Conservatism

[Shaun]

It’s sad how social media has allowed the stupidest people to think they’re the smartest people.

It surprises me some of them actually remember to breath.

 

[TexRex]

lol. lmao.

Said "thoughtful conservative policy" is a fundamental rights violation, the lengths to which it goes notwithstanding. This rat is upset because rights violations that go this far are wildly unpopular and drive opposition to the anti-consent movement, but rights violations that don't go to such lengths aren't made just because a majority supports them.

 

[UKMikey]

Any comments from Kari Lake yet? Last month she said she was in favour of a 15-week ban.

Kari Lake seeks to moderate her position on abortion, says she opposes a federal ban

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Lake said she opposes a federal abortion ban and doesn’t support a near-total ban in the state.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[TexRex]

Arizona abortion ban: Arizona House Republicans halt Democrats' effort to overturn 1864 law

The GOP-controlled Arizona House quickly gaveled out of session after lawmakers attempted to repeal Arizona's 1864 near-total abortion ban.

www.azcentral.com

 

[UKMikey]

My attempts to shift this into the Abortion thread met with no response so I guess I'll be crossposting for the duration:

I hope this leopards are my face moment represents public support for reproductive choice and that this is reflected in the polls.

Any comments from Kari Lake yet? Last month she said she was in favour of a 15-week ban.

Kari Lake seeks to moderate her position on abortion, says she opposes a federal ban

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Lake said she opposes a federal abortion ban and doesn’t support a near-total ban in the state.

www.nbcnews.com

Ah... here she is disavowing the current total ban:

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/09/kari-lake-arizona-abortion-ban

---

Arizona abortion ban: Arizona House Republicans halt Democrats' effort to overturn 1864 law

The GOP-controlled Arizona House quickly gaveled out of session after lawmakers attempted to repeal Arizona's 1864 near-total abortion ban.

www.azcentral.com

“We cannot have those discussions when the Democrats are screaming at us," she said. "They came at us like insurrectionists.”

She was later called out for impugning her Democratic colleagues and had to rephrase her criticism.

 

[McLaren]

Arizona abortion ban: Arizona House Republicans halt Democrats' effort to overturn 1864 law

The GOP-controlled Arizona House quickly gaveled out of session after lawmakers attempted to repeal Arizona's 1864 near-total abortion ban.

www.azcentral.com

Of course. And this even after I believe some of them came out “against it” as being to far.

Useless bags of air.

 

[UKMikey]

 

[UKMikey]

 

[TexRex]

So I don't think cousins marrying should be prohibited by law. That isn't to say that I approve of incest, in fact I think parties should be liable for physical defect resulting from inbreeding. Cousins marrying itself violates no rights so long as marriage is without coercion. I just want the state to get out of marriage. It devalues the institution by its intervention and it can only violate rights by denying disfavored groups.

That said, a restriction applied equally regardless of biological sex does not run counter to Obergefell anymore than laws prohibiting sexual abuse of minors by adults violate religious freedom when the perpetrators are Christian. That bitch is D-U-M-B, stupid.

 

[UKMikey]

 

[TexRex]

God damn. This is a truly spectacular takedown of disingenuous drivel from the Trumpiest of Trump judges (this is to acknowledge a distinction between Trump-appointed judges who, while maybe not principled jurists, apply a middle-of-the-road conservative slant to legal analysis, and judges such as this rat bitch what wear their Trumpism as a badge of honor).

The link card includes mild profanity which hasn't been censored fully, so I've dropped it into a spoiler box. There is no profanity in the body of the article, which is transcribed below.

Spoiler

Judge James Ho Delivers Tour De Force In Disingenuous Bullsh*t - Above the Law

Judge Ho Tries To Explain Why Forum Shopping Is Bad For Patents And Good For Forced Birth, Fails.

abovethelaw.com

When anti-abortion activists filed a lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas seeking to overthrow federal drug regulation nationwide, they understood that there was a 100 percent chance that they would end up with Christian legal activist turned Trump Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. It worked out for them.

