Criticism Of Sanders Symptomatic Of Bigger Problem

Bernie Sanders is out of touch, it seems- way out of touch.

According to Politico's Jonathan Topaz and Kyle Cheney, when the Vermont Senator is asked about racial justice, he

addresses the problem head-on but typically pivots to his core message; namely, that economic policies favored by corporate interests sell out working people, many of whom are inner-city minorities. In an MSNBC interview during the Baltimore protests, Sanders called for body cameras for police and said he would address police brutality. “But the underlying issue,” he continued, “in terms of Freddie Gray’s community, as I understand it — do you know what the unemployment rate there is?”

That's what previously was referred to as addressing the underlying issues.  It's old hat now, evidently.

Sanders, Topaz and Cheney write, participated in sit-ins in the 1960s, criticized the Supreme Court for weakening the Voting Rights Act, has been an outspoken supporter of comprehensive immigration reform,, criticized the Supreme Court for weakening the Voting Rights Act, and has ardently supported comprehensive immigration reform.  He has talked the talk, often addressing Arican-American unemployment, and walked the walk, co-sponsoring with Representative John Conyers (D-MI) a bill which Sanders believes will "address a youth unemployment crisis in the United States by creating jobs for 1 million young Americans."

But that hasn't been enough- or maybe it has been the wrong thing.  Topaz/Cheney state that Sanders introduced into his stump speech this past week a passage definitively supporting a path to citizenship and President Obama's executive actions on immigration. He did so, however,

the same week that Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, one of the most outspoken advocates of immigration reform in Congress, had harsh words for Sanders questioning his commitment to the issue. And they come amid several reports from progressive blogs and news outlets — including Daily Kos and Salon — that he hasn’t spoken out enough on racial justice issues, even when given a tailor-made opportunity at his campaign kickoff speech in Burlington, Vermont.

Let's give Representative Gutierrez his due.  It takes a lot of gall to snark about such a man "I don’t know if he likes immigrants, because he doesn’t seem to talk about immigrants. Sooner or later, he’ll tell us. I hope he likes immigrants."  It takes even more gall when the subject of your attack endorsed Jesus "Chuy" Garcia against the candidate you endorsed, "Mr. 1 percent," Rahm Emanuel. A few months before the election, in which Mayor Emanuel prevailed, Chicago-based journalist and instructor Kari Lydersen explained in In These Times

many regular Chicagoans see injustice, callousness and even cruelty in this trickle-down, authoritarian approach to city governance. They see the mayor bringing thousands of new corporate jobs subsidized with taxpayer dollars while laying off middle-class public sector workers like librarians, call-center staffers, crossing guards, and mental health clinic therapists. They see him closing neighborhood schools, throwing parents’ and students’ lives into turmoil. They see him (like Daley) passing ordinances at will through a rubber-stamp City Council, leaving citizens with few meaningful avenues to express their opposition to policies changing the face of their city.

One can hope that Gutierrez's cheap shot against the one presidential candidate- or potential presidential candidate- in either party to make economic injustice the focal point of his/her campaign was motivated solely by his support of Hillary Clinton's candidacy. But (avoiding the slime) Mr. Daily Kos, Marcos Moulitsas Huizenga, also criticized for lacking reference to immigration and criminal justice reform Sanders' speech launching his candidacy.

After the defeat in the House Thursday of trade adjustment assistance, thus- temporarily- killing "fast track" legislation (Trade Promotion Authority), GOP leadership plans to bring T

GOP leadership plans to bring back Trade Adjustment Assistance on Tuesday, in what will hopefully be their last opportunity to deliver fast-track (Trade Promotion Authority) to a President whom they oppose at every turn, except when given an opportunity to sink quality jobs.  If fast-track eventually passes, there will be much justified outrage by some observers on the left as they prattle on about the blow to the American consumer and middle-class jobs.


