Category Archives: Pro-Life

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The uselessness of the death penalty in Pennsylvania

I get it: the family are outraged at the murder of Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, but let’s tell the truth here: a death sentence in Pennsylvania is virtually meaningless.

Family of slain Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald seeks the death penalty for his alleged killer

“It meets every threshold of the death penalty,” Joel Fitzgerald said of the crime.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, January 23, 2024 | 11:35 AM EST | Updated: 1:21 PM EST

The family of slain Temple University Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, who authorities say was shot and killed by 18-year-old Miles Pfeffer last year, said Tuesday that Pfeffer should be sentenced to death if convicted.

Shortly after seeing Pfeffer in court for the first time since his arrest 11 months ago, Fitzgerald’s family gathered outside the courthouse and called on District Attorney Larry Krasner to seek the death penalty in the case.

“What we’d like to see is this person to go through the pain that our son went through, to go through the suffering that our family is going through,” Joel Fitzgerald, a former Philadelphia police officer, said of his son’s alleged killer.

Well, that will never happen. Even if executed, the current method is lethal injection, where the Commonwealth would put condemned men to sleep like an unwanted kitten in the shelter; they aren’t going to shoot him and let him bleed to death. Mr Pfeffer’s family might suffer as the Fitzgerald family have, but they’ll suffer just as much if their precious baby boy is locked behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.

“It meets every threshold of the death penalty,” he said. “We’ll be waiting with bated breath to hear from the district attorney to see what they decide.”

Ellie Rushing of The Philadelphia Inquirer has already told us the answer the Fitzgerald family will almost certainly receive:

Krasner has long said he opposes the death penalty, and last year — just two days before Fitzgerald was killed — Gov. Josh Shapiro said the death penalty should be abolished in Pennsylvania.

The Governor does not have the authority to commute a death sentence on his own; he has to receive a recommendation for clemency from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute a sentence or pardon a crime. Yet, despite a current death row population of 127 souls, no one has actually been executed this century.

There have been three executions in the Keystone State since the restoration of capital punishment, two in 1995 and one in 1999, but look at the chart: all three were what the Death Penalty Information Center labels “volunteers,” men who voluntarily dropped all of their appeals just to get it all over. Even if Larry Krasner did press for a death sentence, which he will almost certainly do not do, and even if Governor Shapiro signed a death warrant, which he has said he will not do, Mr Pfeffer, if convicted and sentenced to death would have an uncounted number of appeals. I’d point out here that Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, signed almost fifty death warrants during his four years in office, 2011 through 2015, but not a single one was carried out.

So, what’s the purpose of sentencing a man to death when everyone knows it won’t be carried out? It’s better to sentence Mr Pfeffer to life without the possibility of parole rather than set up a situation in which he has dozens and dozens of appeals, drawing out any possible execution for decades, costing the Commonwealth untold thousands of dollars in additional expenses, and bringing Mr Pfeffer a little more publicity every time his appeal goes to court. Realistically, it’s better to just let him languish in prison for the rest of his miserable life, as forgotten by almost everyone as he can be.

Marissa Fitzgerald and her mother- and father-in-law said they were upset that the preliminary hearing had been delayed four times, something they said was a “privilege” extended to Pfeffer.

All four rescheduled appearances were requested by Pfeffer’s defense lawyers, not prosecutors. Joel Fitzgerald said prosecutors should have pushed for an earlier hearing.

The newspaper article noted that Mr Pfeffer has been jailed without bail since his capture at Riverside Correctional Facility, so it’s not as though he gained any real benefit. But in a murder case like this one, judges are going to be extremely careful not to do anything which would be grounds for appeal.

If Mr Pfeffer really is the murderer, he’s unlikely to see the sky as a free man again.

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1,891 lives saved in Kentucky!

I’m sure that columnist Linda Blackford and the rest of the editorial staff of the Lexington Herald-Leader are aghast, but almost 1,900 lives were saved!

Kentucky abortions dropped by nearly half last year, showing impact of statewide bans

by Alex Aquisto | Thursday, October 5, 2023 | 4:48 PM EDT | Updated: 5:11 PM EDT

The number of reported abortions provided in Kentucky last year dropped by roughly 43 percent, according to new annual report tracking the medical procedure.

