How Many Dead Women Will It Take to Slake the Misogynists' Thirst?

All of them.

Kevin Drum:

We are rapidly approaching a point in half the states in America where abortions will be effectively available only to rich women. They'll just jet off to clinics in California or New York if they have to. Non-rich women, who can't afford that, will be forced into motherhood whether they like it or not. At which point conservatives, as usual, will suddenly lose all interest in them except as props for their rants about lazy welfare cheats.

No, non-rich women will NOT be forced into motherhood.  They will be forced into botched, back-alley illegal abortions, which should just be called "Gosnells" from now on.  The will end up sterile from punctures and infections if they're lucky; dead if they're not.  Or maybe imprisoned for life on bogus "murder" charges.

And no, conservatives will never lose interest in women who have sex outside the "Dugger rules." The maimed, dead and imprisoned ones will be held up forever as proof that only Dugger-rule sex is safe.

UPDATE:  And the states are already doing it.

How Many Dead Women Will It Take to Slake the Misogynists' Thirst?

All of them.

Kevin Drum:

We are rapidly approaching a point in half the states in America where abortions will be effectively available only to rich women. They'll just jet off to clinics in California or New York if they have to. Non-rich women, who can't afford that, will be forced into motherhood whether they like it or not. At which point conservatives, as usual, will suddenly lose all interest in them except as props for their rants about lazy welfare cheats.

No, non-rich women will NOT be forced into motherhood.  They will be forced into botched, back-alley illegal abortions, which should just be called "Gosnells" from now on.  The will end up sterile from punctures and infections if they're lucky; dead if they're not.  Or maybe imprisoned for life on bogus "murder" charges.

And no, conservatives will never lose interest in women who have sex outside the "Dugger rules." The maimed, dead and imprisoned ones will be held up forever as proof that only Dugger-rule sex is safe.

QOTD

Via Scott Lemiuex at Lawyers, Guns and Money, the money quote from the Supreme Court majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette more than 60 years ago:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

They sure occur constantly to Nino Scalia and his fellow freakazoid corporatists fouling the seats where honest jurists once worked.

A Prayer for Religious Freedom

Divine Irony:

Let us stand now, unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of One or All. That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is Done. Hail Satan.

After Supreme Court prayer decision, Satanist offers his own prayer 

I fear that most people miss the point of this amazing protest against state sponsored superstition.

"Public Prayer is Always Coercian"

The Rude One is, unlike the Supremes, completely on point here, so read the whole thing.

He concludes:

Public prayer is not a blithe, harmless, almost passive activity. It separates the believers from the non-believers, and it always implies that one should be behaving in a certain way. It forces you to conform or resist in settings where such pressures need not exist. Yeah, it's a fuck of a lot easier to say, "Kiss my ass. I'm sittin' out your prayer" in a large city. But in a small town, like Greece, or, perhaps, in the future, in a Southern classroom, it's an imposition on the freedom of others who want to go to secular things without having someone slap you in the face with their Christ butt plug.

The Rude Pundit has said it before and will say it again: "Freedom of religion" also means "freedom from religion."

Quick P.S. here: You know who offered an amicus brief in support of the praying rights of the Grecian people? The Obama administration. Yeah, the Solicitor General pretty much laid out everything Kennedy needed to say, so, you know, obviously the next State of the Union will start with an Islamic call to prayer.

Don't Laugh; This is Coming Soon

Via Digby:



Larger version here.

Buy A Cross At Hobby Lobby to Support Abortion

Yes, you heard that correctly. Hobby Lobby's profits pay for abortions. And the owners who so hate birth control are perfectly fine with paying for those abortions.

Rude Pundit:

Now, the Rude Pundit is far from the first person to point out the hypocrisy of Hobby Lobby indirectly funding abortions in China while wanting to deny access to some of the most effective means of preventing abortion to its employees. He may not be the first person to say that if anti-choice lawmakers really gave a damn about abortion, they would try to ban American companies from doing business with China until it changed its policy. But he would like to be the first person to say this:

When you buy a cross at Hobby Lobby, you are helping to pay for abortions in China.