That's as it should be. But the reaction on the part of folks such as the loathsome Gutierrez and the influential Moulitsas to Bernie Sanders' emphasis on helping the poor and stabilizing the middle class suggests that isn't where attention is focused.  That is a pity because most Repubs- as their support for TPA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership indicate- keep their eyes on the prize:  satisfying the 1%.   Progressives know the stakes, and they may know the numbers, but some of them need to be reminded of this (from Economic Policy Institute):

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Reckless In Texas

Social media often brings out the worst in people. In this case, it was Facebook.  The Lubbock (Texas) Avalanche-Journal reports

A Frenship teacher said she apologized after writing a Facebook post saying she was “almost to the point” of wanting segregation regarding a racially charged police issue in McKinney.

Karen Fitzgibbons, a teacher at Bennett Elementary School, told A-J Media she deleted the post Wednesday evening — a day after writing the publicly viewable post on her Facebook page.

Asked about the post, a Frenship ISD spokesman said such matters are “taken very seriously.”

Fitzgibbons started the post by saying a McKinney police officer’s resignation after a dispute at a swimming pool made her angry and that the officer should not have to resign.

“I’m going to just go ahead and say it ... the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this ‘racial tension.’ I guess that’s what happens when you flunk out of school and have no education. I’m sure their parents are just as guilty for not knowing what their kids were doing; or knew it and didn’t care. I’m almost to the point of wanting hem all segregated on one side of town so they can hurt each other and leave the innocent people alone. Maybe the 50s and 60s were really on to something. Now, let the bashing of my true and honest opinion begin....GO! #imnotracist #imsickofthemcausingtrouble #itwasatagedcommunity,” the Facebook post stated.

Fitzgibbons insisted the post “was not directed at any one person or group.”

“It was not an educational post; it was a personal experience post,” Fitzgibbons said, adding she has a personal connection to the McKinney situation, but declined to elaborate.

She added: “I apologized to the appropriate people,” declining to identify those people.

With the post deleted and her apology made, the teacher said she hopes the issue is resolved.

Asked if she’d been in contact with Frenship ISD officials regarding the post, Fitzgibbons declined to comment.

Presented with the post, Andy Penney, director of public relations and information at Frenship Independent School District, said in an email all FISD employees are subject to local policies defining employee standards of conduct and electronic media practices.

Frenship’s policy states that employees will be held to the same professional standards in their public use of electronic media as they are for any other public conduct. The policy specifically mentions social networking sites Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

“If an employee’s use of electronic media interferes with the employee’s ability to effectively perform his or her job duties, the employee is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment,” the policy states.

Late Wednesday, Penney briefly commented on the situation.

“Matters such as this are taken very seriously regarding our employees’ social media use,” he said. “That’s the whole reason we have policies and procedures in place.”

He confirmed Fitzgibbons remained a fourth-grade teacher at the elementary as of Wednesday but declined to comment further on her status or possible action by the district, citing personnel issues.

Frenship board President Brad Draper did not return a call requesting comment early Wednesday evening.

Fitzgibbons’ FISD profile page states she has worked 20 years in education, including 16 for Frenship.

Good luck making it to the 21st year.  It's never a good sign when you acknowledge awaiting "the bashing of my true and honest opinions."   It's not an open invitation, but an acknowledgement that what you've just written or said is outside the arena of standard discourse.

Another bad sign is when you must plead "I'm no racist."  And "I'm sick of them causing trouble" can be misinterpreted; perhaps worse, interpreted accurately.

Fitzgibbons' remarks (photo from KCBD-TV via Salon) may have violated the policies and procedures of the school district, and her continued employment there is dubious.  The First Amendment, regrettably, does not apply to the employee-employer relationship and "if an employee's use of electronic media interferes with the employee's ability to effectively perform his or her job duties" is not only a split infinitive, but so broad it could apply to almost anything.

A bizarre, perhaps revolutionary, thought: the teacher's continued employment should depend on whether she is performing adequately.   It's not inconceivable that someone with awful opinions and terrible public relations skills can put aside her prejudices and perform satisfactorily, even in a manner clearly contrary to her own sentiments.

"The Jews are all over the government," President Nixon once complained. Moreover, Washington, D.C. is "full of Jews" and critical agencies needed to be run by someone "who is not Jewish," especially because "most Jews are disloyal." Yet, his Administration was very supportive of Israel, albeit in part because of his national security adviser and Secretary  of State, Henry Kissinger, himself Jewish.   Dick Nixon did not like Jews but that did not stop him from employing Kissinger, Leonard Garment, and William Safire, and- far more importantly- coming to the aid of the Jewish state when needed.

