US Politics: Elections, Defections, Insurrections, Oh My!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

20 minutes ago, LongRider said:

"Pray the gun away."  Yeah, that will work.     

 

NOT.

You didn’t get the message that these school shootings don’t happen in other developed countries because they’re super religious? Oh, wait…

[LongRider]

I guess we are doomed.

Quote

“If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again,”  (Rusty) Bowers said. “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was great.”

 Arizona Republican calls push to overturn 2020 'juvenile' | AP News

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 hours ago, LongRider said:

"Pray the gun away."  Yeah, that will work.     

 

NOT.

Your lack of imagination is disappointing. I mean, you have try to imagine the prayers that are used.

Dear gawd, who is in heaven, with Jesus to his right, and his bushmaster AR 16 to his left. Please forgive us our trespasses, and let the next active shooter not be here, but let him go down to that school we are rivals with. They are just jerks, anyway. 

Amen.

Then you have to watch the outcomes as sorta religious competition. Those schools with an active shooter obviously didn'T pray hard enough. So all the remaining schools will thus double down on their prayer efforts until there are nomore shooters. 

I am not sure whether there will be highlight reel from the prayers, with Pat Robertson doing some post prayer analysis (like they do with sports, where they analyze plays), and offer his view on the pray of the week. Then colleges can set up a sorta draft lottery, with a chance of the most godless college (Harvard) improving their fortunes by getting the most talented pray maker.

[LongRider]

4 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

 there will be highlight reel from the prayers,

The entire post is brilliant, and I like this line the best.  Prayer highlight reels, Fox News would play those over and over!            

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

56 minutes ago, LongRider said:

I guess we are doomed.

 Arizona Republican calls push to overturn 2020 'juvenile' | AP News

Yep. To these people the most unqualified Republican is still better than any Democrat. These people are fighting a religious war in their minds, with the sad twist being that Jesus wouldn't support anything they're doing.

[DireWolfSpirit]

8 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

So, I would like a moratorium placed on grandiose proclamations that the law applies to everyone.

Fuckinay, this goes right up there with "Gawd controls the waves and winds" as phrases we should never again mutter!

The law applies to everyone my ass, not in this country!

[Zorral]

Of course, it must follow then, if my tax payer dollars pay for religious schooling, then all the churches - synagogues must pay income tax.  Especially as this says there's no difference now between the church and the state.

That was my first thought on hearing the SCOTUS's ruling yesterday.  Second thought was, "As if that would ever happen in the nation of law for you and not for me."

[ThinkerX]

 

First, the last of the Jan 6th hearings is getting postponed until next months. Something about a summer recess and a mountain of evidence to sift through.

Jan. 6 Capitol riot probe aims to hold final hearings on pro-Trump mob in July as new evidence comes in (msn.com)

 

Second, Republicans attempted to come up with solutions to the nations woes but fall to come up with little, if anything workable. Mostly, it seems putative. 

House Republicans propose solutions to inflation and gas costs (msn.com)

 

For an hour and a half, Republicans considered proposals ranging from dramatically cutting taxes and government spending, enacting work requirements for social welfare programs, and abolishing “renewable energy mandates” that restrict the production of oil and other fossil fuels.

Although some policy disagreements among them were evident, the event’s attendees were unified in their harsh criticisms of President Joe Biden, fixing the blame squarely on his administration for the country’s economic woes.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Of course, it must follow then, if my tax payer dollars pay for religious schooling, then all the churches - synagogues must pay income tax.  Especially as this says there's no difference now between the church and the state.

That was my first thought on hearing the SCOTUS's ruling yesterday.  Second thought was, "As if that would ever happen in the nation of law for you and not for me."

Can we, just, like stop for a second here?

The issue that was decided in Maine does indeed suck, but it's also kind of on Maine. Maine had a law that funded private schools, and they were taken to court because they would not fund religious private schools. 

I don't think it's a great trend and I think it opens up the door for a lot worse, but it is not the slam dunk that people are displaying here. 

[Quijote Light]

28 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

Can we, just, like stop for a second here?

The issue that was decided in Maine does indeed suck, but it's also kind of on Maine. Maine had a law that funded private schools, and they were taken to court because they would not fund religious private schools. 

I don't think it's a great trend and I think it opens up the door for a lot worse, but it is not the slam dunk that people are displaying here. 

In addition, I believe that there are areas in the state with no easy access to public schools, which is why non-sectarian private schools were funded in the first place. 

[Zorral]

So why fund private sectarian schools instead of building public schools, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

We inquire, but you, the people, answer! 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Yes the ruling won 't have a huge immediate impact, but you can expect more expansive laws like the one in Maine (and I think also in AZ) to be introduced in every red state. The SC has confirmed that it's both okay for states to provide tuition relief for students attending private schools and that it's unconstitutional to block religious private schools from receiving said funding. It's not hard to imagine how a bill could be crafted to basically let everyone who wants to apply for the same tuition relief do so with minimal restrictions.

[Zorral]

Yet, still and indeed, if religious schools get tax money, their churches need to pay taxes.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Is the Religious Liberty Tent Big Enough to Include the Religious Commitments of Jews?

Particularly when it comes to abortion.