Hobby Lobby says on its website that it is committed to "Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with biblical principles." Apparently, those principles end at the borders of the United States. And that gives the game away, doesn't it? That all David Green and his supporters really care about is controlling the bodies of American women?

There are two sentences, one after another, on that same "Our Company" page that provide an amazing juxtaposition. First, we're told, "We believe that it is by God's grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has endured. He has been faithful in the past, and we trust Him for our future." And then, immediately after, we're reminded, "Hobby Lobby is THE place to shop with everyday Super Selections and Super Savings!" Yes, we all remember that biblical passage that said, "Acquire all ye can as ye may of earthly goods manufactured by disposable and cheap labor so that ye may get discounts great and deep on all your scrapbooking needs." That was in Paul's Letter to the Bargain Hunters, right?

Still, no matter which way the Supreme Court case goes (and it's not looking good for people who believe "religious liberty" means "liberated from your religion"), you can always tell your mom or your neighbor that the next time they spend money at Hobby Lobby, to buy a cross or a wooden dowel or some ribbon, they are supporting abortion. Thank them for helping to keep the population down, just like their allies, the Chinese government, would.

Companies SHOULD Pay For Employees' Abortions

Because it's a legal medical procedure, bitches.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

Justice Anthony Kennedy, on whose vote the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS case rests, seems very concerned about the government forcing corporations to cover abortion:

SNIP

It’s worth noting that Kennedy expressed a different concern than one offered shortly thereafter by Chief Justice John Roberts. Hobby Lobby objects to four forms of contraception on the mistaken ground that these contraceptive methods are actually forms of abortion — a brief filed by numerous medical organizations explains that they are not. Roberts, however, suggested that someone’s mere belief that something is an abortion is enough to trigger an religious exemption to federal law. 

I will never understand this reasoning. I don't get to restrict the compensation I pay to my employees based on their political views. No Muslim or Jewish employer gets to demand that their employees not get coverage for, say, illnesses resulting from eating pork. No Hindu employer gets to restrict health coverage for people who eat beef or were born to the wrong caste. If I found a religion stating that guns are the Devil's tools, I still don't get to restrict medical coverage for my employees based on their gun ownership--even if they shoot themselves.

Abortion isn't some special category of religious exemption. Objections to abortion are based on the entirely doctrinally speculative ground about fetuses having "souls." The Hobby Lobby case goes further: Hobby Lobby wrongly believes that certain forms of birth control are abortifacients, despite the rejection of that premise by serious medical organizations.

But what of it? Abortion rights are the law of the land. Hobby Lobby's rejection of abortion rights as against their religious principles is no more valid a reason to deny an employee compensation than any other form of religious discrimination. The Constitution grants the owners of Hobby Lobby to exercise their own religion as they see fit. It doesn't grant them the right to pay their employees unequally on the basis of their religious beliefs if we've passed a law stating that employees have a right to equal compensation (which is what the ACA essentially does.)

But abortion has been set up in its own special category by conservative male legislators in this country. I am forced to support corporate welfare, Creationist schools and immoral wars with my tax dollars. But for some reason my conservative neighbor doesn't have to support abortion rights with his tax dollars. And if Hobby Lobby gets their way, my conservative neighbor will be able to pay any potential employees differently based on whether they use birth control.

That's not justice. If this country wants to move in that direction, then perhaps progressives nationally should reorganize into a "religion." Sounds like a pretty cool perk: organize politically without the pesky IRS, and enshrine a bunch of political beliefs into a discriminatory legal code. But somehow I don't think the Supreme Court would go for that. "Religious freedom" only goes in one direction: whatever misogynistic conservative men want.

And there it is:  "Religious freedom" only goes in one direction: whatever misogynistic conservative men want.

What they want is the Republic of Gilead.

Hobby Lobby: Restricting Actual Freedom for People in the Name of Fake Religious Freedom for Corporations

In 21st-century America, only corporations have rights.

