Dobbs is issued, and Roe and Casey are overturned

The New Neo Posted on by

In a vote that was telegraphed in advance by the unusual leak, SCOTUS has overruled Roe and Casey, thus ending federal control over the states’ ability to set their own abortion laws.

My original prediction for Dobbs prior to the leak (and I don’t have time to locate it right now) was that Roberts would opt for a narrow ruling that upheld the Mississippi state law involved but left Roe and Casey for another day, and that one or two of the other conservative justices might agree with him and thus the can would be kicked down the road. That didn’t happen. The other conservative justices held firm against the precedents of Roe and Casey, and Roberts himself did exactly as predicted (although he reluctantly concurred with the majority), and therefore the Mississippi law was upheld 6-3 and Roe and Casey have been overturned.

As for the liberal justices, they voted exactly as expected.

There is little doubt in my mind that Roe and Casey were terrible decisions in the legal sense. It used to be that even many legal scholars on the left acknowledged that even if they approved of the result. But after Roe’s having been in place for nearly fifty years, several generations have grown up assuming it will continue to be the law. To me, the legal arguments against Roe and Casey are exceptionally strong, but the political repercussions are potentially as bad as the ruling itself was. It really depends on the reaction of the left – which at the moment is of course fury – and what that might lead to.

AOC has predictably said this:

Speaking outside the Supreme Court, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told protesters that “right now, elections are not enough” to reclaim abortion rights in America “we have to fill the streets.”

Insurrection, anyone? Will AOC be impeached for this? No, of course not. It’s particularly horrendous that she’s saying those words in light of the recent arrest of a man planning to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh, but hey, rabble-rousers gotta rabble-rouse. The real question is whether the protests will amount to anything, and what effect the Dobbs ruling will have on the vote in November.

What will different states end up doing about abortion, now that they are able to enact whatever abortion laws they wish, from strict to permissive? Blue states can continue to have abortion on demand, so most Democratic voters won’t find that this limits abortion in their states at all. Red states can do what they want, which will be varying degrees of prohibition that remain to be seen. More moderate states will almost certainly be in the middle. This is where we would have been, I think, without the fifty years of turmoil that Roe engendered. But now turmoil seems to be rampant in the US, and not just about abortion.

One fear I have, as an older person, is that illegal abortion will take the place of legal abortion and the results will be quite a few deaths of pregnant women. Those who believe that every abortion is murder probably will say it’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make to preserve the lives of so many unborn. I’ve written a great deal on abortion, and I refer you to this list if you want to learn them, with a more personal story here.

My hope – although I think it’s a vain one – is that this ruling will cause a lot more people to use birth control more assiduously. That wouldn’t eliminate unwanted pregnancies, but it would help reduce them. If abortion isn’t such an easily available backup, logic would dictate that might happen – but sex is an area where logic so often falters.

As for the decision itself, I haven’t read the whole thing, just short parts of it. Here are some excerpts:

…[I]n 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113. Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one. It did not claim that American law or the common law had ever recognized such a right, and its survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant (e.g., its discussion of abortion in antiquity) to the plainly incorrect (e.g., its assertion that abortion was probably never a crime under the common law). After cataloging a wealth of other information having no bearing on the meaning of the Constitution, the opinion concluded with a numbered set of rules much like those that might be found in a statute enacted by a legislature…

…Roe…It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation, and it effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State.

Justice Byron White aptly put it in his dissent, the decision represented the “exercise of raw judicial power,” and it sparked a national controversy that has embittered our political culture for a half century.

Eventually, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), the Court revisited Roe, but the Members of the Court split three ways…

Paradoxically, the judgment in Casey did a fair amount of overruling. Several important abortion decisions were overruled in toto, and Roe itself was overruled in part. Casey threw out Roe’s trimester scheme and substituted a new rule of uncertain origin under which States were forbidden to adopt any regulation that imposed an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to have an abortion. The decision provided no clear guidance about the difference between a “due” and an “undue” burden. But the three Justices who authored the controlling opinion “call[ed] the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division” by treating the Court’s decision as the final settlement of the question of the constitutional right to abortion.