When the new school year comes around, Karen Fitzgibbons and Bennett Elementary School probably will have parted ways, which might prove to be the best for everyone around.  If so, once again the 21st century principle that what one says is more important than what one does will have prevailed.

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What A Real Purge Looks Like

In an article posted on CNN's website, former House Repub Leader Eric Cantor is giddy about using the phrase "civil war," using it three times in the text of his piece.  "Spend just a little time watching what has been described as a "civil war" within the Democratic Party over the issue of trade policy and you get a real sense of the predicament Hilary Clinton finds herself in," writes Cantor as he links to a Politico article in which the term is used only once, and that in the headline.

More significantly, however, Cantor employs "free trade" twelve times, such as when claiming

Today, the ascendant progressive elements of the Democratic Party are working overtime to purge the remaining pro-free trade faction of the party both in Congress and in the contest for the presidential nomination. If they are successful, this will have a profoundly negative impact on America's ability to be a reliable advocate for free trade.

Unfortunately for the country, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Cantor lustily supports, is not a free-trade agreement. Dean Baker explains

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is often referred to in the media as a "free-trade" agreement. This is not true. Most of the pact is about putting in place a business-friendly regulatory structure, not reducing trade barriers. Perhaps more importantly, the deal will explicitly increase protectionist barriers in the form of stronger and longer copyright and patent-related protections.

These forms of protection impose the same sort of costs as any other form of protection. Markets are not smart enough to know that they aren't supposed to create distortions for protections that our politicians like (e.g. copyrights and patents) as opposed to the protections they ostensibly don't like (tariffs and quotas).

These distortions are likely to be large since copyrights and patents raise prices by many multiples of their free market price. For example, the patent protected version of the Hepatitis-C drug Sovaldi sells for $84,000 for a treatment in the United States. A high quality generic version is sold in India for less than $1,000. This gap implies that the patent would have the same effect in creating distortions as a 9000 percent tariff. Since the TPP would strengthen such protections, we can assume that the resulting distortions would increase.

Details, details. More interesting, though, is Cantor's statement  "In the current debate over Trade Promotion Authority in Congress, lack of trust in President Obama seems to be a more animating factor in Republican concerns than any animus towards free trade."

"Animus" is a derogatory term, particularly compared to the far more positive "lack of trust in."  Further, the remark is preceded by  "As Republican districts have become more conservative overall, Republican officials have less to fear politically from an anti-trade Democratic challenger."     Cantor is defending his GOP colleagues when he ascribes "Republican concerns" to a lack of trust (otherwise known as "animus") in the President rather than principle, which he calls "animus toward free trade.

In a bizarre twist, Cantor remarks

Today, the ascendant progressive elements of the Democratic Party are working overtime to purge the remaining pro-free trade faction of the party both in Congress and in the contest for the presidential nomination. If they are successful, this will have a profoundly negative impact on America's ability to be a reliable advocate for free trade.

If progressives are trying to "purge" any group from the ranks of their Party, they are late to that party, as events in Louisiana recently, and in Iowa four years ago, illustrate. According to The Associated Press

The proposal’s been called a sham, a fake, a gimmick, even money laundering. It’s also become the linchpin of a budget deal between lawmakers and Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration. And it’s all about protecting Jindal’s record as he eyes a presidential campaign.

Without it, a financing proposal that shields public higher education and health care services from deep cuts could go down in flames.

The dispute centers on a bill by state Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Mandeville, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, that would create the Student Assessment for a Valuable Education, or SAVE, tax credit.

Only it wouldn’t lessen anyone’s taxes at all.

The proposal would involve raising a new “assessment” on college students. The students wouldn’t actually pay the fee because it would be covered by the state through the tax credit, paid directly to colleges.

It’s a pass-through that doesn’t provide any net new revenue to the state or to colleges.

If no one pays the new fee and no one actually gains any new revenue from the tax credit, what’s the point of the bill?

