Leaving abortion up to the individual states is untenable

It is untenable for the very same reason that the Fugitive Slave Act was ultimately untenable: because it raises questions about the obligations under the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution of states where abortion is legal to those states where it is not. You simply cannot have a situation where something is treated as a major crime in one state while being perfectly legal in another. Republicans who try to make this claim are attempting to claim a "middle ground" that does not, in fact, exist!

It saddened me to write this . . .

This is a comment I posted in response to retired Justice Stephen Breyer's op-ed in today's NY Times (see https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/03/opinion/stephen-breyer-friendship-court.html?ugrp=c&unlocked_article_code=1.hk0.zL3T.vi50e3X9BiUj&smid=url-share ). I have always held Justice Breyer in high regard, and so I was quite saddened to feel compelled to write this comment:

The pressure campaign on Justice Sotomayor needs to stop!

This entire notion that everything can be gamed out in advance is a fiction, based on the mistaken notion that it would have made a difference if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had only retired while Obama was president. It would not have. McConnell was hellbent on preventing Obama from naming a third justice to the court, and would have used every procedural and parliamentary trick in the book to prevent it from happening. It is true that Democrats held the Senate through 2013, but they still had the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, and McConnell wouldn’t have hesitated to use it.

Besides, what with Manchin and Sinema still in the Senate, it is unclear whether Democrats could even seat a justice at the present moment!

And in any case, Sotomayor is just 69 years old. Yes, she is a type 1 diabetic, but she has managed that condition since she was 7 years old! And there are no other reports of any particular illness currently dogging her.

How NOT to respond to posts expressing extreme frustration and anger over the ruling reducing Trump's bond

A lot of people are making comments today borne of frustration and perfectly understandable anger. But responding to them with lectures on how they are hurting Biden or helping Trump is perhaps the least helpful way to respond, even if you believe that to be true.

Look, these posts are coming out of raw emotion. Many of the people who post them will cool down after they've had a chance to work through those emotions. People are entitled to their emotions, and are entitled to express them. We should all respect that. But to respond to posts expressing legitimate emotions with a kind of cool, detached rationality does nothing to help them process those emotions in a productive way. And in some cases, it may only serve to entrench them in their initial emotional response.

Just my two cents, but please consider refraining from the need to "correct" the people who are making these postings, at least until after they've had a reasonable opportunity to fully grapple with the emotions they are experiencing!

My Dad always used to say . . .

. . . "Don't shit where you eat."

It's advice that would have served Fani Willis well!

Last night, my 20-year-old grandniece reached out to me to ask what I thought of RFK, Jr. . . .

Here was my response:

"I sometimes wish there was cognitive impairment"

If that's what dimentia looks like . . .

. . . then I'll have what he's having!

I believe the Supreme Court, including the three liberal justices, erred gravely today

Let's be clear: this is NOT a decision based on the text or intention of the Constitution as Amended. I believe there is a flaw in the court's reasoning on the question of whether a state can disqualify a candidate for the entire country. The decision by the Colorado Secretary of State affected only whether Trump would appear on the ballot in Colorado. Other states would still have been free to decide otherwise. And I believe that was precisely the intent of those who ratified the 14th Amendment, and would have been consistent with the very federalism the Constitution sets up.

The Constitution leaves it to the individual states to administer federal elections. I believe the drafters and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment envisioned a system whereby a state could indeed exclude a candidate from the ballot within its jurisdiction based on the candidate's participation in an insurrection, provided some sort of due process had occurred to make that determination. Such a process had occurred in Colorado. Under this envisioning, the candidate could then have appealed on the substantive question of whether he or she had, in fact, participated in an insurrection (a question today's ruling doesn't address at all).

The three liberal justices seem to have been concerned about creating a patchwork, but a patchwork is precisely what the Constitution sets up! If we are seriously worried about creating a patchwork, then logically we should dispense with the entire electoral system and have instead national federal elections administered by the federal government! But this ruling amounts to a picking and choosing of federalism when it suits the Court's preferred result.

Sorry, Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson -- all of you missed the boat on this one!

For those who have a Netflix account . . .

. . . I highly recommend the documentary, "Brother Outsider: The LIfe of Bayard Rustin." Rustin was the great African American, Quaker, openly and unapologetically gay civil rights activist, pacifist and organizer who was, in many respects, the organizing genius behind things like the March on Washington and something of a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. This is not the recently released feature film, "Rustin," which is also streaming on Netflix. This is a 2003 documentary, and provides much more detail on Rustin's life and beliefs. It features numerous recordings of Rustin's singing -- which earned him enough money to put himself through City College, as well as an interview with one of his past lovers. Actually, as I watched it, I was struck by how many aspects of Rustin's life the feature film, "Rustin," either played down or omitted entirely! It is beautifully put together!

https://www.netflix.com/watch/70139371?trackId=14170286&tctx=2%2C0%2C03edbe16-9e73-4645-9b7a-94b4a766a852-17486363%2CNES_AC884119042DB46FB04F79A5EC41A4-994911DC4F528C-45130432CD_p_1708740184338%2CNES_AC884119042DB46FB04F79A5EC41A4_p_1708738981381%2C%2C%2C%2C%2CVideo%3A70139371%2C