The reduction in legal pregnancy terminations correlates directly with the commonwealth’s trigger law banning abortion and a six-week ban, both of which became enforceable last summer with the overturning of federal abortion protections by the U.S. Supreme Court. Continue reading →

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The one-world-government folks want to subject the United States to the United Nations, when they haven’t gotten their way under our laws

The one-world-government folks want to subject the United States to the United Nations, regardless of American law. From The Washington Post:

Almost 200 rights groups call on U.N. to intervene over U.S. abortion access

The U.S. cannot be a global champion of human rights when its own abortion rights are not protected, one activist group said

by Adela Suliman | Thursday, March 2, 2023 | 9:03 AM EST

Almost 200 human rights organizations from across the world have issued an “urgent appeal” to the United Nations to intervene to ensure the United States protects reproductive rights — after a Supreme Court ruling last year overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.

In a letter issued Thursday, nonprofits and civil society groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Global Justice Center, as well as dozens of smaller U.S.-based charities have written to the U.N. warning that “people residing in the US who can become pregnant are facing a human rights crisis.”

“(P)eople residing in the US who can become pregnant”? Guffaws! Footnote #1 of the letter, on page 5 of the .pdf file states, “While the remainder of this letter often refers to women and girls as the targets of laws restricting abortion, we recognize that although most people who can become pregnant and require abortion services are cisgender women, people with diverse gender identities are also affected and need abortions.” How can any sensible person take seriously the logic of people who would say something that stupid?

It comes after the Supreme Court ruling last year, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, struck down reproductive protections enshrined in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, igniting a seismic social and legal change in the country by shifting power to regulate abortions into the hands of individual states. A majority of justices argued that Roe v. Wade’s reasoning was “weak” and that the issue of abortion should be considered by “the people’s elected representatives,” in a decision that was a long-sought triumph for conservatives.

At least a dozen states have moved to ban or heavily restrict abortions since Dobbs.

The 196 signatories to Thursday’s letter describe “intensifying harms” occurring in the United States as a result of the legal ruling.

It says approximately 22 million women and girls of reproductive age in the United States are living in states where “abortion access is heavily restricted, and often totally inaccessible,” causing them to face a plethora of public health harms.

Of course, the letter writers think nothing of the harms which come to the unborn children who are slaughtered, all for the convenience of the pregnant woman. I’m reminded of Tuesday’s editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer, in which the Editorial Board urged the City Council to rename Taney Street, named after Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the Dred Scott v Sandford decision, who wrote that blacks are “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The Editorial Board, as you might guess, are all in on supporting abortion rights, despite the fact that abortion means that unborn children are, to paraphrase, “so far inferior, that they had no rights which adults were bound to respect.”

“By overturning the established constitutional protection for access to abortion and through the passage of state laws, the US is in violation of its obligations under international human rights law,” it says, detailing violations to the right to life, health and privacy, among others.

U.N. human rights bodies have previously spoken out against last year’s ruling, calling it a “major setback” and a “huge blow to women’s human rights and gender equality.”

Apparently “women’s human rights and gender equality” don’t include the human rights of the children aborted, half of whom are girls.

“We sent this letter to draw the world’s attention to the suffering that US abortion law is inflicting on women, girls and others who can become pregnant,” Christine Ryan, legal director of the Global Justice Center, which uses international law to advocate for gender equality, said in an emailed statement.

There’s considerably more at the original, but it’s much the same as quoted above, a cry that women have rights and not-yet-born children have none, along with the call that the United Nations should Do Something to bring the United States into line.

Well, f(ornicate) that! The United Nations has no authority that the United States is, or ought to be, bound to respect.

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Don’t waste time and money trying for a death sentence which will never be carried out

Sergeant Mark Fusetti is a retired Philadelphia Police officer, who last served on the Warrant Squad, and one of my electronic friends. His major concern right now — other than helping his friend Sam Oropeza gat on the ballot for a Philadelphia City Council At Large seat — is crime in the City of Brotherly Love. The fatal shooting of Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, allegedly by a privileged punk kid from Bucks County, has Sgt Fusetti, and many of the other law-and-order conservatives in and around Philly rightly concerned.

There are a lot of responses to Sgt Fusetti’s tweet, and almost all of them call for the death penalty in this case. Continue reading →

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Are dog lives more important than humans in Philadelphia?

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page has reported that 62 Philadelphians have been sent untimely to their eternal rewards as of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 20th. While that number is lower than the same date in 2021 and 2022, it’s higher than in 2020, which saw 499 ‘official’ homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. And, as we have reported frequently, very few of those killings — other than the fatal shooting of Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, allegedly by a privileged punk kid from Bucks County — have received much press coverage from The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and the newspaper of record for the entire area.

