The State Of Things

If this gets appealed all the way up to SCOTUS, will the supremes let stand a decision made by a court at the state level? Or will they basically abandon their position of "leaving it up to the states" (as articulated in the Dodd decision), and tell us that the federal level is where it has to be decided?

Alito and his merry band of "conservatives" have painted themselves into an interesting little corner.

(pay wall)

Arizona court halts enforcement of near-total abortion ban

An Arizona appellate court halted enforcement of the state’s near-total abortion ban late Friday, staying a lower court’s decision to reinstate an older law that allows the procedure only if it is needed to save the life of a pregnant person.

The order by the Arizona Court of Appeals followed a challenge by Planned Parenthood Arizona, a reproductive health organization, of a ruling in September by Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson. The stay is in place until the appellate court can hear the appeal. Johnson had lifted a decades-long injunction on the near-total restrictions, which are rooted in an 1864 law that has no exceptions for victims of rape or incest and threatens abortion providers with imprisonment for as long as five years.

Judge Peter J. Eckerstrom, writing for the three-member panel that issued the stay, said the lower court may have erred in resurrecting the Civil War-era law, because it conflicts with more recent laws that provide abortion seekers more leeway. A law that permits abortions for up to 15 weeks took effect last month, putting it in conflict with the 1864 ban. State Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R), who opposes abortion rights and has said he plans to enforce the older law, had urged the courts to provide clarity on the issue.

Johnson, the Pima County judge, had ruled that the older prohibition, which was updated and codified in 1901, supersedes the 15-week ban enacted this year. She said in her order that the state legislature had expressly written the 2022 law so that it did not “repeal” the older ban.

Abortion is now banned in these states. See where laws have changed.

But the three appellate judges said that Planned Parenthood’s attorneys had “demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success” for their legal challenge against the stricter prohibitions.

“Arizona courts have a responsibility to attempt to harmonize all of this state’s relevant statutes,” Eckerstrom wrote in a one-page order, adding that the “acute need of [health care] providers, prosecuting agencies, and the public for legal clarity” had prompted the order.

The stay brings “temporary respite to Arizonans,” said Planned Parenthood Arizona president and chief executive Brittany Fonteno in a statement.

“Planned Parenthood Arizona is committed to defending reproductive freedom for all and continuing this fight until this 150-year-old law is taken off the books for good,” she said.

A Brnovich spokeswoman, Brittni Thomason, said in a statement that his office “understands this is an emotional issue, and we will carefully review the court’s ruling before determining the next step.” A decision by the appeals court on the 19th-century prohibitions could be appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court.

Reproductive rights have been in flux in many states since June, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which established a nationwide right to abortion in 1973. The reversal returned that decision to Congress and the states. It has occasionally resulted in legal chaos. Several states did not update their abortion laws after Roe, meaning conflicting regulations may be on the books.

In Arizona, Brnovich and abortion rights activists both recently called for the state legislature to hold a special session to address the confusion, the Arizona Republic reported.

In Ohio — another state where reproductive rights have been curtailed since the overturning of Roe — a judge on Friday issued a preliminary injunction on a six-week abortion ban while a constitutional challenge is heard, citing individual liberty. The procedure is now permitted up to the 22nd week of a pregnancy.

The Bidening

Biden points out what everybody should know by now.

And it's not like it's going to matter to a buncha dog-ass Republican politicians who wear hypocrisy like a fucking merit badge, but over time, even the most brain-bleached GOP voters will see how their family and their friends and their neighbors are looking at them with increased suspicion and more than a little disgust, and some of them will start to come around. 

At least, that's the hope I have to maintain for the sake of my own sanity - and I think we all know that I can get a little shorthanded in the mental wellness department.

As always: hopeful - not optimistic.

Today's Warning

"The elected autocrat" - the strong man who dismantles democracy from within.

He manipulates public opinion thru mis-information and dis-information by way of various media, and a loose network of hucksters who are also looking to syphon off a little of that money-n-power for themselves.

Once in office, he sets about taking down the process that got him elected, and replacing it with a system that will keep him in power for life - all under the oldest bullshit guise ever, which (no matter the phrasing he comes up with) is always:

I had to destroy democracy

in order to save it.

