“Look, maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God’s name in vain, we wouldn’t have the mass killings like we didn’t have before prayer was eliminated from school.”
“If I lost one of my children I’d be pretty devastated, especially in a way that is so senseless and seemingly has no purpose. I think … I would just have to say, if I had the opportunity to talk to the people I’d have to say, look, there’s always a plan. I believe God always has a plan. Life is short no matter what it is. And certainly, we’re not going to make sense of, you know, a young child being shot and killed way before their life expectancy.”
Children flee Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022.
They’re like recurring allergies – they just keep hitting over and over. But we have a bevy of cures for allergies. We don’t seem to have many for the sickening epidemic of mass shootings in the U.S.
On the other side, far left gun control proponents want to eliminate all firearms for private citizens; believing that – in this violent, imperfect world – we only need herbal tea and kind words to solve every crisis. These are the same people who get so emotional it’s almost painfully embarrassing to watch them recount their ordeals. I understand these are horrific events, but the time for tears and anguish has already passed.
And that’s what I want to communicate to liberals. Stop crying! It’s time to get mad, stand up and yell back at these idiotic gun nuts whose only resolution to firearm blood baths is another weapon and a few thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers serve as little more than toilet paper for the carnage.
In the immediate aftermath of both Buffalo and Uvalde, as more talk of gun violence and gun control arose, we heard the usual cadre of right-wing loudmouths more worried (as always) that the rights of “law-abiding gun owners” could be desecrated.
Spare me the narrow-minded anxiety!
People have more of a right to live than anyone has a right to own a gun. And no, they aren’t equally significant. But conservatives campaigning for public office consistently point out one characteristic: they are pro-Second Amendment. I see these ads every election cycle, especially here in Texas. They always skip over the First Amendment, which ensures free speech and peaceable assembly and guarantees the right to vote. Again, the twisted priorities of the conservative mindset.
Last year, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed several pieces of legislation into law that declared the state to be a “Second Amendment sanctuary”, I wasn’t shocked. But I was angry. This is the same governor who oversaw blatant attacks on the right to vote by dismissing the reality of gerrymandering in the state and allowing for partisan poll watchers. In older days, partisan poll watchers across the South carried guns and would deliberately intimidate (mostly non-White) voters. Conservatives steadily bemoan the myth of rampant voter fraud, while ignoring the very real pandemic of gun violence.
For the first anniversary of the 1999 Columbine school massacre, a national news network interviewed several of those first responders. One man stated that he was particularly upset that the perpetrators (two teenage boys) had included girls among their victims. He said could understand them shooting boys, “but they shot girls, too.” I literally stopped when I heard him say that. Aside from the shock value of the verbiage, that he could differentiate between the genders of the victims and therefore categorize his horror level proved how complacent people in this country have become towards violence. It certainly was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
The outrage continued in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, when the U.S. Senate held a hearing on gun violence in the nation and the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre sat with a scowl on his face and became defensively hostile with every question lobbed at him. And, as usual, liberals wept, while conservatives grunted. And then…nothing. Nothing happened. No new legislation to address gun violence; no new funding for mental health counseling…nothing. With that, it seemed the gun violence debate in the United States ended. We’d accepted the murder of helpless children and thus, nothing more could be done.
At this point, I really don’t hold out much hope for any kind of movement on the legislative front. Politics has gotten in the way of public service. So, what’s new?
I remain as tired of the crying from liberals as I am of the concern for gun owner rights from conservatives. If only the latter group understood the extent of the damage caused by bullet wounds, then perhaps they’d rethink their commitment to ensuring gun rights over human rights. It’s time for we progressives to get mad and shout down the right-wing extremists who proudly pose with their firearms for family holiday photos the way most normal-minded folks pose with their children and pets, armed with little more than smiles. The saccharine responses from the horrified won’t result in any considerable change. They’ll just fade into the morass of national traumas.
Then we’ll have another mass shooting – in a school or some public venue. And the cycle of tears and excuses will begin all over again.
“This bullshit you get from this guy about mental health and evil. The only evil that exists is when the leader of this state has a problem and is a problem of epic proportions.”
“No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”
A lower court will resolve a preliminary First Amendment challenge to the statute, also known as Texas’ “social media law”.
“No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”
Matt Schruers, President of Computer & Communications Industry Association, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling temporarily blocking Texas’ HB 20 from being enforced
A lower court will resolve a preliminary First Amendment challenge to the statute, also known as Texas’ “social media law”.
Schruers added, “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute. This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law. We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law.”
Schruers added, “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute. This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law. We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law.”
