Abortion, the law, and morality

The New Neo Posted on by

Some issues came up about abortion in the comments yesterday, and I think I’ll briefly take up two of them.

(1) From “R2L”:

I wonder why the standing of the father is so seldom mentioned in these cases and discussions. Clearly many men impregnating a woman “by accident” are not interested in accepting the obligations of rearing a child, but some are. Since 23 of the chromosomes in the embryo/ fetus are not really part of “my body my choice” it seems very fair to ask why the original owner of those chromosomes might have “standing” as well.

“Standing” isn’t just an interest in something. It’s a legal right to sue concerning something, and requires an “injury in fact” that is “redressable” by the court. A man who impregnates a woman could certainly sustain an “injury in fact” through her decision to have an abortion, but that injury is not “redressable” by the court. There is no getting around the fact that the woman is the pregnant person and he is not, and he cannot force her to bear a child and continue a pregnancy in her own body against her will, nor can he take on the pregnancy himself in his body (despite what trans activists might have you think). Men have rights in their children once they are born, of course, as well as responsibilities, and courts get involved in those things from time to time. But the man is not pregnant.

(2) From commenter OBloodyHell:

Not a big fan of this kind of challenges [to abortion]. They key on — rely on — far too much upon religious interpretations to justify their actions.

Religion is not, and should never be, a basis for The Law.

And if you try and say it should, grasp this: You are opening the door for Islam to demand Sharia Law be the law they operate under.

No. HELL NO

If you cannot justify a position simply by the notions of “natural law”, rather than using Jesus and the Bible for cause, then you are not only wrong, you’re being STUPID to support it being LAW.

This doesn’t mean you cannot use peer pressure to push behavior in a given direction. It just means you should not be using LAW to do the job.

And here’s a reply from “R2L”:

OBH, I agree with you in general, but it seems to me most discussions of “natural law” end up sneaking in concepts of God, revelation, absolute instead of relative, soul, and other semi-religious and “self evident” (essentially axiomatic) ideas. At least most versions are oriented to our Western Judeo-Christian history. Natural law is seldom addressed from the perspective of evolutionary psychology and our evolved mental states (or companion neuroscience). Also, of course civil law was derived from studies of Roman Law, and development of cannon law when the pope became supreme ruler over souls (1057AD?), and the success of cannon law led secular leaders to adjust it for non-religious uses in turn. These ideas were more widely spread with the creation of universities starting around 1188 and later, then the printing press, etc. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment brought us to our current state of a republican constitutional democracy (at least in theory).

How do we move the law to a position where it will give standing to the potential person gestating in the womb? I gather, following PM Thatcher, we have to win the argument first, and then we can obtain the votes. Given the divide in our country on several ideological fronts and issues, that will not be easy.

The left is constantly trying to find “penumbras” and hidden rights within the language of the Constitution and statutes in order to push through rulings they want and expand the law to cover things it never was intended to cover. The right opposes that – except that now and then a certain number of people on the right happen to want a certain result from the courts, such as a nationwide ban on abortion, and those people (fewer than on the left, but still not a minuscule number) are hoping the courts will find an implicit right somewhere that can make that happen.

In my opinion, that’s not the correct approach at all. The Constitution neither guarantees a right to abortion – Roe – nor supports its ban on the federal level through courts or even as an act of Congres. States can decide for themselves. But if either side wishes a national requirement that abortion be made legal everywhere – the left’s position, for the most part – or wishes a national ban or strong limitation (the stance of some on the right), there is a remedy: a Constitutional amendment. That is the way to establish a national right or to take it away (Prohibition is a good example of the latter).

Why don’t people talk much about this remedy, the amendment process? Because it requires a great deal of consensus. The Founders made amendments difficult to pass, for very good reason. As “R2L” says, first win the argument and then get the votes. That can happen more easily on a state level, but it could happen on a national level if enough people in enough states agree on one point of view or the other. But that’s not where we’re at right now.

Turley on Pelosi and J6

The New Neo Posted on by

January 6, 2021. Seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it? But news about it is still coming out:

The J6 Committee was an obviously biased set-up, a kangaroo court in Congress. I’m actually surprised that this recording ever came to light. I also strongly doubt it will have any influence on how Democrats feel about J6 and the security involved. The myth of J6 has built to such great proportions, and that happened quite soon after J6 happened.