Scott Lemiuex at Lawyers, Guns and Money: 

The companies advancing the farcically specious religious freedom arguments against the contraception non-mandate want their employees to get even less for the health insurance they pay for with their labor than you think:

Arguments in front of the Supreme Court start next week in the Hobby Lobby case. Hobby Lobby is suing for a religious exemption from the Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring that employer-provided health insurance cover contraception. Most of the coverage of the case has focused on Hobby Lobby’s objection to the contraception itself and how, if the business prevails, its employees will have to pay out of pocket for things like birth control pills or IUDs. But, as Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress explained on Wednesday, Hobby Lobby and their co-plaintiff, Conestoga Wood Specialties, are also objecting to insurance plans covering “related education and counseling” for contraception. In other words, these for-profit businesses aren’t just asking their female employees to pay for their own contraception, even though they are already paying for their own contraception by paying for their insurance coverage. These companies want to elbow their way into doctor’s offices and call the shots on what doctors can and cannot say to Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood employees.

In summary, Hobby Lobby et al. are citing a “burden” on religious practice so trivial as to be non-existent in order to impose actual burdens on the rights of their employees. This nicely summarizes how American conservatives think about “freedom.”

The way the story is being covered reveals the hidden agenda.

Kathleen Geier at Political Animal:

Few political stories of the past couple of years have exposed the not-so-subtle misogyny of much of the political/pundit class like the “debate” over coverage of birth control under the ACA — beginning with the fact that that we are even debating this topic in the first place. The vehemence of the disdain and scorn that is reserved for coverage of women’s reproductive health in general, and of birth control in particular, can be attributed only to the low regard with which women continue to be held throughout our society.

There are plenty of good counterarguments to Lee’s ignorance, and Crockett touches on most of them. The argument I like best, which is among those she discusses, is the economic one — and it’s one that should be patently obvious to a reporter like Lee, who reports on tech and economics for a living. It’s based on the simple concept that for employees, compensation is compensation, whether it’s in the form of wages or benefits. The compensation the employee earns is hers to spend, not her employer’s. No one is “buying” the employee anything; she herself has earned her own benefits out of her own wages.

Also bogus is the idea that employers are somehow being forced to subsidize birth control. A health plan that includes birth control saves money on costs associated with pregnancy. It’s more economically rational for the insurer to cover birth control because it’s cheaper than the alternative of only covering pregnancy and childbirth.

Because reducing women to the status of pets is the perfect cover for giving corporations unlimited power over all of us.

Supremes: Fuck you, hippies, and the bikes you rode in on

This isn't about property rights; it's about smacking down hippies and their "sustainability" descendants.

And Stephen Breyer is a moron.

From Salon:

The Supreme Court Monday ruled 8-1 in favor of a private landowner in Wyoming who was fighting to keep bike paths from being built near his house. The decision, according to USA Today, threatens thousands of miles of public bicycle trails.

The case wasn’t about bike paths per se — it was about whether or not the federal government retains its control over land that had been granted to railroad companies once it’s been abandoned.  But the decision undermines a federal “rails to trails” program, threatening the more than 1,400 bike and nature trails it’s created since its inception in 1983.

SNIP

“I certainly think bicycle paths are a good idea, ” Justice Stephen Breyer said during oral arguments in January. The problem, he continued, is that the U.S. government doesn’t have a central database of the land it could convert to bike paths: “For all I know, there is some right-of-way that goes through people’s houses, you know, and all of a sudden they are going to be living in their house and suddenly a bicycle will run through it.”

“The court undermines the legality of thousands of miles of former rights of way that the public now enjoys as means of transportation and recreation,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the lone dissenter. ”Lawsuits challenging the conversion of former rails to recreational trails alone,” she added, “may well cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.”

I'm not surprised that Corporatist Elena Kagan went along with Breyer's bullshit, but I am disappointed in Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  Between this and her insistence that Roe v Wade was 'premature," I'm rapidly moving into the "Resign, Ruth, Resign" camp.

Forget the ACA; If Obama Doesn't Fill the Courts With Lefties, He'll Have No Legacy At All

Don't be fooled by the recent decisions by federal district judges to make states stop discriminating: the federal judiciary is infested with reich-wing corporatists hell-bent on reversing a century of economic and social progress.

Fortunately, there are hundreds of vacancies in the federal court system, all of them begging for far, far, FAR left judges to counteract the anti-democratic drag of Smirky-Darth appointees.