As has become increasingly apparent in the intervening years, Casey did not achieve that goal. Americans continue to hold passionate and widely divergent views on abortion, and state legislatures have acted accordingly…

We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely–the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but
any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

The right to abortion does not fall within this category.

Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law…

Stare decisis, the doctrine on which Casey’s controlling opinion was based, does not compel unending adherence to Roe’s abuse of judicial authority. Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.

And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.

How many people even understand that’s what Dobbs now does – “returns the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives”? I would guess a lot of people think that Dobbs bans abortion, which it does not. The important issue of who decides – the federal judiciary or the state legislatures – which is the heart of Dobbs, is probably of little importance to a great many people, who want what they want.

[NOTE: Trump’s SCOTUS appointments led directly to Dobbs, as many have pointed out. But another important player was McConnell – whom many conservatives nevertheless detest – because he agreed to block Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to SCOTUS.]

Open thread 6/24/22

The New Neo Posted on by

This is Violette Verdy, in a short excerpt from her role as the girl in green in Jerome Robbins’ brilliant 1969 “Dances At a Gathering.” She was the role’s originator and the most musical dancer I’ve ever seen, with exquisite timing and expression. I saw her dance this role many times and it was always a wondrous experience. Video can’t capture it, but nothing could and I’m glad we have this to give at least a faint suggestion of her unique artistry:

That was Violette Verdy. This is not – although it’s a valiant effort by Aurelie Dupont. In the manner of later dancers, she is slower and much more tense than the joyous and relaxed Verdy, too:

Looking at Uvalde from another perspective

The New Neo Posted on by

At first the Uvalde school shooting riveted everyone’s attention because of its horror and tragedy. The murder of innocent and beloved children and their teachers is a nightmare that engenders deep feelings of rage and grief. At first, the stories focused on the victims and the perpetrator, and also some descriptions by survivors.

But after a while people realized that the perpetrator will always remain opaque, as psychopaths so often do. What drove an 18-year-old to end his life through an act of obscene cruelty? We’ll never know. The grandmother he shot in the face and left for dead has surprisingly survived, minus her jaw. His family will live with the mystery and the horror forever, but they have faded into obscurity once more. The children he killed will always be mourned by their families and friends, and the survivors will bear the physical and emotional scars.

But the world has moved on, as the world does. Now we’re confronting what might be done to improve school security, and the hearing in Texas this past Tuesday that featured Texas Department of Public Safety head Steve McCraw had lengthy discussions on that issue. But the focus for most people listening to the hearing was when he finally gave an updated timeline and facts.

In particular, people wanted to know about the police response. Ever since just a few days after the shooting, when it began to emerge that the police got to the school quickly but acted with agonizing slowness and delay, a great deal of rage has been directed in their direction and in particular towards the person who was ostensibly in charge but seemed to not have a clue what should be done, school police chief Arredondo.

I set out to watch McCraw’s entire testimony, which lasted about four and a half hours. I took notes the entire time and listened very carefully, sometimes playing certain sections several times. About a third of the way into it, I was struck with the thought that I was watching something that was teaching me much more than facts about the shooting. That “something” concerned the ways in which people take in information, communicate that information, understand or don’t understand each other, and act on their perceptions in terms of behavior and also in terms of their judgments of the behavior of others.

It’s something we do every day and every time we interact with another person. We’ve done it all our lives. Sometimes, when people make errors in perception or judgment or behavior, it doesn’t matter much. Sometimes it causes small misunderstandings and mistakes; sometimes it causes large ones. Sometimes it even causes fatal ones.

People whose job it is to investigate accidents are well aware of that. Sometimes they discover that an instrument was read wrong. Sometimes a word was misheard. Sometimes a person is tired and loses alertness (I once fell asleep for a split second while driving on three hours of sleep, and almost veered into oncoming traffic when something – I don’t know what – jerked me awake).

Fortunately, though, most of the time our errors have few or no important consequences – although some misunderstandings and miscommunications can end a friendship, or a marriage, or estrange a relative. But that’s part of being human.