And it was easy to predict. For example, here’s an excerpt from a post I wrote on January 7, 2021, the day after J6 occurred:

The double standards we’ve had for years are a pernicious part of the problem, and they’re not going away any time soon, because yesterday was something people can sink their teeth into.

Some on the right are saying that the left will be using this like the Nazis used the Reichstag fire. If they mean “to stoke hatred against the right as well as to repress it further,” then I agree. I’m not sure whether most people saying this realize that there is no historical consensus on who set the Reichstag fire: Communists as accused, or the Nazis themselves. But there is no dispute on how it was used by the Nazis.

And it’s the same way in which J6 has been used by the Democrats.

One of the questions the right has asked about J6 was always: since everyone knew there was a danger of violence on January 6, 2021, why wasn’t more security ordered? And since Nancy Pelosi was apparently able to have ordered it, why wasn’t she blamed? The answers are political ones. And the reason none of this came out during the J6 Committee hearings is the same obvious one: politics.

SCOTUS on the abortion pill

The New Neo Posted on by

In a unanimous ruling, SCOTUS says that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and therefore the challenge is thrown out and the pill remains legal:

“Like an individual, an organization may not establish standing simply based on the ‘intensity of the litigant’s interest’ or because of strong opposition to the government’s conduct,” wrote Kavanaugh. “The plaintiff associations therefore cannot establish standing simply because they object to FDA’s actions.”

That’s because the plaintiffs had no personal stake:

“The plaintiffs do not allege the kinds of injuries described above that unregulated parties sometimes can assert to demonstrate causation. Because the plaintiffs do not prescribe, manufacture, sell, or advertise mifepristone or sponsor a competing drug, the plaintiffs suffer no direct monetary injuries from FDA’s actions relaxing regulation of mifepristone. Nor do they suffer injuries to their property, or to the value of their property, from FDA’s actions. Because the plaintiffs do not use mifepristone, they obviously can suffer no physical injuries from FDA’s actions relaxing regulation of mifepristone.”

Did you realize that inflation was “functionally over”?

The New Neo Posted on by

Saith the experts.

[Hat tip: Althouse.]

From Zachary D. Carter at Slate:

Something is wrecking Joe Biden, but it isn’t the economy—at least the economy that economists know how to measure—and it isn’t inflation.

There’s a lot in that sentence. Does it assume that only one thing is the problem for Joe? Does it assume it’s a hard-to-perceive mystery? Does it assume that what economists measure is all there is to know about how a voter perceives the economy and how it affects him or her? Does it assume that economists’ measurements are unbiased?

And how do economists measure inflation? We get a hint in the next paragraph [emphasis mine]:

None of this has prevented Biden’s critics from declaring him an economic failure. They have instead shifted the goalposts. The warning cry of the early Biden years was “stagflation“—the simultaneous deluge of high unemployment and high inflation that defined the 1970s. … But that corner seemed to slip farther and farther away as unemployment remained stubbornly low and economic growth stubbornly high, so negative commentary began to focus exclusively on inflation. This remained a popular approach until inflation, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. According to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, prices rose just 2.7 percent between April of 2023 and April of 2024. Two-point-seven is higher than zero, but price changes at this pace are simply not perceptible to anyone except economists.

That paragraph emphasizes the idea that whatever criticism there is of the economy under Biden is some sort of artifact created by his critics, rather than a reality that people perceive all by themselves. It ignores the fact that unemployment figures are not necessarily a measure of actual unemployment (see this, for example, which although written in 2022 explains the principle). But even more importantly, I think, is the odd fact that it doesn’t credit the consumer for being able to think longer than the last year when evaluating inflation.

When I go to the grocery store and my grocery bill seems to be at least 30% higher than it was in 2020, I don’t get the warm fuzzies and tell myself that at least it hasn’t risen in the last year, or at least not all that much – although I beg to differ with the author of that piece, because 2.7% is perceptible to those on a tight budget.

But the last year isn’t the point. If what I used to pay for a bag of groceries during the Trump administration was pretty stable at $65, let’s say, and that same bag costs me a bit more than $100 now, I sure do notice. As for the 2.7% increase, in the last year, not only is it on top of the earlier bigger jumps, but 2.7% of $100 every week adds up to about $10.80 per month or about $130 a year. That’s not nothing to those who live paycheck to paycheck.

And people with families pay much more than $100 a week on groceries. This article from a year ago estimates the typical family of four should spend between $975 a month (if being very “thrifty”) to $1580 (if being economically “liberal”), with two levels in between. At a 2.7% rise for the year, that comes out to about $315 more per year even for the most “thrifty” among us. For people on a tight budget, that’s quite noticeable, and of course it’s on top of much higher rises – the same article mentions an 11.9% rise from 2021 to 2022.

