Since the Supreme Court let a radical a******n ban that flatly violates decades of precedent go into effect, it is now illegal in the Lone Star State to perform, aid or abet the termination of a pregnancy after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. And in a clever, devious move, it’s not government enforcing the ban, but ordinary Texans, who can take their neighbors to court and collect damages of “not less than $10,000 for each a******n that the defendant performed or induced.”

“By prohibiting state officers from enforcing the Act directly and relying instead on citizen bounty h****rs, the Legislature sought to make it more complicated for federal courts to enjoin the Act on a statewide basis,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent. “Taken together, the Act is a breathtaking act of defiance — of the Constitution, of this Court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking a******ns throughout Texas.”

Sotomayor might have added that it is especially ironic that this statute emerged out of a state that claims to revere personal freedom. Still, maybe there’s a lesson to learn here. Are legislators in Albany and other progressive state capitols paying attention?

Rather than the government requiring teachers to be v******ted and students to be masked, legislators could let ordinary citizens take to court and collect damages from unv******ted individuals who refuse to cover their faces and get their shots.

Rather than using police to find and seize illegal firearms, regular people could identify fellow citizens who possess them, and rake in the dough.

Rather than relying solely on traffic cops, red-light and speed cameras to stop the life-threatening behavior of reckless drivers, pedestrians could carry radar guns themselves.

To prevent terrorists from attacking the homeland, individuals could be given the power to surveil one another, winning monetary awards when they expose plots.

To stop predators from exploiting children online, the government could dangle big money to encourage Americans to entrap one another in intimate sexual conversations.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-way-unusual-anti-a******n-080500395.html

The American right has been drunk on its freedom from two kinds of inhibition since Donald Trump appeared to guide them into the promised land of their unleashed ids. One is the inhibition from lies, the other from violence. Both are ways members of civil society normally limit their own actions out of respect for the rights of others and the collective good. Those already strained limits have snapped for leading Republican figures, from Tucker Carlson on Fox News to Ted Cruz in the Senate and for their followers.

We’ve watched those followers gulp down delusions from Pizzagate to Q***n to C***d denialism to Trump’s e******n **es. And rough up journalists, crash vehicles into and wave weapons at Black L***s M****r and other anti-r****t protesters at least since Charlottesville, menace statehouses, issue threats to doctors and school boards testifying about public health, and plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, for imposing C***d-prevention protocols.

The Texas a******n law that the rightwing supreme court just smiled upon, despite its violation of precedent, seethes with both violence and lies. The very language of the law is a lie, a familiar one in which six-week embryos are called fetuses and a heartbeat is attributed to the cluster of cells that is not yet a heart not yet powering a circulatory system.

Behind it are other lies, in which women have a******ns because they are reckless, wanton and callous, rather than, in the great number of cases, because of the failure of birth control, or coercive sex, or medical problems, including threats to the health of the mother or a non-viable pregnancy, and financial problems, including responsibility for existing children.

A vigilante who goes after a woman under Texas's law is willing to see her die

But what was new about the Texas bill is its invitation to its residents to become vigilantes, bounty h****rs and snitches. This will likely throw a woman who suspects she is pregnant into a hideous state of fearful secrecy, because absolutely anyone can profit off her condition and anyone who aids her, from the driver to the doctor, is liable. It makes pregnancy a crime, since it is likely to lead to the further criminalization even of the significant percentage of pregnancies that end in miscarriage. It will lead women – particularly the undocumented, poor, the young, those under the thumbs of abusive spouses or families – to die of life-threatening pregnancies or illicit a******ns or suicide out of despair. A vigilante who goes after a woman is willing to see her die.

The rightwing stance on a******n is often treated as a contradiction coming from a political sector that sings in praise of unfettered liberty to do as you like, including carry semiautomatic weapons in public and spread a sometimes fatal v***s. But like the attack on v****g rights in Texas happening simultaneously with the attack on reproductive rights, it is of course about expanding liberty for some while withering it away for others. The attacks on reproductive rights seek to make women unfree and unequal; the attacks on v****g rights seek to make people of color unfree and unequal; women of color get a double dose.

Related: Texas now has a******n bounty h****rs.