Here’s a story. When I was about five years old, my older brother and I used to attend Sunday School classes from 9 AM to noon. My mother would pick us up then and take us home, about a three- or four-mile drive. But one Sunday she didn’t come.

I couldn’t figure out why. I watched all the other kids leave, and I think even a teacher or two asked me if I was all right and I said I was fine (I hated asking for help). But at a certain point I was left alone, standing there.

Fortunately it was a beautiful day, sunny and just a little warm. Although I was only five, I knew the way home – after all, we drove it Sunday after Sunday.

And so I started out for my house on foot. I had a choice of one of two ways to go. The shorter way was through the park and the longer way would take me around it (in those days each route was fairly safe). I chose the longer way because I would be passing the apartment building where my aunt, uncle, and cousin lived, and I decided to stop there and see if they were home, because I figured if they were then they could drive me to my house. I was starting to get a bit tired.

It was a good idea in theory. But they weren’t in their apartment; I rang and rang the bell but no answer. At that point it would have made my trip even longer to have backtracked and gone through the park, so I continued onward. It was a long walk, and as it got hotter I took off my outer sweater and carried it; for some reason I remember that in particular. The last stretch was uphill and I was dragging a bit more. But then I got to my block, and then my house.

The front door was open, and I stepped in. I saw my mother in the living room, sitting on a couch and chatting on the phone. She looked at me, open-mouthed with surprise, and I said something nasty to her and then turned on my heel and went upstairs to my room. I was really, really angry, because the only explanation in my head the entire time had been that she had simply forgotten me.

But then she told me her story. At about ten o’clock, my brother had called her from the school phone and said something like “We’re being let out early and I’m going to Jimmy’s house.” Jimmy was his friend. My mother thought that the “we” was my brother and me, but he actually meant that the other person in the “we” was Jimmy. My brother never for a moment thought my mother would misunderstand and think that he and I were the ones going over to Jimmy’s house. And my mother never thought that he didn’t mean me, so she never thought to ask him what he meant.

They both thought everything they said was clear. But when my brother phoned her to be picked up later on at Jimmy’s house, which happened at about 12:30, and she arrived there, she was stunned to learn I wasn’t at Jimmy’s, too. Stunned and very very upset.

Meanwhile, I was oblivious to all that, and plodding home, with my short cotton socks sinking down at the heels and forcing me to tug them up every block or so.

My mother took my brother in the car and they went to look for me. I wasn’t at the school anymore when they got there, of course; no one was. Again, my mother – and my brother – made an assumption at that point. Their assumption was that I would of course take the route we always took, the short one through the pretty park with the water feature and the birds. It never occurred to them that I wouldn’t do that, because they simply didn’t think that I’d stop at my uncle’s instead. I guess they thought of me as a creature of habit, unable to come up with a more creative solution to my problem; after all, I was only five. But when they drove the park route (several times, I think) I was nowhere to be found.

And so they went back to our house. My mother was extremely upset. My father wasn’t home. Did she call the police at that point? I can’t remember. But when I entered the house she was certainly calling someone (no cell phones back then, of course). She was flabbergasted and delighted to see me trudge in, my sweater dragging too. And I was absolutely enraged at her, till she told me the story of what had really happened. Even then, I couldn’t understand for a long time how my brother and mother had misunderstood each other so badly, and it bugged me that it ended up affecting me. It also seemed strange to me that all this drama had occurred completely outside my awareness. For me, the drama was at the beginning; the rest had just been tedious.

That’s a story with a completely happy ending. No one was hurt. My mother wasn’t guilty of neglect. I was forgiven for being angry. My brother was – my brother. But it planted seeds of knowledge within me about how easily communications can go astray, and it certainly wasn’t the only time that happened in my life.

On Tuesday, when I watched McCraw’s presentation, and then listened to the question-and-answer period as well, I was struck over and over with the ways in which people misunderstand each other despite making enormous efforts at being clear. It was a demonstration of one of my favorite quotes, from Karl Popper:

Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

And combine that with Donald Rumsfeld’s:

…[A]s we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

It’s usually those last ones that get you.