There’s also this recent article:

In a recent interview, President Biden was told that food prices are up over 30% on his watch. But he casually dismissed this fact, claiming people have money to pay those elevated prices. …

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average weekly paychecks have increased about $150 under Mr. Biden, or 14.1% in roughly three years. Normally, that would be cause for celebration, but not in the inflationary environment of “Bidenomics.”

Because prices have risen an average of 19.3% during Mr. Biden’s tenure, the average real, or inflation-adjusted, weekly paycheck has shrunk by about $50, or 4.4%. Today’s larger paychecks buy less, and consumers are being squeezed by higher prices everywhere.

This drop in purchasing power has many families relying on credit cards to make ends meet, pushing outstanding balances up to $1.1 trillion, even while the interest rate on that debt is at a record high.

Some of us haven’t gotten raises, either. Some of us are on fixed incomes, or are unemployed (for the latter, more than the statistics show).

Not only that, but grocery shopping is something we all do on a regular basis. We know how much our groceries used to cost on average. We know how much the prices have risen. And groceries are, of course, only one type of expense, although a very in-your-face one.

But back to the original article by Zachary Carter. This paragraph is unintentionally humorous:

With inflation functionally over, the search has now shifted to some other kind of price metric that can explain Biden’s terrible polling. The Washington Post editorial board hypothesizes that the country is experiencing “an inflation hangover,” feeling squeamish about higher price levels even though prices are no longer increasing at a meaningful rate.

Got it? Inflation is functionally over, meaning the thing that economists measure isn’t very high any more. But people at the checkout counter aren’t measuring the thing that economists measure, at least not in the timeframe that the economists measure it. We ask ourselves the old question “are you better off now or four years ago?” And in real life, which is where most of us live, “higher price levels” are indeed more important that the current rate of increase. Not only that, but what an economist considers a “meaningful rate” may not be the same as what the poor shmo in the grocery store, wondering whether to buy a piece of meat, considers a meaningful rate.

The writer goes on and on about various metrics, but still seems very puzzled as to why Biden is polling so badly. Now, to a hammer everything looks like a nail, and Zachary Carter seems to be an economics writer, but are Biden’s bad numbers in the polls really such a mystery? I think it’s more of a mystery why he’s still doing relatively well, but I chalk that up to Trump Derangement Syndrome on the part of so many voters.

Hunter relied on Biden privilege

The New Neo Posted on by

Jonathan Turley writes about Hunter Biden:

For Hunter Biden, though, this was the first time he’s ever been held accountable for any criminal conduct …

True; but let’s wait for the sentencing. I continue to think he’ll get just a wrist slap. Turley thinks otherwise, though:

The problem now is that this all played out in front of the judge who will now sentence Hunter.

Noreika witnessed the attempt to secure the sweetheart deal and then the disaster in open court.

She watched as a defendant not only refused to admit guilt, but decided to put on an obvious jury nullification defense.

That history could weigh in favor of a short jail stint for Hunter, a risk that would have been effectively eliminated by a guilty plea.

To me the most interesting thing about the risk-taking both Hunter and his attorneys took in forcing this trial was that they all seem to have fully expected an acquittal despite the incredibly strong nature of the incriminating evidence. Not just Hunter, but many members of the family have been getting away with cons and scams and skims for a long time, and they feel protected as quasi-royalty.

Miranda Devine writes at greater length on the same subject:

In the end, Hunter Biden and his army of pricey lawyers got tripped up by their own arrogance and overconfidence.

In Joe Biden’s home state, where the Biden name is feared and the Biden family has been royalty for 50 years, a jury of 12 ordinary Delawareans sitting in a courthouse in Wilmington judged the evidence honestly, ignored the intimidating presence of the first lady and found the president’s son guilty on all three felony gun charges.

For once, a Biden has been held accountable, although the gun charges were the least serious of the crimes considered by investigators in the troubled five-year financial probe of Hunter in Delaware.

The first son now faces a felony tax fraud trial in California in September but even there, the charges just skim the surface of the evidence and the links to Joe Biden’s corruption that investigators were blocked from pursuing. …

Hunter, 54, assumed his father’s power would protect him, as it has all his life.