Creating a tax credit — at least on paper — can be used as an offset to count against tax increases used to generate new money for the state’s budget, like a cigarette tax hike.

And that matters very much to Gov. Bobby Jindal, so he can claim Louisiana didn’t raise taxes to balance the budget.

Jindal, expected to announce his White House bid in New Orleans on June 24, won’t support any tax changes he — or national anti-tax activist Grover Norquist — considers a net tax increase.

Oh, but that's only Bobby Jindal, Eric Cantor might say.   However, when moderating a presidential debate (excerpt below) in Iowa on August 11, 2001, Fox News' Brett Baier

phrased it this way: “I’m going to ask a question to everyone here on the stage. Say you had a deal, a real spending cuts deal, 10-to-1, as Byron said, spending cuts to tax increases…. Who on this stage would walk away from that deal? Can you raise your hand if you feel so strongly about not raising taxes, you’d walk away on the 10-to-1 deal?”

All eight candidates raised their hand. Literally all of them, if offered a debt-reduction deal that’s 10-to-1 in their favor, would simply refuse.

Republicans don't have to purge their ranks of candidates who don't "work overtime" to lower the taxes of the wealthy and pad their accounts. They've already done it.











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Better Bipartisanship

Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, currently at The New York Times, should know better than to argue that in appealing to the Democratic base, Hillary Clinton is

forgoing a determined outreach effort to all 50 states, or even most of them (which) could mean missing out on the kind of spirited conversation that can be a unifying feature of a presidential election. And it could leave Mrs. Clinton, if she wins, with the same difficulties Mr. Obama has faced in governing with a Republican-controlled Congress.

The Martin/Haberman thesis is eviscerated by Heather Digby Parton, Steve M., and Erik Loomis. SM points out that Hillary Clinton's presidency- like that of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama- "won't be deemed legitimate either, even if she wins 49 states."  The latter two presidencies bracketed that of the guy for whom fewer votes were cast nationally- and in Florida- and then when appointed by the US Supreme Court, claimed a mandate for taxes, war in Iraq, and for practically everything else.

Oh, yes, the war in Iraq, which demonstrated the existential beauty of bipartisanship, in which (a minority of) Democrats joined with congressional Republicans in giving George W. Bush a mandate to embark on what arguably is the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history.

That war was conducted against a nation the Bush Administration strongly implied, at virtually every juncture, was responsible for the terrorists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11/01.   But even with most Democrats now recognizing it was a costly error, Gulf War II continues to have bipartisan overtones.

In one of those troubling instances of bipartisanship

Since the early days after the Sept. 11 attacks, when news emerged that most of the airline hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, dark allegations have lingered about official Saudi ties to the terrorists. Fueling the suspicions: 28 still-classified pages in a congressional inquiry on 9/11 that raise questions about Saudi financial support to the hijackers in the United States prior to the attacks.

Both the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have refused to declassify the pages on grounds of national security. But critics, including members of Congress who have read the pages in the tightly guarded, underground room in the Capitol where they are held, say national security has nothing to do with it. U.S. officials, they charge, are trying to hide the double game that Saudi Arabia has long played with Washington, as both a close ally and petri dish for the world’s most toxic brand of Islamic extremism.

President Obama has decided to suppress the information despite telling three individuals (two separate occasions) who lost family members to the World Trade Center attacks that he would release the 28 pages. He has chosen to ally himself with President Bush (with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in April, 2005, photo from Jason Reed/Reuters) in shielding Americans from the truth.  However, now that (with the help of Rachel Maddow and her researchers) the suspicion that the subsequent war was fought over oil has been firmly substantiated, things are falling into place.

Senator Rand Paul at a news conference (video below) on June 2 announced that he would be introducing the following week Senate Bill 1471 as a companion to House Resolution 14, requiring the release of the suppressed material. During the event 

Of the speakers, former Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry that produced the 28 pages as part of a much larger report, spoke most pointedly about the 28 pages and what they reveal: “The 28 pages…go to the question of who financed 9/11 and they point a strong finger at Saudi Arabia.”

According to Graham, the release of the 28 pages will have broad ramifications. “The 28 pages are very important, and will…inform the American people and, in so doing, cause the American government to reconsider the nature of our relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

Graham said the 28 pages are “emblematic of a pattern of withholding information, unnecessarily and to the detriment of the American people.”

