Remember When Lindsey Graham Said Abortion Should Be Left to the States?

Justin Baragona, for The Daily Beast:

Against the backdrop of abortion rights becoming one of the top issues in the upcoming midterm elections, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) unveiled a proposed nationwide ban on abortion on Tuesday that would outlaw the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

It was just weeks ago, however, when Graham justified the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to overturn Roe v. Wade by claiming he’d been “consistent” in believing that abortion should be left to individual states.

The only thing consistent about Lindsey Graham is that he’ll do whatever he thinks is best for Lindsey Graham’s political future.

Republicans Move to Ban Abortion Nationwide

Josh Marshall, writing for Talking Points Memo after noted political opportunist Senator Lindsey Graham announced that he was introducing a bill that would ban abortion:

…Republicans want to portray this as a reasonable national compromise, setting a national standard as I’ve seen even some journalists put it. But that’s not what it is. It doesn’t set a national 15 or 20 week standard. All the total restrictions which are now common in red and some purple states stay in place. It simply takes the Mississippi law which brought us the Dobbs decision and imposes it on every blue state. So what Mississippi passed and which was treated as extreme a year ago will become the law in California, New York, Illinois, Washington state and everywhere else. In practice it’s a blue state abortion ban. Abortion’s already banned in the great majority of red states or soon will be.

Republicans leave the decision to the states. Unless a state protects abortion rights. In which case Republicans ban it for them.

‘It’s not about the books’: Boundary County library director resigns over intimidation and ‘political atmosphere of extremism’

James Hanlon for the Spokesman-Review:

In Boundary County, a local group is attempting to recall four of the five library board members, including Colson, after the board approved an updated Collection Development and Maintenance Policy. The new policy says, “Selection of materials will not be affected by any such potential disapproval, and the Boundary County Library will not place materials on ‘closed shelves’ or label items to protect the public from their content.”

And the kicker:

“Nothing in my background could have prepared me for the political atmosphere of extremism, militant Christian fundamentalism, intimidation tactics, and threatening behavior currently being employed in the community,” Glidden wrote in her announcement posted by the library.

Boundary County is only a few hours from where I grew up, and not even an hour from where my parents lived while I attended community college. Hell, I even briefly had an video editing job in Bonner’s Ferry, the county seat. Beautiful area, terrible people.

Drop’s latest mechanical keyboards are love letters to The Lord of the Rings

I don’t need a new mechanical keyboard, but my inner Tolkien geek is awfully tempted.

Conservatives sue school for refusing to out transgender students

Daniel Villarreal for LGBTQ Nation:

“Some of Parent B’s daughter’s special-needs classes are held in a classroom that also functions as the meeting location for the LGBT student club,” the lawsuit says. “The teacher in that classroom is the faculty advisor for the club. Thus, the classroom walls contain several posters with information about various gender identities, gender ‘social transitions,’ and ‘referred pronouns.’ Parent B’s daughter is extremely impressionable and often follows the lead of other students.”

Yes, sitting in a room with LGBTQ-supporting posters will make your kid gay in the same way sitting in a library will make you smarter through osmosis.

Inside the War Between Trump and His Generals

Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker in The New Yorker.

“They shook the very Republic to the core,” Milley would eventually reflect. “Can you imagine what a group of people who are much more capable could have done?”

The only thing that stopped the immorality of the Trump Administration and its failed coup was its own incompetence — and a few good men and women.

Upset over LGBTQ books, a Michigan town defunds its library in tax vote

Knowledge is the enemy.

Sandy Hook lawyers say Alex Jones’s attorneys accidentally gave them his phone contents

I am guilty of using the phrase “it’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion” too much, but watching this story unfold on Twitter was like the Futurama gag where the response to a train wreck was to send in more trains.

Voters in Kansas decide to keep abortion legal in the state, rejecting an amendment

A win for those who believe in basic human rights.

US sues Idaho over abortion law, cites medical treatment

More of this please.

And, as someone who grew up in Idaho: Fuck the Idaho Republican Party.

Child Support Is Bad Because It Encourages Abortions, GOP Lawmaker Says

Sharon Zhang, reporting for Truthout:

Republican Del. Chris Pritt said on the floor of the legislature that, if a man gets a woman pregnant, he may encourage or force a woman to get an abortion because of the possibility that he would have to pay child support if the fetus were carried to term. Thus, Pritt argued, child support is inconsistent with an anti-abortion ideology.

Justice Dept. investigating Trump’s actions in Jan. 6 criminal probe

Carol D. Leonnig, Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey and Spencer S. Hsu for The Washington Post:

The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Finally.