Well, this morning, the newspaper I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. showed us just what shootings in the city are really important!

Off-duty FBI agent shoots dog in Center City

The incident occurred Monday evening on the 1500 block of Spruce Street. It was not immediately known if the dog survived.

by Robert Moran | Tuesday, February 21, 2023 | 7:38 AM EST

An off-duty FBI agent shot a dog outside a Center City apartment building Monday, the FBI and Philadelphia police said.

Video posted on social media showed the aftermath of the incident on the sidewalk in front of the Touraine residential high-rise on the 1500 block of Spruce Street.

The special agent was walking a small dog when she encountered at least one other person walking two dogs, according to witnesses. A fight broke out involving the three dogs.

It was not immediately known if the dog that was shot survived. The FBI did not identify the agent.

At the end of the story:

Animal rights organization Revolution Philly is planning to protest the animal shooting in front of FBI headquarters at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

“This woman is a trained professional and a dog owner. Her first reaction shouldn’t be to shoot first,” said Revolution Philly organizer Tiffany Stair in a statement. “This is unacceptable and we are demanding that she be held accountable.”

The entire article, exclusive of the headline, subheading, photos, and byline, was 237 words over nine paragraphs, a lot longer than the usual reports of killings.

Polar Bear, the Great Pyrenees who is trying to move in with us.

We have two dogs ourselves, and a third, a 150 lb Great Pyrenees we have named Polar Bear, who is trying to move in with us. If we didn’t know his actual human, who lives ¾ mile away from us, we’d let him, but his real human loves him. Bear loves our dogs, and us, more than his human. So, yes, to us, the shooting of a dog is a bad, bad thing.

But, radically enough, the idea that a dog was shot, and perhaps killed — that part is as yet unknown — is generating a protest by Revolution Philly, while the 230 reported shooting victims[2]Through February 20, 2023, including 46 fatally shot, plus 16 other murders, have mostly drawn nothing but the sound of crickets in the city, strikes me as a terrible thing.

Murder has simply been normalized in Philadelphia. Yes, Officer Fitzgerald’s senseless murder, by a punk who seemingly thought he was playing Grand Theft Auto in real life, has generated a lot of emotion in Philly, but for the most part, murder victims are mourned by their family and friends, and otherwise dismissed as just the same old, same old.

And why not? The city is governed by Democrats, has been since Harry Truman was President, and it seems as though preserving prenatal infanticide is the most important issue to them. It’s not as though teenagers don’t get that message, that people who are inconvenient can simply be disposed of, and it really isn’t a surprise that teenaged gangbangers and wannabes find life cheap enough that they will shoot people over the least provocation. The Democrats want to ‘explain’ the city’s killing spree as the result of poverty, racism, segregation, and community ‘disinvestment,’ but the 18-year-old white kid who (allegedly) killed Officer Fitzgerald was a privileged kid, living in his mother’s $1.2 million, 15-acre estate in Bucks County, who’d had one previous ‘contact’, a telephoned and internet reported bomb threat that got him one month’s probation in Bucks County, with law enforcement as a juvenile. For whatever reasons there were, his parents — who are now divorced, with a rumored, but unconfirmed by reliable sources, custody dispute — didn’t teach their son respect for life, and now he’s looking at spending the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

The death penalty, to which I am opposed anyway, is off the table: Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) has stated that he will not allow any executions to proceed as long as he is in office,[3]In Pennsylvania, the Governor does not have independent authority to commute capital sentences, but can only do so with the recommendation of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. and District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) has campaigned on, and vowed, never to seek the death penalty in any capital crimes committed while he is prosecutor. A photo of the alleged killer shows him in custody, leaning back, apparently awaiting questioning, with a posture that says, “What the f(ornicate) did I do? The rest of my life is trashed,” perhaps the best picture from this entire, sad episode. His father and mother — and the mother may be charged with a crime as well, for allegedly picking up her son after he called her for help — are going to have to live with that image, burned into their minds, wondering what they could have done differently.

There’s also a photo of him, as a juvenile, wearing a Biden-Harris t-shirt. Yeah, that’s a way not to rear your children right!