Aside from former Democratic Senator Graham of Florida and GOP Senator (and presidential hopeful) Paul of Kentucky, the news conference included Republican U.S. Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Walter Jones of North Carolina, as well as Democratic Representative Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts.   Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon reportedly will sponsor the bill with Paul.

There is bipartisanship, and then there is bipartisanship.   Some members of the media long for a the kind of bipartisanship which obscures values and priorities by shrouding issues in mystery. The last two presidents have blocked publication of the truth about the  worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. But in a twist, it might be a bipartisan effort that opens the curtain and lets sunshine in upon the events which led to the devastation visited upon the nation nearly 14 years ago.












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Apology, Indeed

Governor Christie last month argued

 the media owes him an apology over the Bridgegate scandal. 

“I do believe there's an absolute bias and a rush to judgment. You all know this, you saw the coverage of me 15 months ago. I was guilty, I had done it,” Christie said on CNBC Thursday morning. “Now we're 15 months later, where are the apologies pouring in? Not one thing I said the day after the bridge situation has been proven wrong.”

Christie has not been implicated for any role in the closing of several lanes on the George Washington Bridge in September of 2013 which caused major traffic delays. Christie’s former high-school classmate and Port Authority official David Wildstein pleaded guilty earlier this month to conspiracy counts related to the lane closures and prosecutors have also indicted fellow Christie allies Bill Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority, and Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor’s former deputy chief of staff.

Whoa! Slow down, big  guy. The opera ain't over till the fat lady sings, and she's not even warming up.  Baruch College history professor and follower of New Jersey politics Brian Murphy writes

Last week, Bridget Anne Kelly’s attorney, Michael Critchley, filed a request with the presiding judge to be given the power to subpoena Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher. That’s the law firm Christie hired last January – at public expense – to investigate his administration and produce the so-called “Mastro Report” that exonerated him from any culpability in both Bridgegate and allegations leveled against him by the Mayor of Hoboken relating to Hurricane Sandy relief aid.

Critchley wants to look at the work product - interview transcripts, notes, and so forth - to see what people actually said and whether they square with the final report. Only one problem: Gibson Dunn told Critchley those notes and other work product don't exist.

This is not a mere technical glitch inasmuch as

According to the manual for outside counsel that’s put together by the N.J. Attorney General’s office, “outside counsel shall” – not may or might, but shall – “retain pleadings, correspondence, discovery materials, deposition transcripts and similar documents and work product for a period of no less than seven years.”

Whatever it is- incompetence, malfeasance, or dishonesty- it doesn't come cheap.  Murphy continues

Would that be a big deal? Yes. Yes it would. It would be a big deal for a number of reasons but the most immediate would be that Christie hired Gibson Dunn on the State of New Jersey's dime.
The Mastro Report, which didn’t look or read like or conform to the standards of a conventional GAO-style investigative document, cost more than $3.5 million in taxpayer funds by the time it was released in March 2014. The firm billed the state more than $1 million during its first three weeks’ of work, then more than $2 million in February, causing a minor panic in the Christie administration as they saw a looming public relations disaster. The solution was to negotiate the firm’s hourly rate down from $650 an hour to $350 an hour.

But the work never ended.

So far, Gibson Dunn has been paid more than $7.75 million by the state of New Jersey to represent Christie and members of his administration in Bridgegate and related investigations. The vast majority of that money has been spent on the federal investigation led by U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul Fishman.

Gibson Dunn billed the state $53,824 in April, $37,731 in March, and $106,325 in February of this year. These fees cover witness interviews and document production – reviewing and handing over documents to prosecutors and investigators in response to subpoenas and less formal requests. A fuller picture of the nature of the firm’s work is obscured, however, by heavy redactions made by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office to the firm’s bills before they’re disclosed to the public each month, always late on Friday afternoons.

Still, you get what you pay for.  Except in New Jersey, where what you pay for vanishes. Murphy summarizes

During the legislative hearings that were held last spring and summer, several witnesses who’d been interviewed by Gibson Dunn told state lawmakers, under oath, that the Mastro Report mischaracterized what they recalled telling Gibson Dunn attorneys. Some even objected to conclusions drawn in the Report.