This ruling dealt a brutal blow to the public’s faith in the judiciary, ultimately inspiring the Judicial Conference, the body representing the leadership of the federal court system, to recommend that cases seeking national or statewide injunctions be randomly assigned on a district-wide basis to prevent the appearance of impropriety. A rational proposal that imposed no significant burden on anyone and the most dedicated Federalist Society judges in the country, who see small divisions less as vital access points for justice in remote areas than supercharged political judgeships allowing litigants to game the judge selection process, responded by telling the leadership to pound sand.

Leading the pushback against the potential end of the right-wing gravy train was the Fifth Circuit’s Judge James Ho. His initial comments were fraught with contradictions and bad faith comparisons, but with the benefit of time he’s now refined his stance into a longer, more detailed compilation of contradictions and bad faith comparisons.

Judge Ho laid out his opposition to the forum shopping rule in a jumbled mess of remarks to the Midland County Bar Association a couple days ago.

But lately, some critics of the judiciary have chosen to bemoan, rather than celebrate, the fact that many Americans across the country are served by a single, local federal district judge.

So many grossly misleading claims for such a short sentence.

First of all by “critics of the judiciary” he means the Judicial Conference. Maybe he sees the Chief Justice and Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton as self-hating jurists, but rebranding the leadership of the federal judiciary — Republicans, no less — as mere “critics of the judiciary” like they’re campus anarchists or something is just transparent nonsense.

Moreover, no one bemoans the existence of single judge courthouses to serve remote communities or there would be a palpable movement to crack and pack courthouses like gerrymandering congressional districts. If anything, the Judicial Conference’s proposal sought to protect the rapidly eroding credibility of those judges.

Judge Ho drapes his talk in rhetoric about a single judge being a “member of their community” and the burden on poor, rural folks forced to “litigate before a judge who lives hundreds of miles away,” even though the case we’re all talking about — the mifepristone ban — didn’t involve humble townsfolk, it was brought by FIVE OUT OF STATE GROUPS who incorporated a new entity in Amarillo mere months before filing the case for the sole purpose of bringing this matter in front of the judge they wanted.

Under this proposal, citizens in the Panhandle will more likely than not be forced to litigate their rights before a federal judge 400 miles away in Dallas.

The proposal was limited to cases seeking national or statewide injunctions. So, no, citizens in the Panhandle are not “more likely than not” litigating in Dallas because citizens in the Panhandle with business before the federal courts are more likely than not NOT asking a judge to overrule the scientific conclusions of FDA medical scientists on the strength of his JD.

Indeed, the only Amarillo litigant more likely than not to be forced to THE BIG CITY under the rule would be a group like Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine that’s actually made up of a bunch of big city activists carpetbagging into the Panhandle to make a mockery of small town legal needs.

We shouldn’t impose greater burdens or different rules on Americans, just because they live outside our Nation’s largest urban centers. The Constitution protects every citizen—not just those who live in big cities.

More of the BS. He knows the plaintiffs are a fictional entity established at the behest of outside activists. He just thinks the rest of you are too stupid to figure that out.

I’ll begin by stating the obvious. There’s nothing inherently wrong or suspicious about the fact that some judicial divisions in our federal system have only one resident district judge.

I spend many of my weekends in a small, one stoplight town in Texas. We have just one supermarket in that town.

Now, do I immediately assume that something illegal or untoward has happened, just because there’s only one supermarket? Some blatant violation of federal antitrust law?

Of course not. It just means the town only needs one grocery store—not two.

And just as one grocery store doesn’t mean monopolization, one federal district judge doesn’t mean corruption.

The more apt analogy would continue to note that big city headquartered supermarket charging the residents of this town triple. You don’t “immediately assume” illegal behavior because there’s one supermarket, but once it starts extracting monopolistic rents from the locals, it progresses from an assumption to reality. Likewise, no one “immediately assumes” a problem with single judges until wingnut lobbying interests flock to that district to create sock puppet plaintiffs.

Ho wants to reframe the discussion as an attack on the existence of single judge courthouses as opposed to the exploitation of that arrangement so he just ignores the second half of the problem.