Devine goes into many more details. But the bottom line is that Hunter has been a train wreck, a con man, a drug user, a people user, and a scam artist for much of his life, and his arrogance is phenomenal. He’s also been the son of a senator since he was two years old, and then the son of the vice president and now the son of the president. And the Biden family sticks together.

And Joe said that Hunter is the smartest man he knows.

Hamas: let’s not make a deal

The New Neo Posted on by

I am so weary of starting posts by asking, “Is anyone at all surprised at this?” But – is anyone at all surprised by this?:

An Israeli official says that Jerusalem has received Hamas’s response to the hostage release and ceasefire deal offer presented by US President Joe Biden late last month, and that the reply from the terror group effectively rejects the proposal. …

The official adds that Hamas has changed the main parameters of the proposal.

The statement comes after Hamas announced that it had submitted a response to Qatari and Egyptian mediators expressing “readiness to positively” come to a deal in the ongoing war in Gaza, sparked by the terror group’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel.

The Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad response to Israel’s latest hostage-ceasefire proposal reportedly includes amendments to the offer, including a new timeline for the hostage release and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

The entire attempt to negotiate with Hamas is a bleak and completely unfunny joke. Hamas, unlike most parties to a war, is not only completely unconcerned with how many non-fighters it loses, it actively wants to lose civilians (or what passes for civilians in Gaza) in order to win the propaganda war.

And in the propaganda war, Hamas is doing very well indeed. The only reason it’s doing well in that latter war is that much of the world swallows its lies. In addition (as I’ve also said many times), the Hamas leaders are not dumb. They took all the hostages in the first place because they knew it would force Israel – and the Biden administration – to negotiate no matter what was happening in the larger war and how badly Hamas might be doing.

Speaking of the Biden administration – why is the US a party to these negotiations? And not just a party, but apparently leading the way? That’s somewhat of a rhetorical question; I’m aware that the administration would like to control Israel and force it into a ceasefire.

And could it be that Blinken is really just this stupid?

You get to a point where you have to question whether Hamas is proceeding in good faith? How about: right from the beginning you know they’re not proceeding in good faith, not even close? Hamas is a terror group dedicated to Israel’s destruction, not to mention the destruction of Jews and the West. They are toying with you. They are laughing at you.

This is a charade, and not just because Hamas keeps refusing these deals. It is also ludicrous because the deals themselves are incredibly favorable to Hamas.

NOTE: And recall that Sinwar, the current head of Hamas, was released from an Israeli prison as part of the deal for a single hostage, Gilad Shalit:

Five years and four months after Shalit was captured by Palestinian militants in southern Israel, a deal was reached between Israel and Hamas to release Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners. The deal was brokered by German and Egyptian mediators and signed in Egypt on 11 October 2011.

Some of our new arrivals coming across the southern border may have been planning an attack

The New Neo Posted on by

Fancy that. Is anyone at all surprised? Even a smidgen?

I doubt it.

See this:

Eight people with suspected ties to the Islamic State have been detained in the U.S., according to several media reports.

The arrests took place in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and the individuals entered the country through the southern border, anonymous sources told The Associated Press. They had been vetted by law enforcement upon their entry, sources said, and there was no indication of their ties to the Islamic State at the time.

You mean they weren’t carrying their ISIS IDs? Odd.

More:

Their connection to the Islamic State group is not immediately clear, but the individuals were being tracked by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was working with the JTTF and made the arrests, It’s now working to remove them from the country, per the sources.

I’m surprised that the Terrorism Task Force took a break from tracking conservative parents at school board meetings, old-fashioned Catholics, and anyone who ever doubted the 2020 election results, and paid some attention to these guys.

On the other hand, I have become so suspicious of the FBI that I wonder whether this is a case of entrapment. I don’t actually think so, but it is theoretically possible, because the administration might want us to think the FBI is more on the ball concerning actual terrorists in this country than it is. Again, I doubt it, because this story reflects poorly on the administration’s border policies, and that wouldn’t be desirable prior to an election.

More:

The individuals were from Tajikistan and passed through the U.S. government’s screening process after entering the country last spring, the AP reported. …

The individuals crossed the border without proper documents and were released into the U.S. with notices to appear in immigration court. Law enforcement later became concerned with their presence and took action.

They had no documents. As Ace points out, professional smugglers at the southern border regularly advise people to burn their passports to avoid proper vetting, knowing that they’ll be let in. As these guys were. Nice going!

More:

They are in detention and face deportation proceedings now, but an official told CBS that it’s difficult to deport people to Tajikistan due to operational and diplomatic reasons.

