Toon: Condemned to Repeat It

After 49 years of promising their voters to appoint justices to the Supreme Court for the express purpose of overturning Roe v. Wade — and the kabuki theater of those appointees testifying to Senate Judiciary Commitees that honest pinky-swear cross-my-heart they carried no such agenda —Republicans are finally getting their wish.

Unless you've just recovered from a coma, you already know about that Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion eviscerating Roe v. Wade was leaked to Politico, and you probably know that one of the main points of his opinion is that abortion rights (or the prohibition of them) is a matter to be decided between a woman and her statehouse, governor, Congress, President... anyone "from the government and I'm here to help."

Effective abortion bans are set to snap into place in 26 states the instant the Court's ruling is handed down. Some have been passed recently or will be soon; in other states, old laws voided by the Court's 1973 ruling (such as Wisconsin's 1849 law) will arise from their graves.

Just about all of these abortion bans, old and new, presuppose that women who seek abortions are unprincipled whores likely to wait right up until moments before going into labor to abort their unwanted fetus instead. That they deserve for each and every sexual act to result in nine months of hard labor.

I know from the experience of someone close to me that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is never easy, and sometimes the baby was very much wanted. If I had been in her place and had been told to go home and wait to miscarry, I would have reached the same decision she did.

If you're a woman or girl living in a state where Republicans do not exercise a stranglehold on your legislature, chances are you will get to keep the right to determine your own child-bearing decisions — at least as long as there's a Democrat in the White House. But anywhere else, your chances are awfully remote, and largely thanks to Court decisions made along the way with this day in mind.

Republicans took advantage of their state legislative wins in 2010 to cement their momentary majorities into permanent ones through the redistricting process and erecting barriers against voters apt to vote for Democrats — and Republican judges have backed them up. Right-wing activists regularly flood the airwaves in election years to promote anti-abortion candidates — and again, Republican judges (many of them having been themselves beneficiaries of those floods) have backed them up.

Federally, Republicans use the free and easy filibuster rules in the Senate to block any and all Democratic legislation — and you can bet that if there are 51 of them in the Senate next year, Mitch McConnell will get rid of the filibuster to pass a total nation-wide ban on abortion. Even if the Roman Catholic in the Oval Office today vetoes it, the GOP retains its numerical advantage in the electoral college in 2024 that we saw in 2000 and 2016.

If the immediate future for women's reproductive rights looks bleak now, so too did the prospects of the anti-abortion movement in 1973. But they kept working toward Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization with unrelenting, calculated determination, and here we are.

Can the other side match that effort — even if it takes another half-century?

Q Toon: Sinema Defends the Filibuster

So Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer held a vote Wednesday on whether to end debate on the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and thus bring the bills themselves to a vote. This, even though the vote was doomed to fail, given that all fifty Republican Senators were guaranteed to vote to extend debate, and Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema had announced that they would vote with the Republicans.

(Do we really need those Republican senators to show up for votes in the first place? They're going to vote No, everybody knows they're going to vote No, it's safe to predict that they will always vote No. Just score fifty No votes for every piece of legislation for the rest of the year and have done with it. Heck, since 60 votes are required to get legislation to a vote in the first place, all 100 Senators can go home and spend the rest of the year fellating their donors.)

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. LGBTQ+ voters were elated to see Kyrsten Sinema, an out bisexual, narrowly elected to the Senate from Arizona in 2018. She had the support of EMILY's List and progressives around the country, so a whole lot of people have been disappointed in her insistence in today's 50-50 Senate that Filibusters Are Good For Democracy.

Sen. Sinema, who has seven years experience serving in the minority party in Arizona legislature before coming to the U.S. Senate, gave her reasons why she learned to stop worrying and love the filibuster last week, citing how Democrats' efforts to get around Republican tactics have come around to bite them in the keyster:

"The 2013 decision by Senate Democrats to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for most judicial and presidential nominations led directly to a response in 2017 by Senate Republicans, who eliminated the threshold for Supreme Court nominees.

"These short-sighted actions by both parties have led to our current American Judiciary and Supreme Court, which, as I stand here today, is considering questions regarding fundamental rights Americans have enjoyed for decades."

She's not entirely wrong. If Democratic senators make an exception to the filibuster for voter rights, voting restriction bills are not the only agenda items Republicans would act on if they attain the majority. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) ticked off a list for Washington Times:

"More pro-life bills, more bills promoting, let's see, universal carry under the Second Amendment, say, more border security ... those are just a few of the areas."

So what are the Democrats to do in this Catch-2022 situation? Eliminate the filibuster now, and regret it as soon as there's a 51st Republican in the Senate? Or sit by and watch Republicans in statehouses around the country systematically disenfranchise Democratic voters?

 

That includes the Arizona statehouse, where the legislature and governor been working overtime to make sure Sinema becomes a one-term-and-done senator in 2024.

✍

 

P.S.: Somebody at DailyKos apparently liked this cartoon so much they posted it straight from the Q Syndicate feed on Tuesday, before any of its subscribers (or this, your humble scribe) had printed or posted it. I suppose I'm flattered; I don't think I've ever appeared on that particular site before — certainly not as a post's featured graphic.