Unfortunately, President Obama has no interest in correcting the right-wing judicial threat to the Constitution.

Digby:

I wrote about the Michael Boggs nomination to the Federal bench earlier, but it's worth revisiting today as it seems likely to go forward. Remember, it isn't just him, it's three more totally unacceptable neanderthal wingnuts on the federal courts in exchange for a couple of moderates. This is a result of a "painstaking process of negotiations" --- which the president obviously lost.

The White House has not backed down from the nominations, arguing that the deal was part of a long, painstaking process of negotiations that they don’t want to toss out the window. According to The Hill, White House adviser Valerie Jarrett told the Congressional Black Caucus at a meeting in early February that the administration wouldn’t be withdrawing the nominations. The Obama administration is also frustrated with what they see as inadequate recognition of the fact that the administration has nominated the most diverse slate of candidates for the federal bench in history — including one who would be the first openly gay black nominee —and that the Georgia delegation failed to weigh in on the process before the deal over the Georgia nominees was cut.

Just a reminder: Clarence Thomas is black. (Also, apropos of nothing, from Georgia.) Choosing more racial minorities, women and gays alone, while a worthy goal, is not enough for a Democratic president. This is especially true of one who has inexplicably failed to even nominate  enough judges to fill the available vacancies. It's just inexplicable that he would agree to "deals" in which Republicans get to put more far right ideologues on the court after the previous president already packed it with them to the fullest extent he possibly could. If there is one area in which ideology, temperament and political philosophy simply must be taken seriously, it's this one. If he can't do any better than this, he should leave the seats unfilled and hope his successor is a Democrat who has better negotiating skills.

Now it must be recognized that the Senate, especially judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy, are clinging to their Senatorial prerogatives and that's a problem. They don't get a pass. But the administration should recognize that a major component of any president's legacy is his federal court appointments and should not be so cavalier as to allow such far right ideologues to obtain lifetime appointment under his auspices.

Why should repugs get all the obstruction fun? I'd like to see Senator Bernie Sanders block any judicial nominee to the right of  Elizabeth Warren.

For MLK Day, The Death Knell for Voting Rights

Yes, the proposed new voting rights bill is actually an anti-voter bill.

Fuck this shit. Every civilized country on the planet has federal voting laws, and ours should be simple: vote by mail, polls open 24-7 a full month before election day, same-day registration, sign in (no voter ID), redistricting by nonpartisan commission.

Anything less is a violation of civil rights.

Ian Milhiser at Think Progress:

On Thursday, Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) plan to introduce bipartisan legislation that will undo much of the damage done by the Roberts Court’s 5-4 decision to neuter a key prong of the Voting Rights Act. Since its enactment in 1965, the Voting Rights Act required states with a record of racial voter suppression to “preclear” any new voting laws with the Department of Justice or a federal court in D.C. The Supreme Court’s decision last June struck down the formula that determined which states are subject to this preclearance regime, effectively halting federal supervision of many states that were actively engaged in voter suppression.

Prior to the Roberts Court’s decision, nine states were subject in their entirety to the preclearance requirement, and parts of six others were also covered. Notably, much of the state of North Carolina, which recently enacted the most aggressive voter suppression law in the nation, was covered under the old formula.

The bipartisan fix to the Roberts Court’s decision creates a new formula that would initially lead to far fewer states being covered by preclearance. As the Nation’s Ari Berman explains, the new formula requires preclearance in states “with five violations of federal law to their voting changes over the past fifteen years,” and to localities “if they commit three or more violations or have one violation and ‘persistent, extremely low minority turnout’ over the past fifteen years.” The upshot of this new formula is that only four states, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas will immediately be subject to preclearance in their entirety. Notably, none of these four states are North Carolina, with its comprehensive voter suppression law.

The other piece of bad news is that the bipartisan bill creates a special carve-out for voter ID laws. Voter ID, which requires voters to show a photo ID before they can cast a ballot, are one of the most common voter suppression tactics in the country. Though their proponents claim that they are necessary to prevent voter fraud at the polls, such fraud is virtually non-existent. Indeed, a Wisconsin study found that just 0.00023 percent of votes are the product of in-person voter fraud, so a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls.