But police responding to a school shooter call don’t have the luxury of misunderstanding, or of having a lot of unknown unknowns. We demand perfection or near-perfection of them – or at least competence in often-chaotic situations – for a reason, which is that the stakes are extremely high. They are required to understand others clearly and to be understood clearly by others as well, and it is necessary for them not to assume that they know things they don’t know and to ask the right questions of dispatch, and all this must happen very rapidly in tense situations.

We also require courage of police – courage of a degree we don’t all have. I certainly don’t think I have the requisite courage; but then, I’m not a police officer. “It’s what they signed on for,” we say. So it probably is the case that even though we have almost no tolerance in police for error and/or stupidity or misunderstandings that can prove dangerous or fatal, we probably have even less patience for demonstrations of cowardice.

All of those are issues relevant to the perceptions and behavior of the police in Uvalde that day, and to our own perceptions of the meaning of the information we read and hear about that behavior. This was on full display in McCraw’s testimony as well as in the questions of the Texas senators. There were a number of communication breakdowns, as well as unknown-unknowns, even in the interactions between McCraw and the senators there, and I’m virtually certain that a lot of viewers will have trouble agreeing on what was said and in particular what it means.

So here I am again, writing a post with general reflections rather than going into the nitty-gritty of McCraw’s testimony. But for me this is a very big topic with many parts, so I felt the need to write this first. I definitely plan to go into much detail on specifics in subsequent posts – probably exhaustive detail.

SCOTUS speaks: a 2nd Amendment victory

The New Neo Posted on by

No wonder the left is so enraged at SCOTUS.

Today’s big big SCOTUS news is on gun rights. You can read about the Court’s 6-3 ruling here as well as here. The gist of it is that New York has had a law that requires a person requesting a concealed carry permit to demonstrate a special need for self-defense, and the state has been stingy in granting such requests, and the law has been ruled unconstitutional as violating the 2nd Amendment.

From the decision authored by Clarence Thomas:

In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742 (2010), we recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense. We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.

The parties nevertheless dispute whether New York’s licensing regime respects the constitutional right to carry handguns publicly for self-defense. In 43 States, the government issues licenses to carry based on objective criteria. But in six States, including New York, the government further conditions issuance of a license to carry on a citizen’s showing of some additional special need. Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution.

As expected, many gun control advocates have gone full insurrection over this. From Keith Olbermann, that noted Constitutional scholar:

This is an important ruling. I’m convinced that if the conservative/liberal breakdown of the Court had been the opposite, the New York law would have been upheld. That’s how political these decisions usually are, especially the big ones. However, there was also an 8-1 ruling in favor of the right, involving voting laws (although the ruling is more about legal procedure than anything else):

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that two Republican legislators in North Carolina can join a lawsuit to defend the constitutionality of the state’s voter-identification law. Two lower courts had rejected the legislators’ request, reasoning that the state’s Democratic attorney general and the board of elections were already defending the law, but the justices reversed those rulings. In an 8-1 opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court ruled that the Republican legislators have a right to intervene in the lawsuit.

Thursday’s decision addressed only the legislators’ right to join the lawsuit to defend the voter-ID law; it did not address the underlying issue of whether the law violates federal voting-rights protections.

Sotomayor was the only dissenting vote.

And at some point in the not-too-distant future the Court should be issuing an abortion ruling in Dobbs.

Biden polls

The New Neo Posted on by

“Going down?” – as they used to ask in the days when there were real live human elevator operators.

I remember elevator operators. They used to have them in all the big Manhattan flagship department stores. I wonder if they still do. And they had those sliding accordion metal grates, too.

Pleasant digressions aside, here’s a new Biden poll:

President Joe Biden is fast heading into worst-ever territory as people are rejecting his handling of the economy — and him.

In two new polls depressing the White House today, one put his approval rating at a career low of 32%, and another rejected the president’s finger-pointing on the economy.

The latest approval rating hit 32%, with 56% disapproving of the president. Even Democrats are expressing frustration, with their approval rate at a low 69%, according to the data.

It’s always tempting to wonder why Biden’s approval rating is still that high. But I’ve noticed that about a third of the population (and not always the same third) will approve of anything.