(pay wall)

Opinion
A Washington foreign policy legend issues a dire warning

America’s role as a promoter of freedom, democracy and universal rights is under unprecedented pressure both at home and abroad. All over the world, autocracy is on the march. The United States’ own democratic credibility is at a historic low. Yet legendary Washington foreign policy practitioner Morton Halperin is still optimistic that democracy can eventually prevail — if we fight for it.

Halperin, who served in senior national security posts under presidents from Lyndon B. Johnson to Barack Obama, retired last month, ending a six-decade career in diplomacy and public service. Now 84, he worked in the Nixon administration under then-national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger, who secretly wiretapped him for 21 months. Halperin once held the No. 8 spot on President Richard M. Nixon’s enemies list. A note next to his name read: “A scandal would be helpful here.”

He oversaw the production of the Pentagon Papers, which documented the coverup of U.S. military failures in the Vietnam War. He literally wrote the book on bureaucratic politics and foreign policy. In between stints in government, Halperin worked for several civil society organizations advocating causes ranging from arms control to civil rights to government accountability. He founded an intergovernmental coalition called the Community of Democracies. His last posting was as a senior adviser to the Open Society Foundations.

Halperin is a proud liberal internationalist who dedicated his life to advancing the cause of democracy and human rights while seeking to prove that the United States could be a force for good in the world. Looking back on that career now, he said what has changed the most is that in the 21st century, the greatest threats to democracies come from within.

“We thought the much greater danger was military coups,” he told me in an interview. “The real danger was the elected autocrat.”

In countries such as Hungary, Turkey and Egypt, he said, we see voters choosing strongmen who dismantle the democratic process and minority rights. Here at home, Donald Trump and his many supporters’ efforts to undermine and overturn free and fair elections, combined with their attacks on minorities, are a worrying escalation of the same trend. Trump and his GOP allies are betting that Americans view the defeat of their political enemies as more important than the preservation of democratic norms.

“I think we underestimated the degree to which people prefer to live in a country where the government represents their view of who the society is,” said Halperin. “The tyranny of the majority … that was a much more serious threat than I contemplated.”

As democracies are being tested internally, the world’s aggressive dictatorships are taking advantage, he warned. Since the end of the Cold War, autocrats have learned that they are more likely to survive internal dissent if they turn to violence against their own people. This has resulted in more repression and political persecution in countries like Myanmar, Syria and Iran.

“In a way, we’ve taught the autocrats that murder is the best option for them,” Halperin said. “Passive resistance works unless you have a leader who is willing to shoot people marching in the street.”

These days, Halperin’s neoliberal worldview is often derided as imperialist or overly aggressive. Americans are rightly wary of foreign intervention after failures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Halperin, who had a front-row seat to the Vietnam War, said that the critics have learned the wrong lessons. The problem with U.S. foreign policy since World War II has not been the extent to which it has promoted values such as freedom, democracy and human rights, he argued. The issue is rather that various U.S. governments have sided with leaders who had no real legitimacy.

“The fundamental lesson is, [we must] help people who are willing to risk their own lives to help themselves and who have the genuine nationalist support of their own people,” he said. “And the tragedy of Vietnam is, we chose the wrong side. Almost the most important thing in the Pentagon Papers is that Truman was told that Ho Chi Minh was the legitimate leader of Vietnam.”

Today, we in the United States face a world in which our international influence is lessened, people in other countries are less willing to work with us, and our internal will to fight for freedom and democracy has diminished. Nevertheless, Halperin said, Americans still have a duty to help those people abroad who are fighting for dignity and self-determination — wherever they emerge.

“There still continue to be democratic insurgencies, and I think we have to be there for them,” he said. “It’s hard to be optimistic, but you have to be. This is where we have to go. It’s going to take longer than we thought.”

Ukraine

One of the basic tenets of combat operations at the tactical level is, "Take the other guy's shit and kill him with it".

Putin's boys have been quite accommodating in this regard.

Ammunition left behind by fleeing Russian troops is filling Ukraine's depleted reserves and powering its counteroffensive, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Russia's hurried retreat from the Kharkiv region in early September involved troops abandoning hardware including tanks, other armored vehicles, and howitzers. They also left behind huge quantities of Soviet-caliber artillery shells, the paper reported.

"The Russians no longer have a firepower advantage," an unnamed artillery officer told the paper. "We smashed up all their artillery units before launching the offensive, and then we started to move ahead so fast that they didn't even have time to fuel up and load their tanks. They just fled and left everything behind."

