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He manipulated the court’s norms to overturn Roe. And he’ll do it again whenever he chooses. This piece in the NY Times about the deliberations in the Dobbs decision is a barn burner. I’ve included a gift link so that you can read the whole thing, but here is how it opens. Alito is a beast, as are those in his thuggish crew: On Feb. 10 last year, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. showed his eight colleagues how he intended to uproot the constitutional right to abortion. At 11:16 a.m., his clerk circulated a 98-page draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. After a justice shares an opinion inside the court, other members scrutinize it. Those in the majority can request revisions, sometimes as the price of their votes, sweating sentences or even words. But this time, despite the document’s length, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote back just 10 minutes later to say that he would sign on to the opinion and had no changes, according to two people who reviewed the messages. The next morning, Justice Clarence Thomas added his name, then Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and days later, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. None requested a single alteration.

Or is it just more hopium? I’m hoping to spread a little bit of hopium during this holiday season, not because I’m trying to blow smoke but because I’m honestly not as pessimistic about this coming election as a lot of people are. It’s not that I’m not extremely nervous. I know as well as you do that anything can happen and this political situation is extremely volatile. After all, just two years ago we had an attempted coup! But after having lived through some earlier panics that inform my feelings about this election, I’m just not ready to call for the hemlock. Yet. I know it will take hard work and close attention to what’s going on over the next year, but I do believe it’s possible. I’ll try to bring you analysis that I find as I scour the internet everyday that may at least give you some pause. JV Last of the Bulwark is a bit of a curmudgeon. Sometimes he is down right dark but I often find his analysis interesting. Today he discusses a conversation with economist Noah Smith about Biden’s chances in the election and why Smith believes he will win.

Keep the applause going for our host tonight. That guy has some great jokes. In fact, his jokes are so good they make me want to pull an “1880s paleontologist Othniel Marsh” and pay my cronies to sneak into his room at night and steal them, the same way that Marsh paid people to steal fossils from his rival Edward Cope.

Okay, I can tell by your reaction that not everybody liked that joke. That’s all right. I didn’t get into comedy to make audiences comfortable. I’m here to confront dark truths and explore what makes us human. I believe that no topic is off limits in comedy, including 1880s paleontologist Othniel Marsh.

So many comics are afraid to talk about 1880s paleontologist Othniel Marsh. They try to keep things safe by talking about relationships or dumb song lyrics or complicated political topics. But that’s taking the easy way out. As long as I’m telling the truth, I don’t care if I bomb harder than when 1880s paleontologist Othniel Marsh used dynamite to sabotage the dig site of his rival Edward Cope.

If Power, the USAID administrator, would take her own genocide book seriously, she would step down over Israel’s assault on Palestinians.

The post Samantha Power Calls on Samantha Power to Resign Over Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.

Without a large and rapid change in politics, not much in evidence, it now seems unlikely we can avoid climate apocalypse. The COP28 conference in Dubai on (allegedly) reducing greenhouse gas emissions has come and gone with the usual proclamations of triumph. Wow, this time they actually mentioned fossil fuels, and the need to ‘transition Continue reading »

Not content with expanding its membership from the original 12 to 31 nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is making a grab for a presence in the Asia Pacific as well. From 1949, NATO’s commitment to defend any member if attacked (Article 5) applied only to the North American and European mainlands and territories north Continue reading »

Antisemitism is an ancient European pastime. But post-World War II we have seen the birth of the Antisemitism Industry – people who have made it their job to call out antisemitism, even where it might not exist. Last week, Israel’s ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon told The Guardian that he was ‘very sad’ about the Continue reading »

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The Left, and certainly a number of broadly defined progressives, have a strange affinity towards violence and conflict. When the absurdly labelled Global War Against Terror was declared by the semi-literate US President George W. Bush, the use of torture and resort to illegal invasions had the support of such noted liberal figures as Michael Continue reading »

One wonders what our legendary generals and our volunteer soldiers in many wars would have made of the dithering and dissembling at the top level of the Australian War Memorial on how it deals with the Australian Frontier Wars, a defining part of our Australian history. The Australian War Memorial has lost its way. Here’s Continue reading »

Slow progress in cleaning up the mess after decades of Coalition neglect and economic mismanagement in immigration, labour relations, school education and economic structure, opinion polls reveal a restive electorate. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues. This is the last Continue reading »

“What happened here in the Northern Rivers [in 2022] with Lismore as the epicentre has to be recognised as one of the worst disasters the nation has ever seen,” says Lismore City Councillor Elly Bird. The scale of the floods was immense: Australia’s “biggest natural disaster since Cyclone Tracy in 1974, the second-costliest event in Continue reading »

As Hong Kong gears up for both Christmas and the following Lunar New Year celebrations there is plenty to look forward to in this dynamic city. And against this happy backdrop we are also awaiting the start of the long-delayed trial of Jimmy Lai , of Apple Daily fame, under the much quoted National Security Continue reading »

It’s a mess and it’s getting messier It appears that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s honeymoon is coming to an early conclusion. The Freedom Caucus is hopping mad that he allowed the Defense Authorization Bill to pass with Democratic votes, a big no-no signifying that the bill was obviously much too good. According to Puck’s Tara Palmieri, they accused Johnson of going behind their backs and using a “page ripped from the Boehner playbook” referring to the former speaker who, like Kevin McCarthy, was also chased out of the job for passing bills with Democrats. Palmieri reports that a senior GOP aide told her that “people are turning on Mike fast; he won’t make a decision” because he wouldn’t choose between two competing bills. And apparently it has finally occurred to them that his lack of experience and expertise might be a problem, quoting the same aide saying, “his operation is minor league compared to Kevin’s team. At least they knew what they were doing and how the place ran. Mike’s team has no idea what they’re doing, and it’s pissing people off.

The completeness of the Ricardian victory is something of a curiosity and a mystery. It must have been due to a complex of suitabilities in the doctrine to the environment into which it was projected. That it reached conclusions quite different from what the ordinary uninstructed person would expect, added, I suppose, to its intellectual […]

After an eight-year hiatus, our Column Contest triumphantly returned (thanks in no small part to the support from our Patreon members). We received over 400 entries. As with past contests, this year’s group featured many worthy winners. After much deliberation, we’re excited to announce the three grand-prize-winning columns. They are, in random order:

“Chronicles of a Catsitter” by Mai Tran
Mai Tran began catsitting in 2021 while they were on pandemic unemployment, often staying overnight in people’s homes. Tran has now cared for twenty-two cats and traveled to ten apartments all over New York City, observing the interior lives of cat owners and appeasing their neuroses. From home vet visits to black eyes to refugee cats, “Chronicles of a Catsitter” documents Tran’s most memorable days on the job.

“Sorry Not Sorry” by Laurence Pevsner
A column about why we’re sick of everyone apologizing all the time—and how the collapse of the public apology leaves little room for forgiveness and grace in our politics and culture.

Wouldn’t you rather try Hopium? Many of us have them in our lives or in our families, people who over the Trump years slid from left to right. For some it was the terror and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. For others it began sooner than 2020. Most are unknowns, but they often follow better-knowns down the rabbit hole. Michelle Goldberg considers the phenomenon in light of an In These Times essay by Kathryn Joyce (“The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption“) and Jeff Sharlet (“The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War“) and with a little help from Naomi Klein’s “Doppelganger.” Goldberg writes: There have been plenty of high-profile defectors from the left in recent years, among them the comedian Russell Brand, the environmentalist-turned-conspiracy-theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the journalist Matt Taibbi, a onetime scourge of Wall Street, who was recently one of the winners of a $100,000 prize from the ultraconservative Young America’s Foundation.