And I also note that some of Biden’s disapproval comes from people who think he hasn’t been leftist enough, and also from many who would nevertheless vote for him again if he ran against any Republican and especially Donald Trump.

Colombia chooses the Venezuela/Cuba way

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s been an election in Colombia:

Former rebel Gustavo Petro is set to be Colombia’s first leftist president after voters handed him a slim victory in Sunday’s runoff election against Rodolfo Hernández, a political outsider and populist.

Petro had garnered 50.47% of the votes to Hernandez’s 47.25% on Sunday evening, according to preliminary results released by election authorities.

“Rebel” is a euphemism for guerilla.

Petro, who was jailed in the 1980s for his involvement in the defunct M-19 movement, promised a suite of economic reforms during his campaign, including higher taxes, more government spending, and changes to the country’s pension system.

While voters elected Petro on his progressive platform, he will have trouble delivering on his promises due to Colombia’s fragmented Congress.

Colombia is hardly alone in its veer to the left:

Argentina-based analyst Agustin Antonetti of the Fundación Libertad told Fox News Digital: “The triumph of Gustavo Petro is the missing piece, perhaps the most worrying, of this new reconfiguration in Latin America, leaning towards a new wave of leftist governments.”

Antonetti continued, “A region that is in alarming political and economic decline, in a complex global context, with three terrible dictatorships (Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua) that seem more alive than ever and surrounded by a large number of populist leaders, now in power, who they endorse them and are ready for anything. The big question is: Will the institutions in Latin America resist this new wave of governments in a clear rise of authoritarianism?”

I assume that “the institutions” include the military of each country?

More:

Isaias Medina, a former high-ranking Venezuelan diplomat at the United Nations who was one of the first Venezuela diplomats to resign in protest over the Maduro regime, said the U.S. needs to pay attention saying that Maduro and his acolytes were, “tightening the noose around democracy’s neck in Latin America.”

Medina told Fox News Digital, “The American beacon of light and freedom must shine brighter.”

Oh my. That light seems pretty dim right now in the US.

And of course freedom (I much prefer the term “liberty”) and democracy don’t always mesh. Democracy means that people can vote themselves right smack into tyranny – it’s not even all that unusual, especially in Latin America. That’s one of the reasons the Founders in the US designed this country as a republic rather than a democracy, in order to give an extra layer of protection. It’s not perfect protection – where there’s a will to tyranny, there’s a way.

Overview on yesterday’s Uvalde testimony from McCraw

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night I watched the entirety of Texas DPS head Steve McCraw’s testimony in front of the Texas Senate, including the question-and-answer period. It’s a lot to digest; something like four and a half hours. I could probably write a post on the subject that would take you about that long to read – but never fear, I won’t be doing that. However, that’s how much I could say about it.

But I’ll try to touch on some of what I consider the more important points. This post is just an overview; I plan at least one more post on the subject of his testimony, with more details. Here are some of my general observations:

(1) It’s not easy to present with clarity the huge accumulation of information of the type that McCraw was trying to convey. There’s (a) the information itself and how it was gathered. Then there’s (b) the interpretation of what some of the ambiguous pieces of information (and there were quite a few) might mean. And then there’s (c) the evaluation of the whole, including what the presentation indicates about the people involved and even what might have been going on in their minds to explain their behavior.

I wish McCraw had been clearer in separating out those three elements.

As for (c), one of my major objections until now has been so many people feeling sure they can figure that out and that it’s obvious (for example, “they’re cowards just trying to protect their own butts and not caring about kids”) before they ever got much clarity on (a) and (b) from official sources such as video. Because of McCraw’s testimony yesterday, we now have some additional (although not perfect or complete) clarity on (a) and (b), and yet people will continue to differ on their conclusions about (c). But one thing I think we all can agree on is that the police response was chaotic, disorganized, and ineffective. Some will go much further in condemning the police, but those three things have been clear almost from the start to just about everyone, and they remain clear.

Also regarding (c), commenter “Owen” muses, after having watched 20 minutes of McCraw’s appearance: “It leaves me wondering if there is any difference between gross incompetence and simple cowardice.”