“This is not an academic conversation. This is a very real conversation where people’s lives could be destroyed by these criminal prosecutions. In Texas, you’re an adult at 17. We are looking at the prospect of a 17-year-old girl who has an unplanned pregnancy and is seeking an abortion [being] subjected to first-degree felony charges — up to 99 years in jail — and that’s just absolutely unacceptable.”
Vela is proposing a resolution that would direct the city’s police department to make criminal enforcement, arrest and investigation of abortions its lowest priority and restrict city funds and city staff from being used to investigate, catalogue or report suspected abortions.
In 2019, Abbott signed into law a bill allowing gun purchases without a license. Two years later he signed another bill into law lowering the age requirement for a firearms purchase from 21 to 18.
“I think I can speak for myself and other colleagues that align with my policy beliefs — we’ll continue to do our best to make abortion not just outlawed, but unthinkable”
Cain is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the Texas State Legislature.
“If you were to take or destroy the eggs of a sea turtle — now I said, the eggs…. The criminal penalties are severe: up to a $100,000 fine and a year in prison. Now, why do we have laws in place to protect the eggs of a sea turtle, or the eggs of eagles? Because, when you destroy an egg, you’re killing a pre-born baby sea turtle or a pre-born baby eagle. Yet when it comes to a pre-born human baby rather than a sea turtle, that baby will be stripped of all protections in all 50 states…. Is that the America the left wants?”
Montana Sen. Steve Daines, arguing that human egg cells should be afforded the same protection as eagle and turtle eggs, in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate
“I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, about the 1982 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Texas law that had denied state funding to educate children who had not been “legally admitted” to the United States
Abbott wants Texas to challenge the ruling because of its high cost to Texas taxpayers.
“Democrats have convinced themselves that Russia stole the presidency, which rightfully belonged to Hillary Clinton. And they mean it when they say it. And that’s why they are taking us to war with Russia. So, that’s not their goal — saving Ukraine, saving human lives. No, that’s not their goal. Instead, the war in Ukraine is designed to cause regime change in Moscow. They want to topple the Russian government. That would be payback for the 2016 election. So, this is the logical, maybe the inevitable, end stage of Russiagate.”
Tucker Carlson, describing how he thinks the Democratic Party is somehow responsible for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
“We shall have our theocracy very soon.”
Vincent James, a radical White nationalist celebrating the leaked Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade
James also said he hopes the decision will eventually lead Americans to seeing Justices Alito and Thomas “throwing gay people off of tall buildings”.
Many of the cases that arrive before the U.S. Supreme Court begin with individuals either trying right a wrong or make their own lives better. They rarely expect to launch a national movement. That was pretty much the case when Norma McCorvey found herself pregnant with her third child in 1969. An unemployed carnival worker living outside Dallas at the time, McCorvey apparently had led a rough life and had given up her first two children for adoption. She didn’t need – and couldn’t afford – to bring another child into the world. However, the state of Texas didn’t allow for abortions except to save the life of the mother. Even rape and incest victims couldn’t end their unwanted pregnancies. Like so many women in her situation, McCorvey was too poor to travel to another state where abortions were safe and legal. She even tried to obtain an illegal abortion, but again the cost was prohibitive. She sought legal help and ended up under the guidance of attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington.
In 1970, after McCorvey had given birth and given up the baby, Coffee and Weddington filed paper work challenging the Texas law and bestowed the name “Jane Roe” upon their client. They targeted then-Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade. Wade had entered the national spotlight nearly a decade earlier when he prosecuted Jack Ruby for killing Lee Harvey Oswald who had been accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy. (Wade would later come to light as a ruthless prosecutor who engaged in unscrupulous legal maneuvers to ensure criminal prosecutions, no matter the cost and despite evidence to the contrary.)
After McCorvey’s suit was filed, a Texas district court ruled the state’s abortion ban violated the constitutional right to privacy under the 14th Amendment. Wade persisted, however, and vowed to prosecute any doctor who performed what he deemed unnecessary abortions in the state. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court and, in a 7-2 ruling on January 22, 1973, abortion was fully legalized in the United States.
That was pretty much the end of the issue until the 1980s, when right-wing religious leaders began stoking the fires of anti-abortion rhetoric. It accompanied the presidency of Ronald Reagan who openly stated he wished for a return to an America before the 1960s. That should say enough about his bigoted state of mind, but it aligned with a growing hostility towards progressive ideology and civil rights legislation.
Earlier this week the unexpected news arrived that the Supreme Court may overturn Roe vs. Wade by the end of its current term in June. We wouldn’t know anything about this if it wasn’t for the leak of a draft opinion by Associate Justice Samuel Alito who declares the Roe decision “egregiously wrong” in terms of constitutional practicality. Chief Justice John Roberts has confirmed the veracity of the statement, but has joined many others in condemning the leak.