But, hey, the DOJ forum shops too!

That’s not even the highest profile example of recent forum shopping by DOJ. Last year, DOJ filed suit against Texas, challenging the State’s efforts to secure the border in Del Rio.

There’s a federal court in Del Rio. And other similar suits have been filed in Del Rio.

Yet DOJ filed in Austin—not Del Rio. It’s pretty obvious that DOJ’s choice of forum was strategic. And it has not gone unnoticed. One district judge pointedly observed that “the United States sued Texas related to events occurring in the Western District of Texas’s Del Rio Division, but it chose to bring suit over 200 miles away in the Austin Division.”

I don’t expect Attorney General Garland to punish these DOJ lawyers for blatant forum shopping, either.

This is a stupid analogy because suing the state government of Texas in the capital of Texas actually is the right venue.

But… sure. Let’s play with the facts a little and assume the DOJ tried to enjoin Texas state law by filing in San Antonio or something. The DOJ shouldn’t be able to bypass a relevant federal judge in that district just by filing 200 miles away. As the Judicial Conference eloquently put it when unveiling this proposal, the courts embrace random judge assignment to promote the appearance of fairness and those seeking national or statewide injunctions cynically undermine that when they intentionally seek out divisions where they can game the assignment process. AND THIS GOES BOTH WAYS! Make that case go to the district-wide wheel too.

It’s because, if you file in the San Francisco Division of the Northern District of California, or in the Greenbelt Division in Maryland, you have a 100% chance of drawing a judge appointed by a President of a particular party.

It’s inevitable that lawyers will try to predict which strategies will best serve their clients. It’s what we expect in an adversarial system of justice, in which Congress gives plaintiffs the flexibility to select their venue, under the laws that organize our federal judiciary.

Shorter Ho “we live in a government of men and women, not laws.” A federal judge saying, “look, litigants try to cheat because judges are nakedly political and everyone should just deal with it” should be a much bigger story. He also doesn’t really believe this, he just knows that this model cuts in favor of his political preferences because ONLY rural areas present this potential exploit and a combination of geography and blue slips make this particular cheat code overwhelmingly favor his cronies.

But, fine, Judge Ho thinks forum shopping is good advocacy actually.

So if there’s a real concern about forum shopping in our country, it’s that certain judges aren’t just taking cases as they come. The concern is that some judges are trying to direct which cases they get. And that they’re tilting their decisions in order to attract the cases they most want.

Some people use the term “forum shopping.” But the real concern may be what academics call “forum selling.” And it’s a concern that I take very, very seriously.

Narrator voice: Judge Ho does not take this concern seriously.

Few judges in the country have more aggressively sold their forum than Judge Kacsmaryk and in any event the only actionable solution to for forum selling is to water down the odds of litigants picking their judges.

Legal academics have written extensively about the extreme and egregious problem of forum selling by federal bankruptcy courts. One law professor even wrote a whole book about it. He called it: Courting Failure: How Competition For Big Cases Is Corrupting the Bankruptcy Courts.

Bro, you’re the one who just argued that forum shopping is good, strategic advocacy. Now you’re listing a bunch of abuses that can happen when litigants think they can game the system? Far be it from me to give Ho a helping hand with a free lesson is rudimentary argumentation, but you don’t actually need to make every argument, if it undermines your best argument.

As for bankruptcy forum shopping being bad… then expand the pool for that too? Saying that bankruptcy and patent forum shopping (which he also rails against) are bad too isn’t an argument AGAINST the injunction forum shopping rule, it’s a non-sequitur.

Speaking of non-sequitur reasoning:

It’s the same thing when critics accuse certain Supreme Court justices of being unethical. They don’t attack other justices who engage in the same behavior—they applaud them, because they like their rulings.

This is a not-so-subtle reference to Clarence Thomas, who Judge Ho defended with the curious reasoning that some justices own stocks and therefore taking hundreds of thousands in undisclosed gifts, a free house and tuition for family, and an RV from activists is just the same thing.

