"Unmitigated Disaster" for Fetus Freaks

I don't have time for more than a quick happy dance over the US Supreme Court's "beat down" of Texas's anti-abortion law.

I just love this headline from ThinkProgress.

And the photo that accompanies the story.

Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt is a beat down of Texas’ anti-abortion law HB 2. Justice Stephen Breyer’s majority opinion piles facts upon evidence upon statistics to demolish Texas’ supposed justification for the law. At one point, Breyer even damns the law with words uttered by Texas’ own attorney. By the end of the opinion, it is surprising that Breyer did not finish with the two words “HULK SMASH!”

Even more significantly, Whole Woman’s Health leaves the right to an abortion on much stronger footing than it stood on before this decision was handed down. It’s difficult to exaggerate just how awesomely anti-abortion advocates erred in urging Texas to pass HB 2 in the first place. This law was supposed to provide those advocates with a vehicle to drain what life remains in Roe v. Wade. Instead, reproductive freedom is stronger today than it has been at any point in nearly a decade.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a separate concurrence, in which she called out the sham. It gave birth to several variants of this meme:

But let's be clear. This won't solve Texas's abortion access problem immediately, if at all. While no more clinics will close, this report points out that in order to reopen, clinics will have to restaff, re-equip, and maybe most problematic, get relicensed. The government of Texas, having just had its panties pulled down for a MASSIVE spanking, may be a tad vindictive, and make the relicensing as protracted and petty as possible.

And a little set-back like this is not going to stop fetus freaks from continuing to pass more bullshit laws.

But it is exhilarating when facts and evidence win. And when anti-choice hypocrisy is named and held up for all to see.

PDF of the whole judgment.

US Women: 'Yo! Obama! Pay-back Time!

After throwing women's rights under the clichéed bus, Obama owes Merkin women BIG TIME.

For the next spot on the Supreme Court he should appoint the most pro-abort candidate he can. And Jeffrey Toobin, legal analyst for CNN and The New Yorker, is betting on Elena Kagan.

In an exclusive Fresh Dialogues interview, Jeffrey Toobin reveals his No. 1 pick for Stevens' replacement: Elena Kagan. The Supreme Court expert says of her: "She's very much an Obama type person, a moderate Democrat, a consensus builder..."

He also comments on her likely environmental leanings and the future of the Supreme Court...

"If you start to have an energized liberal group of young Justices...the wind could be at their back and if Obama gets re-elected you could see more appointments, so it's a big deal."

Well, hell, somebody has to help drag the Excited States into the 21st century as far as women's rights are concerned. And Kagan looks like the gal to do it.

Beyond all the impressive academic cred, she's got one very important advantage -- the fetus fetishists loathe her.

Senate Republicans responded to the retirement of pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens by saying one of the top potential replacements Obama may look to would cause a significant battle. GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee indicated a nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, an abortion advocate, would spark opposition.

Mr President, we humbly submit -- if you want a second term, it's time to pay back progressive women. Appoint a pro-choice justice or just sign the fucking Freedom of Choice Act.

Spouse of US Supreme Court judge starts her own teabagging lobby group.

And just guess which judge that might be.

Bingo. Virginia Thomas, who stood by her man in spite of his history of sexually harassing female colleagues is launching her own rightwing lobby group.

As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the "tea party" movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.

"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you," she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. [...]

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.

The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources - including corporations - as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.

"I adore all the new citizen patriots who are rising up across this country," Thomas, who goes by Ginni, said on the panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "I have felt called to the front lines with you, with my fellow citizens, to preserve what made America great."

Ginni may have also felt the call of the buckets of munnee to be made from the Tea Party Patriots Nation.

US rightwingnutters in throes of Supreme panic?

"A lot of district attorneys thought they were doing God's work. But she saw it as a civic responsibility."

That's an observation shared by a former colleague of Sonia Sotomayor. And it goes a long way towards explaining why many Republicans and right-wing fundamentalist religious zygote zealots are opposed to her nomination to the Supreme Court of the US.

... Because it is difficult to dismiss her academic credentials and her professional experience, some on the right have resorted to the politics of personal destruction. Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice said in a radio interview that Judge Sotomayor was picked because "she's a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified." Former congressman Tom Tancredo sank to even greater depths when he called Judge Sotomayor a "racist" for her past affiliation with the Hispanic advocacy group, the National Council of La Raza; Mr. Tancredo called La Raza "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." Former Bush adviser Karl Rove implicitly questioned Judge Sotomayor's intelligence, saying in an interview with PBS host Charlie Rose that "I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools."

There's more:

... a coalition of conservative group leaders and opinion leaders has signed a letter calling on Senate Republicans to filibuster President Obama’s Supreme Court choice, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. ... The conservatives say their intent is not to kill the nomination, as Democrats used the tactic, but rather to provide for lengthier debate on its merits. The signatories include a broad swath of the conservative movement, including evangelicals, gun-rights advocates, anti-tax leaders, anti-abortion groups, libertarians and local Republican leaders.

Oh, and the most damning "evidence" that's been dragged up from Sotomayor's past pronouncements gets royally raked over.

“Here you have a racist,” said radio’s Rush Limbaugh of Sotomayor, nominated by President Obama, “the greatest living example of a reverse racist.”“We’re gonna start with the racist quotes from our new Supreme Court nominee,” said Fox News’ Glenn Beck. “I don’t like the charges, well you’re a racist, they’re a racist. But when I hear this, gee, she sure sounds like a racist,” he said of Sotomayor’s statement in a speech that, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Yet, according to a recent Gallup poll, 54% of the US population would like to see Sotomayor confirmed to SCOTUS. That majority must be, as JABbering Stooge summarized in his tidy wrap-up of Jill Stanek's screed about third trimester abortion: 'evil Satanic, Baby-Jesus-and-America-haters'.

Sotomayor's Record on Reproductive Rights

So far, it seems little is known of Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's stand on reproductive rights. Steven Waldman of Beliefnet has a quick summary of her abortion-related rulings, which weren't really abortion-related. Worryingly, she has twice ruled in favour anti-choicers, but not on abortion itself.

In better news, Americans United for Life are against her, not for her abortion stance, but for her evul activism.

Ah well, in the shrieeeek-fest that is looming, we'll surely learn more.

MORE: A link to Christian news site on her opinion on the 'Mexico City rule', you know, the rule about not sending US gov family planning dough to any outfit outside the US that supports or refers for, let alone does, abortions. The one that Obama struck down pretty early. Sotomayor's view: it's OK for gov to base actions on a 'pro-life' point of view. REVISION: From JJ in the comments:

Just a little nuance on her Mexico City ruling -- her opinion wasn't that it was "okay" for the government to make policy favouring anti-abortion views, but rather that it was not a violation of the pro choice group's 1st amendment rights to do so, and that, according to the law of the day, the government had the right to exercise such bias. It was a straight legal interpretation; meaning the 1st amendment was the wrong way to take down the Mexico City Policy.

MORE TWO:Glenn Greenwald is very positive about her. Lots of links there and updates as various worthies weigh in.