Philadelphia, and many other urban areas as well, are places in which human life has become cheap, and with life being cheap, life is being taken cheaply. When we have politicians telling us that human life before birth can be sucked out and destroyed, because some babies are just plain inconvenient, when we have parents supporting and voting for the politicians who support prenatal infanticide, we’re going to get more punks like the one who murdered Officer Fitzgerald. And we’re also going to get more punks roaming the streets of our major cities who apparently think nothing of blowing away rival gang members or girls that cheated on them or people who resist armed carjacking attempts or just look at them the wrong way.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 Through February 20, 2023
↑3 In Pennsylvania, the Governor does not have independent authority to commute capital sentences, but can only do so with the recommendation of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.
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Why is Lexington hiding this?

Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

We previously reported on the arrest of Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, charged with fetal homicide in the first degree, a capital offense under KRS §507A.020, for allegedly kicking a woman who was 18-weeks pregnant thrice in the stomach, along with other forms of assault.

Mr Vasquez-Barradas was arrested on Friday, January 20, 2023, which was 2½ weeks, or 17 days ago. According to the Fayette County Detention Center, Mr Vasquez-Barradas is still behind bars, facing the same charges as we detailed in our previous story, though it now states that he “can post property bond” to meet his $300,000 bail.

The Lexington city government has a rather sketchy record of posting information in a timely manner, but after 17 days have passed, the Lexington Police Department’s Homicide Investigations Page still does not show the fetal homicide Mr Vasquez-Barradas allegedly committed. That the suspect is still behind bars, or so the Fayette County Detention Center records show as of 1:00 PM EST,> and still charged with fetal homicide, tells us that yes, it’s still considered a murder, but the city, for some reason, does not show it as one.

So, I have to ask: does the city, in which the public officials all support abortion, simply not wish to state that a fetal homicide under state law is actually a homicide?

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Seth Williams missed the point

In 2009, Rufus Seth Williams was elected to become District Attorney of Philadelphia, succeeding long-time prosecutor Lynne Abraham, a position he held from January 4, 2010 to July 24, 2017. Mr Williams was a decent prosecutor, but he wound up in legal trouble of his own, and spent 2½ years in federal prison.

Why do I begin with that? The answer is that, despite Mr Williams being a convicted felon and former drug addict, he has been turning his life around, and at least appears to be doing so successfully. Because he is doing that, and because he does not seem to minimize the personal failures he has had — Mr Williams states plainly in his Twitter biography that he was “Federally Incarcerated” — I can respect him.

On October 14, 2022, Mr Williams tweeted:

Tragically, yesterday 3 homicides were added to Philadelphia’s official year to date total. Sadly, we are now 0.7% off the all time record high. This should be unacceptable to everyone that truly values life. The violence, lack of accountability and lawlessness need not continue.

“This should be unacceptable to everyone that truly values life”? It has to be asked: how many people in heavily Democratic Philadelphia truly value life? In November of 2020, the good people gave 603,790 (81.44%) of their votes to the (purportedly) Catholic Joe Biden, who publicly supported, and still supports, an unlimited abortion license, to just 132,740 (17.90%) for Donald Trump, who at least claimed to oppose abortion, and appointed three pro-life Justices to the United States Supreme Court.

In 2016, the margin was even higher, percentagewise, as Philadelphians gave 584,025 (82.53%) of their votes to the odious Hillary Clinton, versus 108,748 (15.37%) to Mr Trump. Democrats outnumber Republicans in Philadelphia by huge margins, and the city’s last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was still President of the United States.

It is the stated position of the Democratic Party to always and everywhere support abortion, in every case, for any reason. The elected political leadership of the city support an unlimited abortion license, and The Philadelphia Inquirer wholly supports unlimited abortion.

So, I ask the question again, how many people in heavily Democratic Philadelphia truly value life? A Google search for abortion clinics in Philadelphia indicates that the city itself supports six abortion clinics, with two more nearby, in Bensalem, Pennsylvania and Cherry Hill New Jersey. While the political and media leadership of the city support abortion, it’s pretty clear that enough of the population do as well, if they can support that many abortuaries.

Is it any wonder, then, that a city which so heavily supports getting rid of inconvenient life when it comes to abortion would not be all that upset about other people getting rid of inconvenient life when it comes to the gang-bangers?

Because, let’s be brutally honest about this: getting rid of inconvenient life, whether we are talking about a pregnant woman who does not want to be ‘burdened’ with a baby, or a gang-banger or wannabe who does not want a member of a rival gang clique of young men[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading to burden his life are taking exactly the same decision, based on exactly the same reasons.