For many of us the leak isn’t the main concern. It’s what it says. There is now a very real possibility that nearly a half century of protection for that part of women’s overall health care could end because a handful of conservative extremists on the High Court want to inject their personal views into it.
For their like-minded ilk in the American public, the overturning of Roe marks the end of a long-fought battle in their alleged “pro-life” agenda; a perverted early Mother’s Day gift. It doesn’t matter that a majority of Americans don’t want to see a complete ban on abortion. They’ve been working for this moment over the past four decades.
For liberals, though, this is a much more dire situation. While the current case that brought Roe back into the forefront is limited to just abortion, progressives see other seminal SCOTUS decisions in the judicial crosshairs. It really isn’t extraordinary to see such cases as Obergefell vs. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage, reversed. Along with abortion, queer rights have been a target of far-right conservatives. But, if the Court sees fit to outlaw abortion at the national level (and leave it up to individual states), it could also reasonably overturn Griswold vs. Connecticut, which ruled that states could not deny birth control to married couples. Before that decision, married residents of Connecticut (and a few other states) couldn’t legally purchase birth control.
To some conservatives, abortion has become another form of birth control, which is not what contemporary feminists who jump-started the modern women’s movement desired. The latter group had always declared that abortion should be a woman’s last choice. But, with the overall concept of birth control in mind, is it possible a woman who has a tubal ligation could be criminally prosecuted? For that matter, could men who have vasectomies be subject to criminal jurisprudence? How about condoms or IUDs? Could those be outlawed?
Why stop with Roe? Aside from Obergefell and Griswold, could the Court target Loving vs. Virginia, the case that struck laws against interracial marriage? How about Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, which outlaws racial desegregation in schools?
Remember that, when Antonin Scalia died in 2016, Republicans in the Senate displayed their usual contempt and disdain for President Obama by refusing to hold hearings on his nominee to the Court, until after Donald Trump got into office. They stated that, since Scalia’s death occurred during an election year, the incoming president should select his replacement. Yet, upon the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, they rammed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett – a character straight out of “The Handmaid’s Tale”.
That social and religious conservatives want to dictate what women can and cannot do with their own bodies conflicts with the long-held American vision of individual freedom. Many of these people screamed at the thought mandatory mask-wearing or forced vaccinations at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; crying they should have autonomy over their own bodies. Really? What an original concept.
The reasons why an individual woman wants to end a pregnancy are myriad, but it is no one else’s business. As painful a decision as it may be, I’d rather see a woman end a pregnancy she doesn’t want than give birth to a child she doesn’t want. Children who come into the world unwanted are often unloved. That’s an awful fate for someone.
Regardless, pregnancy and birth are individual choices. No one – not the Supreme Court and not a politician – has the right to interfere with that.
Here’s a job for which I feel I’m overqualified. Favor Delivery, a Texas-based food delivery service, has a new position: “Chief Taco Officer”. Job duties are simple – travel across the Lone Star State to taste and review select tacos. Favor will pay the chosen individual $10,000 for the duration of the contract (June and July) and provide free accommodations, transportation and free Favor delivery for a year.
Prospective employees must be Texas residents at least 21 years of age with a public profile. Using this application site, they need to create a short video (one minute or less) explaining why they should be the CTO and why they’re excited about the opportunity, then post the video to TikTok or Instagram Reels, tag @favor and use #FavorDreamJob.
I’d love to see this posted on Indeed, Linked In or Monster. Their web sites might crash.
“Ms. Herrera’s case is a terrific example of exactly what we expect to happen. You can’t continue to say over and over again that abortion is murder and not expect that police and prosecutors are going to not treat it as murder.”
Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women
Lizelle Herrera, a 26-year-old South Texas woman, was arrested and jailed recently over a self-induced abortion just months after the state banned most abortions. The murder charge has been dropped, but abortion rights advocates are still concerned about increasing attacks against abortion in judicial circles.
“It appears that you are unaware that [the statute] continues to exist as the law of Texas,” Cain said. “And you likewise appear unaware that your organization is committing criminal acts that are exposing everyone involved in your organization – including your employees, volunteers, and donors – to criminal prosecution and imprisonment.”
“Caitlyn’s story is an inspiration to us all. She is a trailblazer in the LGBTQ+ community and her illustrious career spans a variety of fields that will be a tremendous asset for our audience.”
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, announcing the network has just hired former Olympian and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner
Chief Writing Wolf 