Cassidy Hutchinson Held Their Manhoods Cheap

Tim Miller for The Bulwark:

This is why everyone I interviewed for my book was so filled with hatred for the Never Trumpers, the media, and the liberals in their life. It’s because they knew we were right. And were unwilling to do anything about it. So rather than deal with their own culpability and take responsibility for themselves, they demonized those of us who spoke the truth. Because every time one of us said what they knew, out loud, it was an implicit indictment of their character.

White Parents Rallied to Chase a Black Educator Out of Town. Then, They Followed Her to the Next One — ProPublica

Nicole Carr, writing for ProPublica:

During her early visits, [Cecelia] Lewis found Cherokee County to be a welcoming place. It reminded her of her community in southern Maryland, where everyone knew one another. But leaving the place where she’d been raised — and where, aside from her undergrad years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she’d spent most of her adult life — wasn’t going to be easy. Before her last day as principal of her middle school, her staff created a legacy wall in her honor, plastering a phrase above student lockers that Lewis would say to end the morning messages each day: “If no one’s told you they care about you today, know that I do ... and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it!”

Lewis was beginning to prepare for her move South, spending as much time with friends and family as possible, when she got a strange call from an official in her new school district. The person on the line — Lewis won’t say who — asked if she had ever heard of CRT.

Lewis responded, “Yes — culturally responsive teaching.” She was thinking of the philosophy that connects a child’s cultural background to what they learn in school. For Lewis, who’d studied Japanese and Russian in college and more recently traveled to Ghana with the Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad program for teachers, language and culture were essential to understanding anyone’s experience.

At that point, she wasn’t even familiar with the other CRT, critical race theory, which maintains that racial bias is embedded in America’s laws and institutions and has caused disproportionate harm to people of color. In a speech the previous fall, then-President Donald Trump condemned CRT as “toxic propaganda” and “ideological poison.”

The actions taken by these people idiots in Cherokee County are despicable.

Game of Thrones is coming to Broadway with a prequel to Robert’s Rebellion

Wut.

‘We’ll Never Make That Kind of Movie Again’

From Bilge Ebiri’s delightful oral history of The Emperor’s New Groove in Vulture:

Mark Dindal [the film’s director]: Story rooms, often someone will pitch an idea almost as a joke and then someone else goes, “That’s funny. But what are we really going to do?” This was the only movie I worked onDindal, who started working at Disney in the early 1980s, would eventually go on to direct Chicken Little, Walt Disney Feature Animation’s first computer-animated feature film. where someone pitched an idea like that and we went, “Let’s use that.” Like Yzma, [who’s been turned into a] kitten, is falling off the tower and we’re like, “How are we going to get her back up? She’s not going to splat.” I don’t remember if it was Dave or Don Hall, another story artist who’s become a director since, said, “What if there’s a trampoline salesman at the bottom and she hits that and bounces back up?” We said, “Oh yeah. That’s what it should be.” You can’t imagine a story session in Bambi where somebody says that. This quickly became a movie where a trampoline salesman makes sense.

I’m Being Censored, and You Can Read, Hear, and See Me Talk About It in the News, on the Radio, and on TV

Eli Grober’s wonderful send-up of Insurrectionist Josh Hawley in McSweeney’s:

Hi there, thanks for reading this. I’m being censored. That’s why I’m writing a piece in a major publication that you are consuming easily and for free. Because I am being absolutely and completely muzzled.

I wish I saw evidence these people had a conscience

Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union:

And that is how the terrorist attack of January 6th happened. Millions of Americans infected with the virus of disinformation. It was a joint effort by far-right hate groups that the president has been playing footsy with for years and radicalized, infected Trump supporters, and MAGA media.

Multiple dead bodies later, no contrition, no apologies, no acknowledgment of what they did. Until those who spread the big lie work to correct it — putting out a vaccine of facts and truth — I fear that the U.S. will continue to be in this bad and dangerous place even after the inauguration. And I wish, in my soul, I wish, that I saw any evidence that any of these people had a conscience for this to even nag at.

Among The Insurrectionists

Luke Mogelson for The New Yorker:

The America Firsters and other invaders fanned out in search of lawmakers, breaking into offices and revelling in their own astounding impunity. “Nancy, I’m ho-ome! ” a man taunted, mimicking Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Shining.” Someone else yelled, “1776—it’s now or never.” Around this time, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country. . . . USA demands the truth!” Twenty minutes later, Ashli Babbitt, a thirty-five-year-old woman from California, was fatally shot while climbing through a barricaded door that led to the Speaker’s lobby in the House chamber, where representatives were sheltering. The congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, later said that she’d had a “close encounter” with rioters during which she thought she “was going to die.” Earlier that morning, another representative, Lauren Boebert—a newly elected Republican, from Colorado, who has praised QAnon and promised to wear her Glock in the Capitol—had tweeted, “Today is 1776.”

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell brings notes to White House that suggest calling for ‘martial law if necessary’

Nothing to see here. Move along.