This lesson is not lost on the teenaged and twenty-something young men males of the City of Brotherly Love. They can see that ‘inconvenient’ life is cheap in Philly, cheap enough that the Philadelphia Police have a difficult time finding cooperating witnesses to solve homicides, and cheap enough that most people just don’t care! A wannabe gangsta gets offed in Strawberry Mansion? BFD, nobody other than his family cares, and a whole lot of people think that, hey, the neighborhood is better off with the victim no longer around. Even the very #woke[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Inquirer only seriously covers the victims of the city’s murders when the victim is an ‘innocent‘, someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl.

I have noticed that the (apparent) gang-land killing of 13-year-old Jeremiah Wilcox generated just one sympathetic story about the victim, and since then, the Inky has gone radio-silent; a site search for Jeremiah Wilcox, conducted at 10:18 AM EDT on Friday, October 14th, four days after young Mr Wilcox was murdered, returned no new stories. I suspect, given that, and the apparently deliberately-targeted nature of his killing, Inquirer journolists[3]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading have found nothing new that they want to publish.

It’s clear: life is just plain cheap in Philadelphia, and no one other than the immediate family and friends of a particular murder victim care about the victims. Because the Philadelphia media don’t cover the deaths of the not-so-innocent victims, all that those of us who do care, who do “truly value life,” are left with are the numbers, the statistics.

Abortion is like that. No one knows who was not born because his ‘mother,’ and some ‘doctors’ and ‘nurses’, saw to his unnamed death. Children killed by abortion are not names, just numbers, statistics often poorly kept.

And everybody who pays attention sees that, everybody who pays attention can tell that, to mangle the quote allegedly attributed to Josef Stalin, the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of 429 is a statistic.

My apologies to Mr Williams, but he has it entirely wrong: few people in the City of Brotherly Love actually do care about human life. That’s how they can support six abortion clinics, and that’s how they can choose not to help the police catch killers. In the end, there really is no difference.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑3 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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It seems that some “men” are really immature little boys

I’m not certain that there has ever been a Supreme Court decision which has ever provoked the mass hysteria and insanity that has attended Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the decision which overturned Roe v Wade. We’ve seen all sorts of whacky comments that the decision means the end of the right to use contraception, marry someone of a different race, and same-sex ‘marriage.’

But this story, from the supposedly very serious Washington Post, pretty much takes the cake!

Men rush to get vasectomies after Roe ruling

By Meena Venkataramanan | June 29, 2022 | 3:12 PM EDT

Thomas Figueroa always knew he didn’t want children. Growing up in Central Florida, he remembers his classmates getting pregnant as early as middle school, and had considered getting a vasectomy for the past few years.

But after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, he rushed to schedule one. He registered Monday for a vasectomy with Doug Stein, a Florida urologist known as the “Vasectomy King” for his advocacy of the procedure. Continue reading →

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Amanda Marcotte loses it over abortion Not that we didn't know it would happen

It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter biography photo was taken in a bar.

While I knew that the left would wax apoplectic over the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I was fully aware that Amanda Marcotte would go off the deep end far worse than some of the others. Miss Marcotte wrote:

As many who watch the Supreme Court closely suspected, it now appears all but certain that the draft decision was probably leaked by a conservative trying to pressure Chief Justice John Roberts into joining the majority opinion. That pressure, if that’s what it was, worked.

This is factually untrue. From the conclusion of the Syllabus in the Supreme Court’s release of the decision, found on page 8 of the document:

ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., and KAVANAUGH, J., filed concurring opinions. ROBERTS, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., filed a dissenting opinion.

Translation: while the vote to reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals, 945 F. 3d 265, was 6-3, the Chief Justice did not join with the majority opinion, but wrote separately. While Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh also filed separate, concurring opinions, they signed onto Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion. One thing is clear: Miss Marcotte did not actually read, at least not carefully, the actual decision.

It is also that, of the six justices who voted to uphold abortion bans, only one — Justice Clarence Thomas — was appointed by a president who won the majority of the vote. Both Trump and Bush obtained the White House, and the ability to nominate justices, because of the archaic electoral college system that overweighs the votes of rural whites and marginalizes the majority of Americans who support reproductive rights.