What voter ID does accomplish that it removes many low-income, student and minority voters from the electorate, all of which are groups that tend to favor Democrats over Republicans. Yet, despite their impact on racial minorities, the bipartisan voting bill will not count voter ID laws as a violation of federal voting rights that that can be used to subject a state to preclearance. Berman reports that this special carve out for these racially discriminatory laws was necessary to secure the support of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and some other Republicans.

Kevin Drum has a great summary and analysis. He concludes:

So the odds seem pretty long against reviving preclearance. That may be a helluva note to usher in Martin Luther King Jr. Day with, but it's most likely the truth. Now that blacks and Hispanics identify so overwhelmingly as Democrats, Republicans simply have no incentive to make it easier for them to vote. Nor does it seem possible to shame them into doing it, as it was even eight years ago. The GOP has simply changed too much since 2006.

Half a century ago, the fight over the VRA was a fight between racists and everyone else. Today, it's a fight between Republicans and Democrats. You'd think that might make it an easier fight to win, not a harder one. But it's not.

Federal Court: Workers Are Serfs With No Rights

It's not just the Supremes: thanks to Senate dems rolling over for Smirky/Darth on judicial nominees for eight straight years, then Obama letting court vacancies languish, there are thousands of corporatist repugs with lifetime appointments to the federal bench and decades ahead of them to make rulings that strip every last shred of self-determination from everyone in this country who is not obscenely wealthy.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Former NLRB member Craig Becker on an extremely disturbing decision by the 5th Circuit that effectively creates what he terms a “rightless workplace.”

Unnoticed except by employment lawyers, the United States Court of Appeals in New Orleans last month issued what might be the most important workers’ rights opinions in decades. The decision permits employers to require workers, as a condition of keeping their jobs, to agree to arbitrate all workplace disputes and to do so as individuals, standing alone against their employer. The ruling could spell the end of employment class actions that were instrumental to breaching the barriers of both race and sex discrimination after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and remain critical to enforcement of minimum wage and other labor standards laws.

SNIP

Effectively, Republican judges are continually pushing the United States toward the New Gilded Age, where employees no longer have rights but employers have expansively defined rights that happen to coincide with Republican policy beliefs about the workplace. Think of Gilded Age courts not enforcing Sherman Antitrust Act against the corporations the legislation originally intended to regulate but instead being used to bust unions, as was the case in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for a comparison. Courts are effectively ending a long tradition of workers using the institutions for their rights through defining laws to end class action suits.

The Republican Party and its court appointees have basically deified corporations. Whether we believe corporations should be our masters are not is irrelevant, since the courts will decide the question for us.

Corporations Have Rights; Women Don't

I said it back when Obama nominated her: Sonya Sotomayor is a corporatist who will always put businesses before people or government.

Talking Points Memo:

The Supreme Court has thrown a hitch into President Barack Obama's new health care law by blocking a requirement that some religion-affiliated organizations provide health insurance that includes birth control.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor late Tuesday night decided to block implementation of the contraceptive coverage requirement, only hours before the law's insurance coverage went into effect on New Year's Day.

Her decision, which came after federal court filings by Catholic-affiliated groups from around the nation in hopes of delaying the requirements, throws a part of the president's signature law into temporary disarray. At least one federal appeals court agreed with Sotomayor, issuing its own stay against part of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

This isn't about birth control, and it sure as fuck isn't about religion. It's about corporations putting themselves above the law, and above the Constitution.

And "liberal" judges letting them.

Civil rights and civil libertties are all fine and good ... until they inconvenience a corporation in the slightest.

Then the court's liberal corporatists can't throw the people - and the government we elected - overboard fast enough.

If you want any rights or freedom at all in America today you better be a corporation.

Everybody else is fucked.

What we need on the Supreme Court is people who hate corporations and are determined to deny them any rights at all.

Because any nominee who gives rights to corporations is an existential threat to the nation, regardless of her views on anything else.

The Racist Woman-Hater on the Supreme Court Who Is Ruining Lives and the Country

So glad Senate Democrats used their constant filibustering of everyone Shrub nominated to keep this piece of shit off the nation's highest court.  Oh, wait.

