“Mississippi may not shift its obligation to respect the established constitutional rights of its citizens to another state.”
Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an opinion that will allow Mississippi’s only remaining abortion clinic to stay open.
A good day for the women of Mississippi and women all over America.
Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, but IUDs have been widely used in this country for contraception since the late 1950’s. If IUDs cause abortions, they would have been illegal prior to Roe.
Why is Hobby Lobby even allowed to argue in court that IUDs cause abortions? Why are we going backwards?
Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby does not require any legal determination about the religious rights of for-profit corporations.
This case can, and should, be decided on the facts, which are that the birth control methods Hobby Lobby objects to (Plan B, Ella and IUD’s) are contraceptives, not abortifacients.
The religious right, willfully in my view, continues to confuse Plan B with RU-486, which is an abortifacient and is not covered under Obamacare.
This is just another infuriating example of religious nuts refusing to accept non-controversial medical and scientific facts and trying to impose their ignorant views on the rest of us.
Listening to Hobby Lobby’s lawyers and the conservative justices today, I was reminded of Galileo and the Catholic Church or the Scopes trial.
It’s going to take more than the re-make of Cosmos to turn this country around.
GOP Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has vetoed Senate Bill 1062, which would have make it okay for businesses to discriminate against gays based on the “religious beliefs” of their owners and employees. No soup (or wedding cake) for you!
As with Medicaid expansion, I hope other GOP governors will follow Brewer and do the right thing for their citizens.
Also today, a federal court in Texas found that state’s ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.
Back when I was growing up, right-wingers who saw Communists everywhere in this country wanted those on the left to move to Russia. I think those on the right who are unhappy here should move to Putin’s Russia.
Former GOP Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, under federal indictment along with his wife on 14 counts of corruption, rejected a plea deal that would have allowed him to plead guilty to a single count for bank fraud. His wife would not have faced any charges.
The single count would have been for failing to disclose the loans from Star Scientific’s Jonny Williams on a mortgage re-fi application.
Dumb move, Bob.
A federal court has struck down Florida’s law requiring that those applying for welfare benefits take a drug test. The judge found that the 2011 law violates the Fourth Amendment (Duh!).
GOP Gov. Rick Scott has said he will appeal. Good luck with that.
In today’s department of “Ain’t Gonna Happen,” Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning has requested a presidential pardon. The request is either for a commutation of his/her 35-year sentence to time served or an outright pardon.
Perhaps try again in 2017 with President Rand Paul…
The Justice Department is changing its charging policies so that those who commit low-level, non-violent drug crimes will not face harsh mandatory minimum sentences.
And in Floyd v. New York, a federal judge has found New York City’s minority-heavy stop-and-frisk policies unconstitutional (Duh!). The judge noted that 88% of those targeted by the NYPD are released without being charged with anything, which told her that there wasn’t sufficient suspicion to stop them in the first place.
“George Zimmerman decided Trayvon Martin’s fate on Feb. 26, 2012, and now a jury will decide his. A jury that, by the way, is part of a justice system that is not supposed to exclusively serve the best educated and most articulate of our citizenry. So now would be a good time to point out that Jeantel’s weight, her nails, her sex, her color – these things have precisely jack to do with her account of what happened the night Travyon Martin died. Justice is supposed to serve teenagers too, and people who party and who don’t hide it when they’re angry or flustered, and women who can’t read cursive. It’s supposed to serve people whose dialogue wasn’t written for them by David E. Kelley. Remember that. Remember that Rachel Jeantel is not the one on trial.”
Mary Elizabeth Williams, “The smearing of Rachel Jeantel,” Salon
Over at Talking Points Memo, Sahil Kapur calls Justice Scalia’s gay marriage dissent “flaming.”
Embattled Farmers 