 

Q Toon: As I Have Foreseen

Long ago, in a polity far away, having the Senate evenly split between fifty Republicans and fifty Democrats would have forced the two parties to work together to keep the government running. These days, however, we have one party interested in good government, and the other, led by Mitch McConnell (R-Byss), happy to see no government at all.

Barack Obama came into office in 2008 with a filibuster-proof 60-40 Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, and the the U.S. economy four months into the most serious collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930s. McConnell had vowed that thwarting Obama at every turn would be the Number One priority of the Republican Party, over and above national interest, leaving Democrats to rescue the economy on their own.

From there, Obama and Senate Democrats tried a bipartisan approach to crafting the Affordable Care Act, trimming the bill a little here and gutting it a little there in a vain attempt to persuade even one Republican to sign onto it. But the GOP had their orders to stick together in intransigent opposition no matter what. Democrats might just as well have passed a Swedish-style single-payer system instead.

Then Ted Kennedy up and died and was replaced by Republican Scott Brown, handing McConnell effective veto power over all legislation and dozens upon dozens of judicial appointments.

Today, McConnell is still in charge of Senate Republicans, who continue to show remarkable unity when opportunities to do nothing arise. Ten Senate Republicans do not exist who will put the national interest above party politics.

None of the issues that Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats ran on in 2020 can be dealt with as long as Mitch McConnell retains his veto power, so many Democrats are eager to scrap the filibuster— possible now if they have their 50 votes plus that of Vice President Kamala Harris.

But not so fast! Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) like the filibuster! Manchin cited the "Byrd Rule," named for the 1970's-80's leader of Senate Democrats and 1940's Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd. Byrd personally filibustered four fourteen hours against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 along with other Dixiecrats.

Sinema, this cartoon's link to being of interest to LGBTQ+ readers, avoided citing the filibuster's history of anti-civil rights, but told Politico, “I want to restore the 60-vote threshold for all elements of the Senate’s work.” (Emphasis mine.) Considering her experience as one of the very few Democratic members of the Arizona legislature, her love for the filibuster may be understandable — but self-defeating.

“I have long said that I oppose eliminating the filibuster for votes on legislation,” Sinema’s office went on to explain. “Retaining the legislative filibuster is not meant to impede the things we want to get done. Rather, it’s meant to protect what the Senate was designed to be. I believe the Senate has a responsibility to put politics aside and fully consider, debate, and reach compromise on legislative issues that will affect all Americans.”

From this explanation, a voter might conclude that the Framers created the Senate to be some sort of debating society that occasionally passes bills, rather than an active and functional legislative chamber.

The Framers of the Constitution actually got rid of a forerunner of the filibuster, a requirement that "important resolutions" be approved by two-thirds of the states — a practice that had hobbled government under the Articles of Confederation. As Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist #22, observed:

To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. ... The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.

It was catchier when Lin Manuel-Miranda rapped it, but perhaps you get the point.

Amendment Authorizing End to DADT Passes

The House of Representatives voted 234-194 yesterday to approve an amendment repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". The amendment will be attached to the 2011 Department of Defense Authorization Bill. Five Republicans, Charles Djou (HI), Joseph Cao (LA), Judy Biggert (IL), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL) and Ron Paul (TX), joined 229 Democrats in approving the measure. Djou was just sworn in days ago after a special election to fill the seat of Democrat Neil Abercrombie (resigned to run for governor). Cao, who succeeded the corrupt William Jefferson, was the lone Republican to vote for the draft Affordable Health Care for America Act; but, citing objections to public funding for elective abortion, he joined the rest of his party in opposing the final version, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Paul, of course, is the Libertarian who ran for president in 1988 and 2008. 26 Democrats joined the remaining 168 Republicans in opposition to the bill. Those Democrats, grouped by state, are: Bobby Bright (AL); Marion Berry and Mike Ross (AR); Sanford Bishop Jr., Jim Marshall (GA); Jerry Costello and Frank Lipinski (IL); Joe Donnelly (IN), Collin Peterson (MN), Ike Skelton (MO); Travis Childers and Gene Taylor (MS); Bob Etheridge, Mike McIntyre and Heath Shuler (NC); Earl Pomeroy (ND); Christopher Carney, Mark Critz and Chet Edwards (PA); John Spratt Jr. (SC); Gene Green and Solomon Ortiz (TX); Lincoln Davis and John Tanner (TN); Rick Boucher (VA); and Nick Rahall II (WV). The Republican representing my home district, Paul Ryan, did not vote. The New York Times has the roll call here. President Obama issued this statement this morning:

"I have long advocated that we repeal ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’, and I am pleased that both the House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee took important bipartisan steps toward repeal tonight. Key to successful repeal will be the ongoing Defense Department review, and as such I am grateful that the amendments offered by Representative Patrick Murphy and Senators Joseph Lieberman and Carl Levin that passed today will ensure that the Department of Defense can complete that comprehensive review that will allow our military and their families the opportunity to inform and shape the implementation process. Our military is made up of the best and bravest men and women in our nation, and my greatest honor is leading them as Commander-in-Chief. This legislation will help make our Armed Forces even stronger and more inclusive by allowing gay and lesbian soldiers to serve honestly and with integrity."

The full defense appropriation bill still needs to be approved by both houses of Congress; right-wing lap dog John McCain is threatening a filibuster. 

Paul Berge
Q Syndicate
Feb 24, 2010

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