Weekly News & Opinion Roundup
This week’s important, interesting, and widely-discussed news articles
I often mention to friends an article I read this week. Here is a faster way for them to find those articles. I do NOT endorse everything that is said in these articles and posting here is not an endorsement of the articles themselves nor their authors.
January 6 Hearings and Related
Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony Changed Our Minds About Indicting Donald Trump — Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
Beside the general interest in enforcing federal criminal law, a prosecution of Trump would accomplish three important purposes. First, it would send a clear message that no one, not even the president, is above the law. This, unfortunately, is not a fringe position. From former President Richard Nixon’s statement that “[w]hen the president does it … that means that it is not illegal,” to Trump’s claim that “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” the poisonous idea of an extralegal president has posed an increasing threat to American democracy. A criminal prosecution would go a long way toward countering that threat.
Second, a prosecution would deter future presidents, and their enablers, from engaging in the sort of extreme, anti-democratic conduct that Trump embrace….
When the Left Attacked the Capitol - Lawrence Roberts
Still, the attacks do share historical context. Each arose from a cauldron of political polarization and distrust of government. They were carried out by splinter groups that had abandoned faith in American democracy and would have been pleased to see the system collapse. Both led to heightened security in Washington. Thus it may be valuable to examine the events of 1971, and what lessons those days may hold for our new era of extremism.
Trump and Jan.6 epitomize America’s history of us vs them - Marcia Pally
That anger is rooted in and goaded by longstanding suspicion of government — the D.C. “swamp”— and the conviction that it’s doing the people wrong. That’s about as American as you can get. So either we fix what’s pushing people to this particularly American anger or we will have more of it, with catastrophic results for democracy.
Filmmaker Alex Holder on his interviews with Trump after January 6. — Benjamin Hart
“Based on my interactions with him — I don’t claim to be a psychologist or psychiatrist, but in those moments, the position he gave to me is someone who was utterly irrational, someone living in an alternate reality, and that there was no way to have a coherent, rational conversation with him.”
Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony against Trump Is Devastating — Andrew C. McCarthy
We should understand, in any event, that what Cheney did with Hutchinson Tuesday is what prosecutors do with witnesses in grand juries every day: drawing out the witness’s testimony with no obligation to provide the defense perspective. To be sure, no one gets convicted at the grand-jury stage, but an awful lot of people get indicted this way, and on far less evidence than the country heard today.
Hutchinson Testimony Exposes Tensions Between Parallel Jan. 6 Inquiries — Andy Perez
The explosive testimony of a former Trump White House aide on Tuesday may have increased the likelihood of new prosecutions stemming from the attack on the Capitol, but it also bared lingering conflicts between the Justice Department and congressional investigators.
Quit your Stalin - Jonah Goldberg
Now we’re told that the January 6 hearings are nothing less than a “show trial.” Rep. Scott Perry calls them “Soviet Style Show Trials.” Tucker Carlson strikes a courageous pose refusing to go along with the show trials. And Michael Goodwin thinks the lack of pro-Trump Republican apologists on the committee is proof of a “show trial.”
Do we need a new theory of evolution? — Stephen Buranyi
The computational biologist Eugene Koonin thinks people should get used to theories not fitting together. Unification is a mirage. “In my view there is no – can be no – single theory of evolution,” he told me. “There cannot be a single theory of everything. Even physicists do not have a theory of everything.”
Abortion and Supreme Court Decision
Roe Is Reversed, and the Right Isn’t Ready - David French
In the meantime, the Republican branch of the American church is adopting the political culture of the secular right. With a few notable exceptions, it not only didn’t resist the hatred and fury of the MAGA movement, it was the MAGA movement. And this is the culture that’s going to lead the effort to heal our nation, love the marginalized, and ask young women to face an uncertain future and endure a physical ordeal for the sake of sacrificial love?
