactly right. The courts have long recognized that commercial speech is more subject to regulation than other kinds of speech. Tingley et al. are trying to argue that it is religious speech in a commercial context. Um, sorry, no.
You can bet the state will go after, and try to go after the out of state doctors / facilities that help her. Plus the republican fundamentalist die hard anti-abortions will sue for their mandatory 10,000 dollars regardless of what that would do to the family and her other two children. Plus the way the law is written all court costs and lawyer fees are paid by the person getting sued even if they win, which is the reverse of how all other lawsuits go, the loser normally pays if they start the lawsuit. This is totally about control over a woman, her body, and her sexual life. This treats woman little different from breeding stock. It was done to black women to get more slaves babies. Ask why when the baby can not survive, and it endangers the health, life, and ability of the woman to have more kids, do these people still insist she carry it to birth? Do they think that god will do a miracle and have the baby healed as soon as it is born? Do they think the doctors are lying? That a woman that wants more children is lying to abort one? Hugs. Scottie
Dec 11 (Reuters) – The Texas Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court’s ruling that would have allowed a pregnant woman to get an emergency abortion under the medical exception for the state’s near-total abortion ban, granting a petition by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The unanimous ruling from the Texas Supreme Court came hours after lawyers for the woman, Kate Cox, said in a court filing that she had left the state to obtain the abortion, but nonetheless wanted to pursue the case. Cox has said her fetus had a fatal diagnosis and that her health was at risk if she continued the pregnancy to term, including her ability to have more children in the future.
The high court, whose nine justices are all Republicans, said in its unsigned opinion that a “good faith belief” by Damla Karsan, a doctor who sought to perform the abortion and sued alongside Cox, that the procedure was medically necessary was not enough to qualify for the state’s exception.
Instead, the court said, Karsan would need to determine in her “reasonable medical judgment” that Cox had a “life-threatening condition” and that an abortion was necessary to prevent her death or impairment of a major bodily function.
“A woman who meets the medical-necessity exception need not seek a court order to obtain an abortion,” the court wrote. “The law leaves to physicians – not judges – both the discretion and the responsibility to exercise their reasonable medical judgment, given the unique facts and circumstances of each patient,” the court wrote.
The case is a major test of the scope of the medical exception, an issue that is already before the court in a separate case brought by 22 women who experienced pregnancy complications, though none of those women was seeking an immediate abortion. Monday’s ruling appeared to reject a key argument by the plaintiffs in that case – that doctors’ good-faith belief should be enough to meet the exception.
“This ruling should enrage every Texan to their core,” Molly Duane of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a lawyer for Cox, said in a statement. “If Kate can’t get an abortion in Texas, who can? Kate’s case is proof that exceptions don’t work, and it’s dangerous to be pregnant in any state with an abortion ban.”
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A few abortion rights demonstrators remain in the crowd after hours of public comments and discussion as Denton’s city council meets to vote on a resolution seeking to make enforcing Texas’ trigger law on abortion a low priority for its police force, in Denton, Texas, June 28, 2022. REUTERS/Shelby Tauber/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Cox’s fetus was diagnosed on Nov. 27 with trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality that usually results in miscarriage, stillbirth or death soon after birth.
Paxton had urged the Texas Supreme Court to quickly step in after District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble at a hearing in Austin last Thursday issued a temporary restraining order allowing Cox to have an abortion.
In his filing to the top court, Paxton’s office said Cox fell “far short of demonstrating” she met the criteria for a medical exception and warned that Texas courts were not intended to be “revolving doors of permission slips to obtain abortions.”
Cox, 31, of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, filed a lawsuit last Tuesday seeking a temporary restraining order preventing Texas from enforcing its abortion ban in her case.
Cox’s lawyers have said her lawsuit is the first such case since the U.S. Supreme Court last year reversed its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.
Cox, who was about 20 weeks pregnant when she first sued, said in her lawsuit that she would need to undergo her third Caesarian section if she continues the pregnancy. That could jeopardize her ability to have more children, which she said she and her husband wanted.
Cox said in her lawsuit that although her doctors believed abortion was medically necessary for her, they were unwilling to perform one without a court order in the face of a lack of clarity in how the exception would be interpreted and potential penalties including life in prison and loss of their licenses for violating the state’s abortion laws.