The report said that equipment was being turned on Russian forces as Ukraine advances beyond the recently recaptured city of Lyman in the Donbas region.

The recapture of Lyman provides strategic advantages, as the city served as a supply and logistics hub for Russia's operation in the region.

Ukraine had previously struggled to match Russia in sheer quantity of firepower. Much of Ukraine's military arsenal is Russian or Soviet equipment, making it hard to replenish its stock.

In March, Western officials reported that Ukrainian troops in Mariupol were resupplying by taking ammo from Russian soldiers.

In June, Vitaliy Kim, the governor of the southern region of Mykolaiv, said, "We are out of ammo," Voice of America reported.

The US depleted its own reserves of some ammunition in supplying Ukraine. An unnamed defense official told the Journal in late August that levels of 155 mm ammunition were becoming "uncomfortably low."

But this has begun to change since Ukraine's lightning-fast counteroffensive in September. As its forces recaptured huge swaths of territory in the northeastern Kharkiv region, Russians dropped their guns and abandoned tanks.

One Ukrainian soldier, identified only as Birdie, told The Telegraph that during that effort, Russian troops "left a huge amount of vehicles and ammunition," adding, "We couldn't transfer or evacuate it all to our rear."

The Twitter account of Ukraine's defense ministry mocked the Russians by describing them as "the largest supplier of military equipment for the Ukrainian army."

Oryx, a project to document and track military-equipment usage and losses, has counted 442 Russian tanks captured by Ukrainians throughout the war. The Journal's report, citing Oryx, said 320 tanks had been supplied to Ukraine from elsewhere.

Armored fighting vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles that Ukraine captured from Russia also outnumbered foreign donations, according to Oryx.

Today's Winner

This one wins the intertubes today - everybody can unplug and go home now.

Today's Tweet

The assholes in charge of Iran killed her mom for exactly what she's doing here in this picture.

When someone stands up in the face of murderous intent and says, "No - you will not put your shit on me any more", it's an act of courage that has no equal.

What a remarkable image. The daughter of Minoo Majidi--a mother of two who was killed by the Iranian regime while protesting for #MahsaAmini--stands at her mother's gravesite. She is defiantly unveiled, and in her left hand she holds the hair she cut from her head. pic.twitter.com/QPqHGk4MDy

— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) September 30, 2022

Today's Reddit

Even with state-controlled media, the word will eventually get out. Cuz every one of these guys is going to tell family and friends back home how bad it is.

Every day that sees more Ukrainian ground liberated is a day closer to Putin's inevitable fall - which could take years to be sure. But it's not unreasonable to think he won't survive this war.

Ukraine

Putin put out the kind of standard order that dumbass REMFs who fancy themselves as brilliant and inspirational field commanders always put out, which is that he won't allow retreat, so there's a fair probability that he's going to lose an entire division (about 15,000 guys) in the Kherson area west of the Dnipro.

And I've been wondering why the Russians were probing the Ukrainian line in certain areas - from just south of Bahmut down to Tokmak. And it's occurred to me, that's the area where mostly mercenaries are deployed, and they get paid according to the real estate they've captured, so they're pushing at points of the front where there's not much of anything except dirt to conquer, and where the going should be a little easier. But the Ukrainians have pretty well shut that down too.

Something that's not getting much media attention is the 5th column/underground-type resistance going on in lots of urban centers - Mariupol, Berdiansk, Tokmak, Melitopol, Nova Kakhovka, and Kherson - plus various places scattered all over the joint.

Winter is coming, and the Russians are not prepared for it.

Ukraine

Our sunflowers don't fertilize themselves.

Here's Ukraine teaching a master class in modern Psy Ops.

Significant If True

I've heard this from a couple of different sources now, but so far there's no confirmation.

Because of the failing effort in Ukraine, and trouble at home, Putin is having to divert resources.

1. Manpower: drafting more guys, but sending them to bolster internal security forces to make sure the growing unrest in Russian cities across the Federation can be contained if not quelled.
2. Weapons: he's stopped exporting - tanks in particular - so he can send them to Ukraine (a triple whammy):

• He'll end up donating them to the Ukrainians because his guys have a tendency to ditch their tanks and other armored vehicles, sometimes at the first sign of trouble.
• It's a sign of persistent problems both with operations in Ukraine, and with Russian manufacturing.
• If he's not selling his goods, he's getting less income to finance his war.

Unconfirmed, but wow.

Putin will not survive this war.