US Supreme Court opens door to even more carnage

Today the body in a 6-3 opinion struck down a ban on the use of so-called ‘bump stocks’, the device that can convert a semiautomatic weapon (where you have to pull the trigger for each shot) to something that resembles a machine gun, where simply holding the trigger results in the gun firing repeatedly. Needless to say, the latter allows you fire bullets far more rapidly, allowing for greater carnage in the time interval before the shooter is stopped.

The ruling was 6-3, with the court’s liberal justices dissenting from the conservative majority’s decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that a semiautomatic firearm equipped with a bump stock did not meet the definition of a machine gun, which are subject to stricter regulations.
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The top court’s ruling in Garland v Cargill nullifies the Trump administration’s 2018 regulation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which ordered anyone who owned a bump stock to destroy it or hand it over to federal agents. The rule was passed after the devastating 2017 mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas, in which a gunman fired more than 1,000 rounds, killing 60 people and injuring almost 500.

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Limited victory for abortion rights

The US Supreme Court unanimously allowed the use of the abortion medication mifepristone.

The nine justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA’s subsequent actions to ease access to it. The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.

Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy in 14 states, and after about six weeks of pregnancy in three others, often before women realize they’re pregnant.
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Kavanaugh’s opinion managed to unite a court deeply divided over abortion and many other divisive social issues by employing a minimalist approach that focused solely on the technical legal issue of standing and reached no judgment about the FDA’s actions. Kavanaugh’s seven “pro-life” references to abortion opponents may have been the only language in his opinion that revealed anything of his views on abortion.
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About two-thirds of U.S. adults oppose banning the use of mifepristone, or medication abortion, nationwide, according to a KFF poll conducted in February. About one-third would support a nationwide ban.
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More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen has been used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation.

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The GOP war on democratic institutions

It is quite extraordinary how the Republican party seems determined to tear down institutions that have long been seen as fundamental to the smooth functioning of democratic societies.

The most recent and extreme has been the attack on the entire judiciary system in the US in the wake of the many charges that have been leveled against serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT). He has lost defamation suits brought against him by E. Jean Carroll, business fraud suit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, and the falsifying business records to further his election campaign brought by Manhattan district Attorney Alvin Bragg. He further faces charges of election interference in Georgia brought by Fulton Country district attorney Fani Willis, and two sets of charges involving the possession of classified documents brought by the special prosecutor Jack Smith.
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Nearly all campus protests were peaceful

There has been an eruption of protests across the world at the absolutely horrific slaughter of people in Gaza by Israel, most of whom are women and children. In the US, college students have been in the forefront of these events . If you have been following them, you might have got the impression that violence was a common element of the protests. But the media coverage has been extraordinarily biased, focusing on the rare violence that occurred, often triggered by the actions of university administrations and the police. These few instances have been exploited by apologists for Israel in the US, especially in Congress, to distract from the real issues raised by the students, by raising the usual claim that any protests against the actions of the Israeli government or the military were antisemitic.

A study finds that in fact, 97% of the protests were peaceful and did not cause any serious damage to property.
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Some interesting primary results

The state of New Jersey had its primary elections on Tuesday and although this is a moderately Democratic state, there were some interesting features.

Three term congressperson Andy Kim won the Democratic primary for the senate seat and seems well on the way to becoming the state’s senator. The incumbent Robert Menendez is on trial for corruption and is vowing to run as an independent but his chances look slim. Kim should be a far better senator than the awful Menendez.

More interesting is that the candidate that serial sex offender and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) endorsed for the Republican senate nomination failed to win.
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Trump has to meet with a probation officer before sentencing

I am learning all manner of arcane things about how the criminal justice system works, thanks to the trial and conviction of serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT). For example, I used to wonder why there would be a long gap between the verdict and the sentencing. It turns out that this is because even though it is the judge who decides what the sentence should be, there is a process that leads up to it and one requirement is that the convicted felon first meet with a probation officer who will conduct an examination and give the judge a report.
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Another day, another atrocity committed by the IDF

The Israeli military hit a school and killed over 30 people, 23 of whim were women and children trying to find refuge from the constant bombardment unleashed on the people of Gaza by the Israeli government.

An Israeli strike early Thursday on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed more than 30 people, including 23 women and children, according to local health officials. The Israeli military said that Hamas militants were operating from within the school.
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Witnesses and hospital officials said the predawn strike hit the al-Sardi School, run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees known by the acronym UNRWA. The school was filled with Palestinians who had fled Israeli offensives and bombardment in northern Gaza, they said.

Ayman Rashed, a man displaced from Gaza City who was sheltering at the school, said the missiles hit classrooms on the second and third floor where families were sheltering. He said he helped carry out five dead, including an old man and two children, one with his head shattered open. “It was dark, with no electricity, and we struggled to get out the victims,” Rashed said.

The stories are heartbreaking. It is tempting to turn away, just to avoid becoming depressed at the sheer level of inhumanity of display.

What happens to our bodies in excessive heat

It is astonishing that with record heat waves year after year, there are still those who refuse to acknowledge that we are experiencing dangerous levels of global warming, who not only ignore the warnings but even threaten journalists who write about it.

Almost four out of every 10 journalists covering the climate crisis and environment issues have been threatened as a result of their work, with 11% subjected to physical violence, according to groundbreaking new research.

A global survey of more than 740 reporters and editors from 102 countries found that 39% of those threatened “sometimes” or “frequently” were targeted by people engaged in illegal activities such as logging and mining. Some 30%, meanwhile, were threatened with legal action – reflecting a growing trend towards corporations and governments deploying the judicial system to muzzle free speech.

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