I think there’s a huge difference. However, their terrible effects may be the same. It’s not always easy to tell the difference between the two characteristics, either, because both incompetence and cowardice are interpretations of the facts. Both rely on an understanding of people’s perceptions and emotions and how they affect behavior. That’s difficult to evaluate; we often don’t even know that about ourselves, much less about other people. So interpretations will differ, given the same facts. And it would help to hear more from the people we’re trying to evaluate, although of course sometimes they will lie about their own motives.

(2) I already knew this, but putting together an investigation like this is incredibly time-consuming and complex, yet necessary. This one isn’t finished yet.

(3) McCraw’s presentation yesterday was based on two things: video evidence (from a combination of surveillance videos and police bodycams) and audio records (for example, 911 calls as well as cellphone calls, including some from the school police chief Arredondo to headquarters). We didn’t hear the audio or see any of the video itself, however, which is too bad – especially for the video. We were relying on the investigators’ interpretations, but I’d also like to see for myself whenever possible.

However, information from eyewitness interviews was not included yesterday. In fact, McCraw said he had taken out some information on the previous timeline that had been based on witness descriptions. So, unfortunately, our picture is not as complete as it could have been, even at this point, had eyewitness information been included. Witness statements could have supplemented the video and audio evidence and helped us better understand what was happening, but I suppose that for legal and time constraint reasons they were eliminated. I assume they will be incorporated into the final report.

I had read an article in a Houston paper in early June that said that the Robb Elementary hallway video was of poor quality and had to be enhanced by the FBI. That turns out to be true; according to McCraw’s testimony, the video was taken with a fisheye lens at one end of the hall and the view was very distorted. I’d be curious to know more about that process of enhancement, but at any rate according to McCraw it worked rather well in terms of the videos becoming clearer. However, as McCraw also said, the view further down the hall – where classroom doors 111 and 112 were located – makes it a bit hard to see certain things unequivocally. For example, McCraw mentioned that when the shooter first arrived in the hallway to the front of those doors and shot towards them, you can’t see which classroom he’s shooting into.

(4) Having watched McCraw’s entire presentation carefully and taken notes the entire time, I found certain discrepancies. Some probably don’t matter much – for example, several times he misstates some times in the timelines and says “11” when he means “12.” I had noticed he did the same thing during his press conference on May 27, and it alerted me to the fact that I had to listen very carefully for confusion of that sort. There were other problems, though – which is not surprising in a presentation this long and full of detail. I’ll be saying more about them in another post, hopefully today but maybe tomorrow. But in general they had to do with two things. The first was McCraw’s subtly contradicting himself a couple of times, in certain details, while trying to explain something complex very clearly (for example the locks on the classroom doors). The second was senators occasionally asking questions framed in a way that shows that the senator had misunderstood some part of McCraw’s presentation (sometimes an important part), and McCraw not correcting (or perhaps not noticing?) the misunderstanding. I plan to give at least one example of this happening.

We finally get lots of detail on Uvalde, and what it says about the police reaction – and the general preparedness of the school – is terrible

The New Neo Posted on by

In Uvalde, as more information has come out, it has looked worse and worse for the police. But until now I have refused to come to any conclusions about guilt and responsibility except to say that, from the start, when we first heard some of the details of the attack, the police response appears to have been disorganized and unprepared, and perhaps a lot worse than that. But in any such situation (or really, any situation at all), I want to know who is giving out the evidence we learn, whether it’s authentic, and I’d even like to hear any defense the accused might offer and see whether it makes any sense at all. Until then my preference is to hold back, which is not the same as saying that the accused person or people are innocent.

Well, today Texas DPS head Steve McCraw has testified at length before the Texas Senate, finally giving us a great many official details. I’ve been very busy earlier today (and will be busy for a few more hours) and unfortunately haven’t yet had time to watch his lengthy and important testimony, but I certainly plan to do so. Perhaps I’ll have another post tonight based on that, or perhaps tomorrow.

However, a preliminary look at just a couple of minutes (I watched him describe some details about the doors and the locks or lack thereof), and the content of a few very quick summaries, indicates extremely serious problems and failures, not only with the police response – although failure of the police response (and particularly that of Arredondo, who appears to have been in way over his head) is certainly a very important part of it – but with the entire structure of the school and its lockdown preparedness.