Paxton warned in a letter sent shortly after Gamble issued the order that it did not shield doctors, hospitals or anyone else from prosecution or potential civil liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws. The letter was sent to three hospitals where Karsan has admitting privileges.
Read the full article. As I reported this weekend, one of the Texas justices that voted to block her abortion has been arrested 37 times while protesting outside abortion clinics.
Lawyers for Kate Cox, a Texas woman seeking an abortion due to health risks and a fatal abnormality in her fetus, say she is seeking care out of state after what they describe as "legal whiplash and threats of prosecution." pic.twitter.com/aJEbb8yeid
This is Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine—a man tasked w/ impartially upholding the law—bragging about breaking the law to harass women at abortion clinics.
He’s one of the justices who just blocked Kate Cox from getting a *legal* abortion.
Bleak: "Kate Cox has been forced to leave Texas to get healthcare outside of the state… Kate is not available for media interviews, and we are not disclosing her whereabouts."https://t.co/VU2tECGKfn
I fully expect the Texas legislature to figure out some law that they can apply to charge the woman for getting the abortion in another state, and use that to throw her in jail, all because she wanted to save her own life! You can bank on it.
Hell, if she doesn’t return to Texas, count on them demanding her return through some sick & twisted legal theory bullshit, amounting to the fugitive slave act of the 19th century.
Missouri tried to claim fetuses as state citizens and claimed their right to protect the lives of their citizenry. It was also their excuse for attempting to block pregnant women (likely to be seeking abortions) from leaving the state.
You know what? If they want to make Ken Paxton the national face of the GOP going into 2024 and make the whole election about abortion rights, then I say let them. Go right ahead, Republicans.
The Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy includes an unusual measure designed to ensure the law is enforced: Residents of the state can sue clinics, doctors, nurses and even people who drive a woman to get the procedure, for at least $10,000.
Yes, those that help. But there are so many rabid MAGAts out there, they will sue the husband, family members, the gas station where they might have filled up, etc. Even if she went alone and the husband stayed home with the kids, he has to defend himself and prove that in court. Even if he is found not guilty, there is no compensation for court costs, lost time from work, etc.
I’m sort of expecting that, but I hope they (texas) just leave her the fuck alone. I doubt they will. That state, like christianity gets off on the pain and suffering they cause.
He’ll attempt to drag her back to Texas in leg irons to face prosecution. He’ll fail, but the attempt will make him a hero to the radical right which will only embolden others to try the same stunts.
GOOD FOR HER !! There is no reason this woman’s life & health should be held hostage by a cruel, misogynist & sadistic gov’t seeking to only use this woman’s agony for their political gain.
Probably several, but it’s not media access that’s the issue. Going public to fight right-wing policies is a dangerous business these days, and if anyone is brave enough to try, the media will happily run with their stories.
Paxton is going to go after this woman, her husband and anyone who helped her after this. There’s no way he’s going to let her “win” by going around all the authority he believes he has in the state.
Yep. In TX we’re going to see just a tiny, insignificant taste of what a Trump presidency will be about 100% of the time if Dems don’t get out that vote.
Not only does he feel it “violates his authority & (faux) morality,” but it serves as a distraction from all of his previous crimes & corruption. He knows this helps to firm up support of the Christofascist right. “Sure, he’s dirty, but he supports our beliefs.”
The point is and always has been CRUELTY Delayed suffering is their objective These are all males who know so fuckung much about child birth MUST control a woman’s body Abortion should be on every states ballot and it, above much else would sink the GOP For this singular reason alone No woman should vote Republican
It’s absolutely disgusting that this woman and her husband are being forced to have what is probably one of (or the) most difficult and personal things they’ll ever deal with play out on the national stage. Fuck the Christofascists.
This shit would end fast if that cell cluster could be reimplanted into a man’s abdomen. Nope buddy, you got to carry it full term, even if it kills you. No backsies, your law, you deal with it.
This is the new normal for women in certain states. Tell me again how republicans should, in any way or any race, be seriously considered for elected office.
It should be an automatic disqualification. Disgusting misogynist Nazi fucks
She better set up house in a new state. Paxton will try to put her and anyone with her in prison for decades. He will probably try to prosecute the doctor and nurses who perform the abortion.
Scottie's Playtime 