The Study That Debunks Most Anti-Abortion Arguments - Margaret Talbot
The Turnaway Study’s findings are welcome ones for anyone who supports reproductive justice. But they shouldn’t be necessary for it. The overwhelming majority of women who received abortions and stayed in the study for the full five years did not regret their decision. But the vast majority of women who’d been denied abortions reported that they no longer wished that they’d been able to end the pregnancy, after an actual child of four or five was in the world. And that’s good, too—you’d hope they would love that child wholeheartedly, and you’d root for their resilience and happiness.
….
The Turnaway Study will be understood, criticized, and used politically, however carefully conceived and painstakingly executed the research was. Given that inevitability, it’s worth underlining the most helpful political work that the study does. In light of its findings, the rationale for so many recent abortion restrictions—namely, that abortion is uniquely harmful to the people who choose it—simply topples.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (19-1392) - SCOTUS
DOBBS, STATE HEALTH OFFICER OF THE MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, ET AL. v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 19–1392. Argued December 1, 2021—Decided June 24, 2022
Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act provides that “[e]xcept in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally or knowingly perform . . . or induce an abortion of an unborn human being if the probable gestational age of the unborn hu- man being has been determined to be greater than fifteen (15) weeks.” Miss. Code Ann. §41–41–191. Respondents—Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an abortion clinic, and one of its doctors—challenged the Act in Federal District Court, alleging that it violated this Court’s prec- edents establishing a constitutional right to abortion, in particular Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833. The District Court granted summary judg- ment in favor of respondents and permanently enjoined enforcement of the Act, reasoning that Mississippi’s 15-week restriction on abortion violates this Court’s cases forbidding States to ban abortion pre-viabil- ity. The Fifth Circuit affirmed. Before this Court, petitioners defend the Act on the grounds that Roe and Casey were wrongly decided and that the Act is constitutional because it satisfies rational-basis review.
Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.
Miscellaneous
New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen (20-843) - SCOTUS
NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., ET AL. v. BRUEN, SUPERINTENDENT OF NEW YORK STATE POLICE, ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
No. 20–843. Argued November 3, 2021—Decided June 23, 2022
The State of New York makes it a crime to possess a firearm without a license, whether inside or outside the home. An individual who wants to carry a firearm outside his home may obtain an unrestricted license to “have and carry” a concealed “pistol or revolver” if he can prove that “proper cause exists” for doing so. N. Y. Penal Law Ann. §400.00(2)(f ). An applicant satisfies the “proper cause” requirement only if he can “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.” E.g., In re Klenosky, 75 App. Div. 2d 793, 428 N. Y. S. 2d 256, 257.
Petitioners Brandon Koch and Robert Nash are adult, law-abiding New York residents who both applied for unrestricted licenses to carry a handgun in public based on their generalized interest in self-defense. The State denied both of their applications for unrestricted licenses, allegedly because Koch and Nash failed to satisfy the “proper cause” requirement. Petitioners then sued respondents—state officials who oversee the processing of licensing applications—for declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging that respondents violated their Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights by denying their unrestricted-license applications for failure to demonstrate a unique need for self-defense. The District Court dismissed petitioners’ complaint and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Both courts relied on the Second Circuit’s prior de- cision in Kachalsky v. County of Westchester, 701 F. 3d 81, which had sustained New York’s proper-cause standard, holding that the require- ment was “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.” Id., at 96.
Held: New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-de- fense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense.
Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks — William J. Bradya, Julian A. Willsa, John T. Josta, Joshua A. Tucker, and Jay J. Van Bavela. [PDF]
Here, we show that the expression of moral emotion is key for the spread of moral and political ideas in online social networks, a process we call “moral contagion.” Using a large sample of social media communications about three polarizing moral/political issues (n = 563,312), we observed that the presence of moral-emotional words in messages increased their diffusion by a factor of 20% for each additional word. Furthermore, we found that moral contagion was bounded by group membership; moral-emotional language in- creased diffusion more strongly within liberal and conservative net- works, and less between them. Our results highlight the importance of emotion in the social transmission of moral ideas and also dem- onstrate the utility of social network methods for studying morality. These findings offer insights into how people are exposed to moral and political ideas through social networks, thus expanding models of social influence and group polarization as people become increas- ingly immersed in social media networks.