Anyway, back to the forum shopping:

Why is it ignoring robust bipartisan opposition to forum selling in our Nation’s bankruptcy and patent courts—and instead catering only to a narrow set of concerns at one end of the political spectrum?

Because courts are already taking action to combat those forms of forum shopping/selling without national intervention. The Western District of Texas had the most notorious IP shopping issue and took it upon itself to solve it. The solution? RANDOM DISTRICT-WIDE ASSIGNMENT.

It’s almost as though the Judicial Conference took action on the issue with the most devastating negative impact on public trust and where they had the least confidence that FedSoc functionaries like Ho and Kacsmaryk would act in the best interest of the rule of law.

In this vein, he complains about the existence of nationwide injunctions outright, a right-wing hobby horse based on shoddy research that also fails to address the statewide injunction issue that the Judicial Conference proposal includes.

But assuming that neither Congress nor the Supreme Court will take action to stop nationwide injunctions or agency vacatur, all is not lost. In fact, we already have a solution readily available and on the books today.

It’s called—appellate review.

Newsflash: appellate review exists now and has not solved the problem.

This failure is a product of Ho’s intentionally obtuse recasting of this as a complaint about the existence of small courthouses. Appellate review solves the risk of a lone federal judge continually botching the law — as the Eleventh Circuit can sadly confirm — but not the credibility hit the judiciary takes when national rights are getting gamed.

If we cater to the forum shaming strategies of the critics, then we’re no better than the forum-selling judges who distort their rulings to attract bankruptcy and patent cases. Whether we distort rules to attract cases or appease critics, we’re committing the same sin.

So… if we eliminate the incentives for forum shopping, then we’re no better than judges allowing bankruptcy and patent forum shopping to go unchecked… which we shouldn’t allow… but also we shouldn’t do anything about?

You know, there’s a reason why some of the most egregious assaults on the rule of law come in unexplained shadow docket opinions. The justices realize that when it comes to defending the indefensible, shutting up is free.

Judge James C. Ho’s Remarks to the Midland County Bar Association [Volokh Conspiracy]

 

[TexRex]

This, of course, is the point. It's about controlling people. It's about hurting people.

Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom

Complaints about pregnant women being turned away from emergency rooms spiked in the months after states began enacting strict abortion laws following the 2022 U.S.

apnews.com

When you create exceptions in law, you let politicians make the decisions. When you create exceptions for medical necessity, you give politicians, capricious and motivated by ideology as they are, the power to decide whether specific action is medically necessary. When a doctor may be ruined because a politician decided the action they took wasn't medically necessary, you discover that doctors are hesitant to act and people are harmed as a result. That's the point.

I struggle to think of anything that could happen to these vermin which I would consider unfortunate. They're not people. They're a disease.

 

[Joey D]

So the feds are going to look at that and start rubbing their hands because every violation of EMTALA is about $50,000. Malpractice insurance doesn't cover it either. If you fail to pay or keep having the violations, you end up losing Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement, which effectively means your health system is bankrupt. Even if state law somehow allows EDs to turn patients away, the federal government can cut off Medicare/Medicaid.

 

[UKMikey]

So the feds are going to look at that and start rubbing their hands because every violation of EMTALA is about $50,000. Malpractice insurance doesn't cover it either. If you fail to pay or keep having the violations, you end up losing Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement, which effectively means your health system is bankrupt. Even if state law somehow allows EDs to turn patients away, the federal government can cut off Medicare/Medicaid.

The article says as much. They're waiting to find out whether Health & Human Services enforces the Act after announcing an investigation last year.

 

[TexRex]

Why is the right so driven to propagate obvious falsehoods? Is it just mental illness or is there more to it than that?

Just the right?

So no, not just the right, but this is fun.

FLASHBACK: Columbia President After 9/11 Said Terrorism Is ‘A Form Of Protesting’ [This is a Daily Wire link. I don't recommend visiting it. The entire piece is transcribed below.]

Just two months after the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States, Columbia University’s president Minouche Shafik remarked that terrorism was a “form of protesting against a system,” according to a video unearthed by The Daily Wire.