Ian Millhiser at Think Progress:

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito lacks “either understanding or interest” in the discrimination faced by women, African Americans or Latinos, according to federal Judge Harold Baer.

SNIP

Whatever the wisdom of Judge Baer’s practice, however, it is difficult to look at Alito’s record and see a judge who is very concerned at all by discrimination against women or minorities. Alito authored the Court’s infamous opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, a decision that was widely criticized for rolling back women’s right to equal pay for equal work. That decision was eventually overruled by Congress.

More recently, Alito authored an opinion making it far easier for workplace supervisors to get away with racial or sexual harassment. Although federal law provides fairly robust protection to workers harassed by their supervisor, Alito’s opinion in Vance v. Ball State University defined the term “supervisor” so narrowly as to render it meaningless in many workplaces. Under Vance, a person’s boss is only their “supervisor” if they have the power to make a “significant change in [your] employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in benefits.” Thus, in many modern workplaces where final employment decisions are made by distant human resources managers and not direct supervisors, many victims of racial or sexual harassment will find themselves without recourse thanks to Justice Alito.

On the same day that Alito handed down Vance, he also voted in another case to make it easier for employers to retaliate against workers that complain about workplace discrimination and get away with it. 

Alito’s also voted to give employers an easy way to immunize themselves from class action lawsuits brought by their workers. And he’s a strong supporter of “forced arbitration,” a practice which allows employers to shunt discrimination lawsuits into a secretive and privatized arbitration system rather than allowing those cases to be heard by a real court.

Yet, for all that Justice Alito has done to prevent women and racial minorities from fighting discrimination in Court, he took a very different tone when faced with a group of mostly white plaintiffs alleging discrimination.

SNIP

The skepticism Alito showed in so many other opinions towards plaintiffs alleging discrimination suddenly abandoned him when white people made such an allegation.

SNIP

But Justice Alito has also had several years on the Supreme Court to demonstrate his commitment to abolishing discrimination against women and racial minorities. What he’s shown instead is a desire to roll back anti-discrimination law, even while he rails against discrimination against white people.

It's the Misogyny, Stupid

Although the ultimate consequence of the Supreme Court ruling that corporations have religious rights will be a corporate theocracy replacing democracy in America, the immediate goal is what it always has been: controlling female sexuality.

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

The Supreme Court granted cert in two of the specious legal challenges to the ACA’s contraceptive mandate, and I’m not particularly optimistic.

One point I want to emphasize is that contraceptive coverage is earned, not “free”:

One argument that has been made again and again by supporters of the legal challenges is that the religious consciences of employers are being burdened so that employees can get “free” contraception. But this is an erroneous argument that misapprehends the basic concept of employer-provided health insurance. Contraception provided by health insurance isn’t “free,” it’s earned. Companies get substantial taxpayer subsidies for partly paying employees in health insurance instead of cash. In exchange, this insurance has to be comprehensive enough to provide value to the employee. Women getting basic health-care needs covered by insurance they’re receiving as compensation are not receiving any kind of free ride.

This point underscores just how weak the legal challenge to the mandate is. The employers in question are claiming that there’s a major religious freedom issue at stake depending on whether employees obtain contraception through direct wages or through the insurance employers get tax benefits for paying employees with instead. But there isn’t. The “burden” imposed by the mandate is utterly trivial, and the argument that it violates RFRA should be rejected by the Supreme Court.

Jessica Valenti at The Nation:

Reproductive health needs are just that—health needs. But because we live in a country that has a ridiculous hang-up over women and sex, we’re still debating the morality of birth control and calling women whores instead of giving them the care they need. We know why conservatives want to limit birth control access—they show their true colors every day. So let’s not pretend these cases are about religious freedom or employer’s rights. Call it what it is: misogyny.

"Religious Freedom" for Corporations = Slavery for Workers

When (not if) the U.S. Supremely Conservatard Court rules that corporations have First Amendment rights of religion, what is to stop WalMart from claiming that as xian believers in the literal, inerrant word of the bibble they are entitled - nay, required - to keep slaves?