The hits keep coming. In a civil case separate from the federal criminal prosecution, Kate Zernike of The New York Times reports, Wildstein has given testimony portraying Christie "casually revealing information about a grand jury proceeding he had overseen, which violates federal law."

Perhaps Chris Christie will survive this scandal, just as he has well over a thousand prisoners escaping under his watch from private halfway houses run by a company which he has ties with; tax incentives of $261 million to Revel casino, which has gone belly-up; lying about the costs of, and cancelling, a train tunnel which would have been subsidized by the federal government and given the state a major economic boost; using Hurricane Sandy funds for a political slush fund; reckless fiscal policies resulting in downgrade of credit three times by each of three credit agencies; reneging on a promise- and violating the law in so doing- to make pension payments to state workers (below, AP photo/Mel Evans).   And there is more.  It goes on and on for a governor whose actions make it difficult to distinguish between managerial incompetence and extraordinary dishonesty.

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And In The Mountain West, Real Courage

Word that Caitlyn Jenner will be presented the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in July from ESPN has brought both accolades and criticism. Some people have argued that the award, usually- but not always- given to a sports figure, should instead have been given to Iraq veteran Noah Galloway or Lauren Hill, a Mount St. Joseph basketball player who fought valiantly before succumbing to brain cancer.

Good for Jenner, though, for being recognized for bravery.  Good, too, that she was able to score a starring role in a reality television program, first announced in April on ABC's 20/20 to fellow Republican Diane Sawyer.  The first of eight one-hour episodes of "I Am Cait" reportedly will air on the E! Network on July 26.  Cynics may suggest that this cheapens Jenner's culturally transformative story, but she deserves the privileges of the genre no less than does June Shannon of "Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo," Phil Robertson of "Duck Dynasty," or Jim Bob Duggar of "19 and Counting."

Being forced to endure the humiliation of being paid millions for the show, plus the inevitable endorsements and increase in speaker fees, is testimony to the extraordinary courage being displayed by Jenner. Still, I would have passed over Caitlyn in favor of an Idaho woman, Jennie Linn McCormack (photo below from Robyn Twomey/Newsweek via  RH Reality Check), who Mark David Stern explains

had just finished doing laundry and putting her 2-year-old son to bed when she heard a knock one evening in May 2011. McCormack, a single mother of three living off child support checks, opened the door to find a police officer. He was there to arrest her. The officer explained that McCormack had committed a serious felony under Idaho law—by giving herself an abortion. He proceeded to barrage her with invasive questions about her body and her ex-boyfriend.

“How can you question me about my personal stuff?” McCormack demanded, according to an NPR report.

“Well,” the officer apparently responded, “there’s legal and there’s personal.” The state charged McCormack with intentionally self-terminating her pregnancy, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

After several humiliating hearings, McCormack and her attorney defeated the charge. McCormack actually had given herself an abortion in late 2010, mostly out of desperation: There were no abortion clinics anywhere in southeast Idaho, and an abortion in Salt Lake City, 138 miles away, could cost $2,000. So McCormack procured abortion pills online and took five. She hadn’t realized that her fetus was between 19 and 23 weeks old—and that she was much too far along in her pregnancy to have a safe nonsurgical abortion. McCormack told her friend about the abortion. The friend told her sister—and her sister told the police, who found the fetus wrapped in bags on McCormack’s back porch

After a judge dismissed the case against her for lack of evidence, McCormack was legally off the hook. But she was also furious: furious that Idaho had intruded so deeply into her private life, furious that its strict abortion laws had driven her to such desperate extremes, furious that other women in her situation might be forced to undergo unsafe abortions at their own hands. So McCormack and her lawyer—who happened to also be a doctor—brought a class action in federal court, seeking to have a slew of Idaho’s draconian anti-abortion laws struck down as unconstitutional.