Enter a synagogue in Florida, which filed a complaint in state court last week claiming that the Florida legislature’s new law, which goes into effect July 1, banning almost all pre-viability abortions, violates the state constitution’s religious liberty provisions, which afford even broader protections than those of the federal Constitution. In the complaint, petitioners note that while Florida seeks to ban abortion at 15 weeks’ gestation, “in Jewish law, abortion is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman, or for many other reasons not permitted under the Act.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/do-proponents-of-religious-liberty-really-intend-to-dispute-the-religious-commitments-of-jews.html

 

Quote

 

One of the notable trends in the current Supreme Court’s religion jurisprudence is the shrinking of the establishment clause as the free exercise clause grows ever more robust. The former prohibits the government from sponsoring a religion, while the latter protects individuals’ right to exercise their religion as they see fit. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it Tuesday, dissenting in a case requiring Maine to funnel taxpayer dollars toward religious education: “What a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the Court was ‘lead[ing] us … to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.’ Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation.”

But as new protections for religious liberty are allowed to swallow up other freedoms, the vexing question of religious liberty for whom is never fully addressed. After a series of recent cases in which the Supreme Court appeared to privilege the religious freedoms of Christian death row inmates, some efforts were made to ensure that adherents of any faith would be able to claim protection under the court’s ample new views on religious freedom.

Enter a synagogue in Florida, which filed a complaint in state court last week claiming that the Florida legislature’s new law, which goes into effect July 1, banning almost all pre-viability abortions, violates the state constitution’s religious liberty provisions, which afford even broader protections than those of the federal Constitution. In the complaint, petitioners note that while Florida seeks to ban abortion at 15 weeks’ gestation, “in Jewish law, abortion is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman, or for many other reasons not permitted under the Act.”

This kind of religious liberty claim, assuming away other procedural issues, should be recognizable to those who have successfully obtained religious exemptions from contraceptive coverage requirements under Obamacare, or from civil rights laws protecting LGBTQ Americans, or from public health rules limiting the size of religious gatherings during the pandemic. But will those who have defended the Supreme Court’s expansive approach to religious freedom accept that adherents of other faiths might also have sincere religious objections to prohibitions on abortion? The answer to that question hasn’t been addressed head-on, but it was surely predictable: Not every religion has an equal claim to religious liberties, and some religious adherents can be deemed less worthy of those claims than others.

Some “tentative thoughts” to that effect were published this week by Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston*, who contends that the religious liberty interests advanced by Florida’s Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor can be dismissed if proponents of religious liberty can get past their squeamishness about challenging the sincerity of the Jews seeking exemptions from the Florida law. There are many reasons not to engage directly with these tentative thoughts, chief among them that they appear to be doctrinally unsound. But we have learned over recent years that right-wing ideas that are “off the wall,” and that shouldn’t be given oxygen, can be rapidly absorbed into mainstream legal thinking when allowed to go unchecked. And that makes Blackman’s suggestion that only Orthodox Jews have sincere religious duties not only offensive but dangerous. ....

 

 

[Martell Spy]

Supreme Court strikes down New York gun law along ideological lines
The 6-3 decision is the latest in a series of moves by the increasingly conservative high court to adopt a muscular interpretation of the right to bear arms.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/23/supreme-court-strikes-down-new-york-gun-law-along-ideological-lines-00041691

Quote

 

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of gun owners who want to carry their weapons outside the home, striking down New York state’s rules giving local officials broad authority to deny such permits for almost any reason.

The 6-3 decision, which divided the court along the usual ideological lines, is the latest in a series of moves by the increasingly conservative high court to adopt a muscular interpretation of the right to bear arms found in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

 

 

[Fez]

17 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Supreme Court strikes down New York gun law along ideological lines
The 6-3 decision is the latest in a series of moves by the increasingly conservative high court to adopt a muscular interpretation of the right to bear arms.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/23/supreme-court-strikes-down-new-york-gun-law-along-ideological-lines-00041691

 

Getcha guns, guns here.

Although the ruling isn't quite as apocalyptic as being reported I don't think; not yet anyway.  Though it's certainly bad. The Kavanaugh/Roberts concurrence makes clear that states can still have restrictions within gun license applications. This ruling is that if an applicant meets those restrictions the state "shall issue" the license rather than "may issue". As of this morning, 43 states had shall issue laws and 6 had may issue (not sure what 50th state had; possibly no license requirement at all?); those 6 states' laws are now overturned.

The big question will be what licensing restrictions are still permissible. And also, since only 2 of the 6 conservatives signed the concurrence that potentially means there's already 4 judges on the court who don't believe there should be any restrictions at all. Certainly Alito thinks there shouldn't if you read his insane concurrence.

[Zorral]

SCOTUS has set up the conditions for an armed take-over of NYC.  This is the point.  The city's now become a far more dangerous place as the yahoos with their arsenals come down here, get drunk, and go hunting.  Just like they do upstate.  Except they won't be hunting deer and inadvertently in their lack of skills and drunkeness kill human beings.  They will be hunting us.  There are already precedents, such as the massacre at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo.

 

[JGP]

Yikes.

[Fez]

16 minutes ago, JGP said:

Yikes.

Again bad ruling, but not apocalyptic (yet). Any violation of Miranda is still inadmissible in court. The problem is that since you can no longer sue for violations there's every likelihood that cops will constantly violate Miranda and just hope a court lets something slip in. There's not really a downside for them anymore.

[James Arryn]

I’ll say it again: Protect the guns, help the rich, fuck the people. USA! USA! USA!

[Kalbear]

As always, the advice should always be: never, ever talk to cops.