Nothing, that's what will stop them.  Just as Citizen's United was supposed to "correct" a narrow section of law regarding corporate contributions but in fact unleashed direct purchase of elections by billionaires, the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga cases are going to turn American Democracy into a Corporate Theocracy that combines the worst aspects of Gilded Age robber barons and Saudi Arabian freakazoids.

Think Progress:

Hobby Lobby, the giant craft retailer known for providing knitting wool, holiday trinkets, fake flowers, and just about any other craft-centric material one could need, balks at providing certain types of medical care for its employees. That is because the company, which has 559 stores across the country and brings in $3 billion in revenue each year, is owned by the Green family—devout Christians who believe that human life begins at conception and that using certain types of birth control violates their religious beliefs.

The Greens, who often have Hobby Lobby buy newspaper ads encouraging people to “know Jesus as Lord and Savior,” also think that their religious beliefs should be imposed on Hobby Lobby’s 22,000 employees. Because of their religious convictions, the Greens have asked a federal court, in a case called Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius, to exempt their for-profit corporation from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that companies with more than 50 employees offer health plans covering contraception.

In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that minimum standards for employer health plans would include preventive care for women, including mammograms, cervical-cancer screenings, prenatal care, and contraceptives—all services that are vital to women’s health and well-being. The Obama administration provided an exemption from the contraception-coverage requirement for “religious employers”—churches and nonprofit religious organizations—but not for for-profit, secular corporations such as Hobby Lobby. 

Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius is one of 40 lawsuits filed across the country asking federal courts to exempt a for-profit corporation from the Affordable Care Act’s contraception requirement. It is also one part of a coordinated effort led by conservative legal groups to undermine the Affordable Care Act and avoid complying with other laws.

In June, an all-male majority of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the Greens and ruled that corporations have religious rights equal to living, breathing humans. The panel of judges said that asking Hobby Lobby to provide contraception coverage would violate the corporation’s religious freedom under federal law.

Two other cases have already made it through the Courts of Appeals in the 3rd and 6th Circuits where the courts have not been as easily swayed by corporations’ religious arguments. The 3rd and 6th Circuits split from the 10th Circuit and held that for-profit corporations do not have religious rights. On September 19, both Hobby Lobby and the 3rd Circuit case, Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, were appealed up to the Supreme Court; the current circuit split makes it likely that the Court will agree to hear one of these cases this term. If a majority of the justices agree with the “corporate conscience” argument—that for-profit corporations can have religious beliefs—thousands of American women will be denied access to critical health care, simply because their bosses do not believe in contraception.

If the Supreme Court were to side with Hobby Lobby, it would be another piece of pro-corporate precedent from an increasingly pro-business court. Such a decision would also impact how we define religious liberty in America. Will corporations soon be permitted to override the religious-freedom rights of their employees? What other types of exemptions will these corporations have? Will these companies be free to disregard all civil rights laws barring discrimination?

As 10th Circuit Chief Judge Mary Beck Briscoe, the only active woman on that appeals court, wrote in her Hobby Lobby dissent, the court’s holding is “unprecedented” and no one “can confidently predict where it may lead, particularly when one considers how easily an ‘exercise of religion’ could now be asserted by a corporation to avoid or take advantage of any government rule or requirement.”

It is exactly because of this possibility that the justices, should the Supreme Court take one of these religious-exemption cases, must recognize that corporations were never intended to have religious-freedom rights.

The Supremely Conservatard Court has, indeed, accepted both Hobby Lobby and Conestoga for the express purpose of establishing a religio-corporate state beyond the wildest dreams of either the Dominionists or the Randians.

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution, the Federalist papers or the mountains of correspondence among the Founders to suggest that the Establishment clause of the First Amendment was ever intended to allow individuals or corporations to claim exemption from the law.  I doubt even Alexander Hamilton could countenance that.

But here we are.

Cowardly Bullies Paul and McConnell Whine That Dems Fought Back

Nobody nails the GOP like the Rude Pundit:

In Brief: Oh, Shut the Fuck Up on the Filibuster, GOP:

Dear GOP,

You reap what you have sown, motherfuckers. And now you get at least a year of eating shit on judges and executive branch appointees. Why? Because you were such unbelievable dickheads for the last three years and the government can't function when a minority of one house of one branch can stall everything. Frankly, this should have been done all the way in January 2009, with no exception for bills and Supreme Court justices, and then we'd have real heath care reform, Gitmo closed, and more.