On May 29, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted McCormack’s wish. It affirmed a lower court’s invalidation of the self-induced abortion statute, as well as three other laws: one that barred abortions of fetuses at 20 weeks postfertilization, one that required all second-trimester abortions to occur in hospitals, and one that placed onerous burdens on clinics in the form of safety regulations. The litigation may not be over: Idaho can ask a bigger panel of 9th Circuit judges to rehear the case or appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. Still, as states like Wisconsin move closer to enacting shockingly stringent abortion laws, the decision is a powerful affirmation of constitutional autonomy in an age when that value is in short supply.

The court's ruling is not insignificant in the struggle for reproductive rights. Stern remarks

this case arose because a woman gave herself an abortion—and was arrested because of it. She herself was the “abortionist.” Since she aborted her own fetus, why shouldn’t she be prosecuted? And if she truly killed a baby, as anti-abortion groups believe, shouldn’t she be charged with first-degree murder? The McCormack case presents thorny questions that anti-abortion activists would rather not answer. Better to scapegoat the abortion providers—and pretend that a woman is not the one who makes the ultimate decision to end a pregnancy.

This case refutes the anti-abortion rights meme that doctors- or, as the right slanders them, "abortionists"- not women make the decision to abort.  But while there is a "T," there is no "A" (as in "abortion"),  in LGBT.   So while Caitlyn Jenner will ride the crest of fame and fortune for a spectacular act, there will be no television program, no speaker fees, and little if any applause for an Idaho woman whose courage will not be acknowledged by the celebrities behind the ESPY awards.

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Not The Fraud He Was Referring To

Hillary Clinton called out four GOP governors or ex-governors, all of them presidential hopefuls, on Thursday for voter suppression.  Ohio's John Kasich, Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Texas' Rick Perry, and New Jersey's Chris Christie were named.   As one of the GOP chief executives who "offer themselves to undercut this fundamental American principle," Christie, she noted,  had "vetoed legislation to extend early voting."

With his usual thoughtfulness and dignity, Christie (as a softball player Wednesday, below, from deadspin) responded

She doesn't know what she's talking about.  In New Jersey, we have early voting that are available to people... I don't want to expand it and increase the opportunities for fraud.  And maybe that's what Mrs. Clinton wants to do. I don't know. But the fact is that the folks in New Jersey have plenty of an opportunity to vote.

In May, 2013 The New York Times had reported "Mr. Christie on Thursday vetoed a bill to set up voting at up to seven locations in each county during a 14-day period before elections," which seems a heck of a lot like what Mrs. Clinton was saying.

Still, voting fraud exists and however barely, voter fraud exists. On November 2, 2012 the Las Vegas Sun reported the arrest of registered Republican Roxanne Rubin for voting the previous day in Henderson, Nevada, then unsuccessfully trying to vote later in the day at another location in Henderson.   According to the Houston Chronicle, Republican precinct chairman Bruce J. Fleming appeared to have cast ballots in 2006, 2008, and 2010 in both Sugar Land, Texas and Yardley, Pennsylvania.  And then there is Massachusetts, in which California resident Willard "Mitt" Romney in January, 2010 voted for Scott Brown in a special election to fill the US Senate seat vacated by the death of Edward Kennedy.

However, no GOP election official, precinct chairperson, or ex-governor has been seen voting illegally in New Jersey.The Brennan Center for Justice discovered

Just before the 2005 election, partisan actors attempted to probe the accuracy of New Jersey’s voter rolls by comparing election records for 2004 with death records and with the rolls of other states. The allegations yielded only eight substantiated cases of individuals knowingly casting invalid votes that counted—eight voters who voted twice. Given the number of votes cast in these elections, this amounts to a rate of 0.0004%. None of these problems could have been resolved by requiring photo ID at the polls. 

Facts may not matter, however, and Steve M. wryly observes

So even though Christie din't make a tightly reasoned argument, he beats Perry and Kasich. The right believes voter fraud is rife, and that Democrats steal elections routinely. If that's the case, I'm not sure why Democrats didn't do more thievery in, say, 2010 and 2014 -- but that's not even question worth asking on the right. To the right, Democrats are the voter fraud party, and Christie wisely went straight for that talking point. If he wants to get back into contention, maybe he should run an entire presidential campaign based on opposition to nonexistent voter fraud.

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