Simply put – it was terrible. I have always said I would be more than willing to acknowledge that, if and when we got some evidence of it that was comprehensive and well-sourced. Well, today we appear to have gotten just that sort of evidence.

I plan to write much more about this, but only after I’ve watched much more of the testimony, which I still need to do. If anyone knows where I can find a transcript, which would make my task a lot easier and quicker, please put a link in the comments.

Parliamentary stirrings in two countries: France and Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

The first is France:

The left won a lot more seats. A new party, or really a new party coalition called “Nupes,” united the Socialists, Communists, hard left and greens, won somewhere between 149-200 seats, which is a lot more than the 60 seats the left held in total before the election.

LePen’s National Rally party previously held only eight seats, but now will hold between 60 and 102.

Macron attacked the left during the parliamentary election season and is unlikely to form a coalition with them. He’s extremely unlikely to form a coalition with LePen’s NR, which leaves only Les Republicains — the traditional center-right party, the party of Sarkozy — as his only dance partner. They will elect between 40 and 80 members of parliament.

Macron will have to strike a deal with LR for their support, moving to the “right” to appease them, maybe even picking a PM from their ranks.

More here:

The strong support for political extremes reflects a frustration with Macron’s leadership that first erupted in 2018 with the yellow vest movement against perceived economic injustice, and has periodically resurfaced among those who see him as too pro-business, arrogant or tone-deaf to everyday concerns.

The strong performance of both Le Pen’s National Rally and Mélenchon’s coalition — composed of his hard-left France Unbowed party as well as the Socialists, Greens and Communists — will make it harder for Macron to implement the agenda he was reelected on in May, including tax cuts and raising France’s retirement age from 62 to 65.

“Macron is a minority president now,” a beaming Le Pen declared Monday in Hénin-Beaumont, her stronghold in northern France. “His retirement reform plan is buried.”

The summary version is that Macron’s bloc and the left united in the presidential elections against Le Pen in order to give Macron victory, but that coalition fell apart when it came to parliamentary elections, to Macron’s detriment.

And then we have Israel, where a fragile coalition government is in big trouble and another parliamentary election looms:

Israel is heading to its fifth election in three and a half years, after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid gave up Monday on their efforts to stabilize the coalition.

In a joint statement, Bennett and Lapid said they would bring a bill to dissolve the Knesset to a vote next Monday. There is a consensus in the coalition and opposition on an October 25 date for the election…

According to the coalition agreement, Lapid will become caretaker prime minister until the election and until the new government takes power. He is set to greet US President Joe Biden when he comes to Israel next month.

The meeting of the lame ducks.

More:

There is still a chance that Netanyahu will succeed in forming an alternate government within the current Knesset. This would happen if members of the coalition, from New Hope and Yamina, switch sides and join Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc.

Netanyahu took credit for the government’s downfall and called it the “worst government in the history of the State of Israel.”

He vowed he would form the next government and that it would be “nationalist and wide.”

Netanyahu the phoenix. The article doesn’t discuss it, but I wonder whether some of this resurgence has to do with the weakness of the evidence against him in a bogus bribery case.

Here’s a memory-refresher on how Bennett and Lapid formed the present government in the first place. It’s not a pretty story:

Once Netanyahu proved unable to form a government [after the election], Lapid cajoled Bennett to desert the right-wing bloc and offered him the seat of prime minister as part of a rotation arrangement. Unable to resist Lapid’s offer, Bennett agreed to become prime minister, despite winning only seven mandates in the previous election…

Bennett [had] repeatedly told voters on national news programs that it would be undemocratic for a Knesset member to become prime minister with less than 10 mandates. Bennett had seven. In a stunt, Bennett [had] also signed a piece of paper that he brought into an Israeli evening news program stating that he would not join any Lapid-led government “with a rotation or without a rotation” because “I am right-wing and [Lapid] is left-wing.” Many right-wing voters supported Bennett on the basis of those broken promises.

Great guys. Interesting times.