Shafik, who was a vice president at the World Bank at the time, was asked about the economic roots of terrorism in developing countries during an event with the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies. While she condemned “extreme views” held by terrorist groups, she said the reason they are popular is because terrorism is a “protest.”

“You’ll always have individuals who will have extreme views,” Shafik said at the November 2001 event, “but what’s really troubling in the region is that there’s actually quite a broad base of society which has some sympathy for the terrorists, not so much because they approve of their methods, but it’s a form of protesting against a system which is not delivering for them on the economic or the political front.”



She also added that “economic stagnation and political authoritarianism” create “fertile ground on which terrorist seeds can flourish.” Video of the full event can be viewed here [YouTube].

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who has led calls for Shafik to resign as anti-Semitic demonstrations take over the Ivy League campus, told The Daily Wire that she believes this view of terrorism is informing her response to the chaotic anti-Israel protests taking place under her watch at Columbia.

“This video of Columbia University President Dr. Minouche Shafik saying she can understand why people sympathize with terrorists right after 9/11, and calling it a form of protest, is just further evidence that placating the pro-Hamas unsanctioned mob currently taking over Columbia is part of her core beliefs,” Stefanik said.

“Shafik must either immediately resign or be fired by Columbia’s Board,” Stefanik said.

A Columbia spokesman told The Daily Wire that Shafik condemns terrorism.

“President Shafik condemns terrorism, full stop,” spokesman Ben Chang said. “To intimate otherwise is dangerous and a complete misrepresentation of what she said.”

Shafik’s 2001 comments echo the sentiment professed by defenders of the Hamas terrorist massacre on October 7 that left more than a thousand Israelis dead. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) a day after the attack, for example, said that Israel’s “blockade” and “occupation” of Gaza led to the terrorist attack.

“The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance,” Tlaib said. “The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer.”

House Republicans, including Stefanik, demanded Shafik resign in a Monday letter, citing the anarchy and anti-Semitism erupting on the New York City Ivy League school’s campus.

“Over the past few days, anarchy has engulfed the campus of Columbia University,” the lawmakers wrote. “As the leader of this institution, one of your chief objectives, morally and under law, is to ensure students have a safe learning environment. By every measure, you have failed this obligation.”

“The situation unfolding on campus right now is a direct product of your policies and misguided decisions,” they added. “As Representatives from the State of New York, many of our constituents are directly impacted by the unfolding chaos on Columbia’s campus. Based on these recent events and your testimony in front of Congress, we have no confidence in your leadership of this once esteemed institution.”

During her testimony last week — while the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” was just beginning — Shafik said anti-Semitism has “no place on our campus” and that she was “committed to do everything I can do to confront it directly.”

Since last week, the encampment on Columbia’s campus has been the scene of antisemitic chants, arrests by NYPD officers, and heightened tensions. Despite nearly 100 students initially being arrested and others suspended, the Columbia administration has decided to move classes virtually and let the encampment continue.

Columbia sent a campus-wide announcement on Sunday announcing new safety measures, including more security guards, improved ID checks, and more security for The Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life during Passover — which will begin Monday night.

How broken are they that they don't recognize the remarks cited contradict the claim made about them?

“You’ll always have individuals who will have extreme views, but what’s really troubling in the region is that there’s actually quite a broad base of society which has some sympathy for the terrorists, not so much because they approve of their methods, but it’s a form of protesting against a system which is not delivering for them on the economic or the political front.”

It's also absolutely hilarious that Stefanik is claiming that Shafik isn't sufficiently opposed to terrorism when the rat has defended those being held to account for their attack on the United States Capitol as "hostages."

House Republicans shy away from Trump and Rep. Elise Stefanik's use of term "Jan. 6 hostages"

Trump's congressional supporters, including some who have endorsed him for president in 2024, largely declined to endorse Trump's use of the word "hostages."

www.cbsnews.com

The rat was in the Capitol during the attack, by the way. Here it is cowering in fear:

Connie vermin.

 

[UKMikey]

To the Community Notes-mobile, Robin!

Although I doubt my vote will make much of an impact against the misinformation juggernaut (bitch).