How nice.

The article goes on to say that the FBI is aware of heightened terror threats especially since October 7. Actually, I think we’re all aware.

More:

Part of the investigation featured a wiretap which revealed one of the now-arrested individuals was talking about bombs, the sources said.

The concern involved an ISIS offshoot called ISIS-K, which stands for Islamic State Khorasan:

The bureau had been investigating whether dozens of migrants from Uzbekistan crossed the US-Mexico border with the help of a Turkish smuggler tied to ISIS, CNN reported last August. …

With migration continuing at unprecedented levels, federal authorities have already accidentally released migrants into the country who have suspected or known terror ties.

The article goes on to describe how weak Biden’s new order regarding the border is. The entire thing seems quite out of control and has been for a long long time.

The Biden administration and Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been clear for quite some time that the Biden administration is trying to stab Israel in the back. Yesterday this happened at the UN:

The United Nations Security Council on Monday adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution aimed at reaching a three-phase ceasefire deal to end the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

The resolution was passed by 14 of the 15 permanent Security Council members, with Russia abstaining. Moscow claimed that the parameters of the deal the resolution endorses had not been sufficiently clarified.

Note that this was generated by the US.

More:

Phase one of the proposed ceasefire deal includes “an immediate, full and complete ceasefire” coupled with the release of an unspecified number of hostages—both living and dead—in exchange for the release of an unspecified number of Palestinian security prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from “populated areas” of Gaza, the return of Gaza civilians to their homes throughout the Strip and the scaling up of aid delivery.

Phase two, which would be negotiated between the parties during the first phase, comprises “a permanent end to hostilities” in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages and full withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza.

What are they smoking? Of course, this is unenforceable, but it represents the administration’s application of pressure and a public notice that it’s going full steam ahead in this direction in terms of policy for the Israel/Hamas war.

The wording of the resolution calls into question whether Israel would retain operational freedom in Gaza to fully remove Hamas from power, though it “stresses the importance” of the Palestinian Authority returning to power in Gaza.

The Israeli government rejects both P.A. governance of the Strip and leaving Hamas in power.

The PA is Hamas with a slightly prettier public face.

Let’s see, what else is the Biden administration doing? Oh, there’s this about Iran [emphasis mine]:

Why is President Biden still treating Iran as if it were our friend or ally? His actions — such as honoring Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s deceased president, lobbying our European allies not to censure Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s meeting, and ignoring Iran’s steady march to nuclear weapons — make no sense.

Oh, they make plenty of sense if you think of the Biden administration as a continuation of the Obama administration, which cast its lot with Iran and dissed Israel and Netanyahu.

Speaking of Netanyahu, the Biden administration is strongly behind Gantz’s efforts against his rival Netanyahu’s tenure:

What precipitated Gantz’s departure? Are new elections upon us? How will his decision affect the trajectory of the war?

Two forces are responsible for Gantz’s move: the Biden administration and the far-left, anti-government political campaigners popularly known as the Kaplan force. Gantz joined the government in response to U.S. pressure and a call from the far left to undermine the government from within. He is leaving due to pressure from both.

As Politico reported on Thursday, Biden’s main focus these days is to end the war as quickly as possible. To achieve this goal, he is applying pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to capitulate to Hamas’s demands for a permanent ceasefire.

“The president and his aides are working to make sure Netanyahu is feeling the squeeze from all sides,” the magazine reported.

The report explained that Biden and his team are working not only with international actors but with “Israeli citizens and Netanyahu’s political allies and foes alike.”

I shudder to think what will happen – to the US and the world – if Biden gets a second term. It boggles my mind that more people don’t appreciate the danger.

Hunter Biden guilty verdict

The New Neo Posted on by

Apparently the evidence of guilt was overwhelming, because even the Delaware jury has returned guilty verdicts, and it didn’t take long.

On the other hand, I doubt he’ll get much of a sentence – maybe suspended, plus a fine? That would close the books and establish the argument that justice has been served and is even-handed. Of course – as opposed to Trump in NY – Hunter was charged for an actual crime and was almost certainly guilty; his defense arguments were so weak as to be almost ludicrous.

The charges against Hunter in this trial were personal to him and did not involve his father or his uncle, unlike other charges that might have been brought against Hunter – for example, FARA violations – that might have exposed his powerful relatives. I’ll start taking more of an interest if charges of that nature are ever brought. But I think I’m fairly safe in predicting that won’t be happening.