Just fucking stop with the outrage and the promise that you're gonna do even more evil cuntery if you ever get the majority and the presidency again. C'mon. You know and so does everyone else that, no matter if Reid went nuclear or not, you were gonna change the filibuster the first chance you got. And that's because you're dishonorable scumfuckers who won't stand to let the black man president have his way.

SNIP

Let's just hope Obama tees up a shit-ton of liberal judges to correct the rightward tilt of the judiciary in this country. You know how it got so conservative, GOP? Because Democrats weren't complete and utter pricks. Like you. So even some fuckin' perverse animals got through to lifetime appointments on the bench.

You got what you deserved. Now, really, go out and try to sell America on how much majority rule sucks as you try to get the majority.

Kisses in Hell,

The Rude Pundit

Quote of the Day

Congratulations, all you DINO "strategists" who think outlawing abortion would help Democratic candidates win elections, never mind the millions of women who will die from illegal abortions: the Supreme Court is about to give you what you want.

Digby:

Basically, what they've done is validate the anti-abortion zealots' strategy of closing down clinics with any spurious reasoning they can come up with regardless of whether it makes sense.

*Oh, and by the way, there will always be abortions no matter how much birth control is widely available and how much health care and support women get. Always have been always will be. The only question for any decent society is if they will be safe and available.

Abortion. On. Demand. Free of charge, no questions asked, available everywhere. Anything less is a violation of human rights.

Freedom From Religion Still Far Out of Reach

Forced public prayer at government meetings and events is a ubiquitous abomination in Kentucky.  And I say forced because failing to stand up, clasp your hands, bow your head and join in the closing "Amen" immediately singles you out as not just an atheist, not just a troublemaker, not just a clear threat to the community, but also as inexcusably rude, lacking the basic manners to pretend to belief so as not to offend your xian neighbors.

In Shelbyville, a suburb of Louisville with pretensions of cosmopolitanism, a local atheist couple have drawn personal attacks on themselves by daring to challenge the opening prayer at the city council meeting.  When their initial polite request that the unconstitutional prayers stop was rejected, they started recording the prayer at each meeting. So the council instituted two insulting changes:

- prayers are now made to an un-named invisible sky wizard, as if failing to utter the name of babby jeebus fools anybody, and

- pasting the following meaningless disclaimer at the bottom of meeting agendas:

Any invocation that may be offered (as if it is accidental and a surprise, rather than automatic) before the official start of the Council meeting (as if it is not listed on the agenda as Invocation, right AFTER the Call to Order, making it an official part of the meeting), shall be the voluntary offering of a private citizen, to and for the benefit of the Council. (Not true, as it is listed on the agenda as part of the meeting.) The views or beliefs expressed by the invocation speaker have not been previously reviewed or approved by the Council and do not necessarily represent the religious beliefs or views of the Council in part or as a whole. (Another LIE. Everybody who thinks a Pastafarian could stand up and offer the touch of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's Noodly Appendange without getting arrested, stand on your head.) No member of the community is required to attend or participate in the invocation (technically not false but irrelevant, as noted above) and such decision will have no impact on their right to actively participate in the business of the Council. (It will, however, eliminate any chance of your petition being heard with respect or considered impartially.) Copies of the policy governing invocations and setting forth the procedure to have a volunteer deliver an invocation are available upon written request submitted to the Clerk of the City of Shelbyville.

Which bullshit is completely beside the point, which is that any prayer or religious invocation of any kind at a government meeting or event is a blatant, obvious and egregious violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, to wit:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ....

Your right to practice your religion ends where my right to not have your religion poison my government starts.

If by some bizarre fluke the U.S. Supremely Conservatard Court upholds the Establishment Clause in this case, you can expect the freakazoids in the god-bothering states to reject it out of hand and fight like rabid ferrets to force public prayer down the throats of everyone who dares to step foot out of their own homes.

It'll make the backlash against Brown v. Board of Education look like a petition drive.