This is the logical outcome of a party that, some decades back, looked at an increasingly non-white country and decided to try to suppress the v**es of people of color rather than win them. Not just the Democratic party but democracy is their enemy. In this system in which some animals are more equal than others, some have the right to determine the t***h more than others, and facts, science, history are likewise fetters to be shaken loose in pursuit of exactly your very own favorite version of reality, which you enforce through dominance, including outright violence.

What was the 6 January c**p attempt but this practice writ large? A mountain of lies about the outcome of an e******n was used to whip up a vigilante mob into an attack not just on Congress but on the ratification of the e******n results and death threats against the vice-president and against Speaker Pelosi. The sheer berserker-style violence of it was extraordinary, the mostly middle-aged mostly white mostly men trying to gouge out eyeballs and trampling their own underfoot while screaming and spraying bear spray in the faces of those guarding the building and the elected officials within and the e******n.

The ideological premise is that one’s own rights matter so much that others’ rights do not matter at all

Their leaders produced lies that instigated the violence, lies to justify that violence, lies to deny the existence of that violence, and then lies to stir up further violence. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who by his own account furiously begged Trump to call off the attackers, has since been trying to sabotage the investigation into what happened.

As the New York Times reported this week: “Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, has threatened to retaliate against any company that complies with the congressional committee investigating the J****** 6 r**t, after the panel asked dozens of firms to preserve the phone and social media records of 11 far-right members of Congress who pushed to overturn the results of the 2020 e******n.” He is trying to prevent Congress and the public from knowing what has gone on. Which you could also call covering up a crime, in public, and his threats may themselves constitute crimes.

Madison Cawthorn, the North Carolina freshman congressman who appeared onstage on 6 January to whip up the crowd, calls the r****rs “political prisoners” and continues to lie about the outcome of the 2020 e******n, declaring: “If our e******n systems continue to be r****d, continue to be stolen, it’s going to lead to one place and that’s bloodshed.” Cawthorne, like the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, like Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, whose v**es set the Texas a******n law into action on Wednesday, has been accused of sexual misconduct.

While men across the political spectrum are accused of similar wrongdoing – Andrew Cuomo’s conduct led to New York getting its first female governor last month – in the Republican case it is not an ideological inconsistency. The ideological premise is that one’s own rights matter so much that others’ rights do not matter at all, and that goes from rape to mask and v*****e policies to the proliferation of guns and gun deaths in recent years.

There is no clear way to tell if the right is emboldened because they’ve gotten away with so much in the past five years, or whether they’re increasingly desperate because they are in a wild gamble, but it seems like both at once. If the US defends its democracy, such as it is, and protects the v****g rights of all eligible adults, the right will continue to be a shrinking minority. Their one chance of overturning that requires overturning democracy itself. That’s one goal they’re willing to use violence to achieve and no longer bothering to lie about.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-seethe-violence-lies-texas-102225567.html

I wish I cold take credit for this one but I can't. I received it via e-mail today,


I was sitting at a long stoplight yesterday, minding my own business, patiently waiting for it to turn green even though there was no on-coming traffic.


A carload of scruffy-bearded, young men shouting Anti-American and B*M slogans with a half-burned American F**g duct-taped on the trunk of their car and a "Remember G****e F***d" slogan spray painted on the side stopped next to me.Suddenly they yelled, "Defund the police." and took off before the light changed.


Out of nowhere an 18-wheeler came speeding through the intersection and ran directly over their car, crushing it completely and k*****g everyone in it.


For several minutes I sat in my car thinking to myself, "Man... that could have been me. So this morning, bright and early, I went out and got myself a job as a truck driver.

For a crime to be considered negligent homicide, the prosecution must prove that the one causing the death of another person had no intention to k**l

For a crime to be considered criminal homicide implies that the perpetrator failed to recognize a substantial and unjustifiable risk of causing the death of another person. The type of risk is one which a reasonable person would not have taken.

So what raises the degree of negligence from civil liability to criminal liability is when you act in an extremely unreasonable way. This is called criminal negligence or gross negligence.

The question for those responsible for leaving behind those Americans and the Afghans who fought by our side who were left behind, who may die at the hands of the Taliban. Can the indirect homicide of those left behind be considered negligent or criminal?

The Democrats want to erase history because their history is evil and they don’t want those failed policies connected with their legacy.