Again, this is factually untrue. While the younger George Bush received fewer popular votes than Vice President Al Gore in 2000, he not only won the popular vote in 2004, 62,040,610 to 59,028,444 for Senator John Kerry (D-M), but with a 50.7% to 48.3% margin, he won an absolute majority of all votes cast. John Roberts was appointed by the younger President Bush on July 19, 2005, which was in Mr Bush’s second term. Justice Alito was nominated on October 31, 2005, also during the President’s second term.

To compound the injustice of this, one of the Trump-nominated judges, Justice Neil Gorsuch, has no right to sit in his seat. He is only there because Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., illegally used his power as then-Senate Majority Leader to refuse to hold hearings for then-President Barack Obama’s 2020 nominee to the court, Merrick Garland.

“Illegally used”? I wonder: did Miss Marcotte ever claim that Senate Majority Leader Ton Daschle (D-SC) was “illegally us(ing)” his authority over the Senate’s schedule to deny votes to several of President Bush’s lower court nominees, stating that if they did not have the support of at least 60 members, the number required to break a filibuster, he would not allow a vote at all?

Of course, there is no law which compels the Senate to vote on any particular nomination. The Constitution, in Article I, Section 5, specifies that “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.”

Instead, in a direct violation of his constitutional duties, McConnell held the seat open for a year. All so Republicans could install someone who could be counted on to ram through endless amounts of reactionary policies rejected by the American majority that wants a clean environment, sensible gun safety regulations, fair labor laws, and human rights.

Senator McConnell took a real gamble, a gamble that the Republican nominee would win the 2016 election. At the time he did this, Donald Trump was surging and leading in the Republican primaries, and all of the polls had him losing against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In refusing to allow Mr Garland to be confirmed, he was gambling that the (supposedly) more moderate Merrick Garland wouldn’t be replaced by a flaming leftist appointed by Mrs Clinton. We got lucky, and Mr Trump defeated Mrs Clinton.

And there’s no sign that the restlessness is going away. In his concurring opinion on Dobbs, Thomas openly invites lawsuits to challenge “all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” i.e. the decisions that secured the right to use birth control, the right to have sex with another consenting adult in the privacy of your home, and the right to marry someone of the same sex.

It is true that Justice Thomas has long been an opponent of the concept of “substantive due process,” not that Miss Marcotte has any flaming idea what substantive due process actually means, but it is also true that none of the other Justices joined Mr Thomas’ concurring opinion.[1]Justice Thomas concurring opinion begins on page 117 of the .pdf document. Rather, in the majority opinion, Justice Alito specified:[2]Page 66 of the Opinion of the Court, found on page 74 of the .pdf document. This is pointed out again on page 71 of the Opinion of the Court, page 79 of the .pdf document.

Unable to show concrete reliance on Roe and Casey themselves, the Solicitor General suggests that overruling those decisions would “threaten the Court’s precedents holding that the Due Process Clause protects other rights.” Brief for United States 26 (citing Obergefell, 576 U. S. 644; Lawrence, 539 U. S. 558; Griswold, 381 U. S. 479). That is not correct for reasons we have already discussed. As even the Casey plurality recognized, “[a]bortion is a unique act” because it terminates “life or potential life.” 505 U. S., at 852; see also Roe, 410 U. S., at 159 (abortion is “inherently different from marital intimacy,” “marriage,” or “procreation”). And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.

Miss Marcotte has long claimed that evil reich wing conservatives want to take away the right to use contraception, but when she tried to document this in her book It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments, the most up with which she could come is Quiverfull, a small sect about which Wikipedia said, “One 2006 estimate put the number of families which subscribe to this philosophy as ranging from ‘the thousands to the low tens of thousands’.”

Even taking the extreme position of Miss Marcotte that we evil reich wing conservatives want to ban contraception, it fails the logic test: while we might want our wives to bear us as many strong, fine sons as possible, we really don’t want our mistresses to get knocked up and cause us problems, or cost us child support.

Of course, if our mistresses are married to other men, we do want to get them pregnant, so other, weaker men will have to pay to rear our progeny. 🙂

Is there a sarcasm tag for the previous two paragraphs?

Of course, the author had absolutely no problem with vaccine mandates for COVID-19.

References

References
↑1 Justice Thomas concurring opinion begins on page 117 of the .pdf document.
↑2 Page 66 of the Opinion of the Court, found on page 74 of the .pdf document. This is pointed out again on page 71 of the Opinion of the Court, page 79 of the .pdf document.