DL Open Thread: Tuesday, May 10, 2022

QAnon Devotees Call Each Other Pedophiles, Deny QAnon Allegiance.  Submitted just because I, at least, need to take my mind off all the shit that’s going down. At least for a moment:

The new thing, it seems, is to pretend you aren’t a conspiracy theory-pushing Q advocate, while very clearly being a conspiracy theory-pushing Q advocate. Also, if you are a tool of QAnon and then cannot prove—and, in fact, cast doubt on—any Q theories of a “plandemic” or the massive election fraud that ousted the unpopular former guy out of office, you are a traitor. It’s an enigma wrapped in a riddle, fermenting in a bag of trash.

Tennessee Makes Medication Abortion A Crime:  Back to the real world:

Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill on Thursday increasing criminal penalties for anyone distributing abortion medication through telehealth or mail, amid the U.S. Supreme Court’s contemplation of ending nationwide abortion rights.

The bill prohibits any distribution of abortion medication except when prescribing is done in person by a physician. The physician is not required to monitor a patient during or after taking the medication, except for a required follow-up appointment within two weeks.

The legislation, approved by lawmakers this year, also makes it a Class E felony punishable by a fine of up to $50,000 if that procedure is not followed.

A medicated abortion is an increasingly common method to terminate early-term pregnancies up to 10 weeks. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved the delivery and telehealth dispensing of the medication amid access concerns during the pandemic.

Might I point out that ‘prescribing done in person by a physician’ is soon to be outlawed in states with trigger laws?  Including, yes, Tennessee?:

In 2019, Tennessee passed a “trigger law” bill banning all abortions in the state 30 days after the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Including Tennessee, there are 13 states across the nation that have signaled their readiness to ban abortions in the same way.

Will Louisiana Inmates Finally Receive The Same Justice Afforded Almost Everywhere Else?  Believe it or not, unanimous jury verdicts were not required to convict defendants of felonies.  That might change:

Reginald Reddick is serving life in prison in Louisiana for second-degree murder, even though two jurors at his 1997 trial found him not guilty. Almost anywhere else in the country, he would have been acquitted: even one juror would have been enough to change the outcome.

This week, the Louisiana supreme court will hear oral arguments in Reddick’s case, in which he argues that he is entitled to a new trial. The court’s decision could affect more than 1,000 people who, like Reddick, are serving time for crimes that some of their jurors did not believe they committed beyond a reasonable doubt.

Until recently, Louisiana was one of only two states that did not require the unanimous vote of a jury, a vestige of a Jim Crow-era law designed to negate the growing power of Black jurors.

In 2018, Louisiana residents voted to end the practice, and in 2020, the US supreme court found non-unanimous jury verdicts unconstitutional. But the high court declined to make the ruling retroactive (of course), leaving it up to Louisiana and Oregon (the only other state that allowed split juries) to decide whether people already serving time in such cases were entitled to new trials.

Reich: We Must Fight Powerful Bullies.  Everything Reich publishes is worth reading:

Putin invades Ukraine. Trump refuses to concede and promotes his big lie. Rightwing politicians in America and Europe inflame white Christian nationalism. Television pundits spur bigotry toward immigrants. Politicians target LGBTQ+ youth.

Powerful men sexually harass and abuse women. Abortion bans harm women unable to obtain safe abortions. Police kill innocent Black people with impunity.

CEOs rake in record profits and compensation but give workers meager wages and fire them for unionizing. The richest men in the world own the most influential media platforms. Billionaires make large campaign donations (read: legal bribes) so lawmakers won’t raise their taxes.

What connects these? All are abuses of power. All are occurring at a time when power and wealth are concentrated in few hands.

It is important to see the overall pattern because each of these sorts of abuses encourages other abuses. Stopping them – standing up against all forms of bullying and brutality – is essential to preserving a civil society.

Throughout history, the central struggle of civilization has been against brutality by the powerful. The state of nature is a continuous war in which only the fittest survive – where lives are “nasty, brutish, and short,” in the words of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

DSU Student-Athletes Get A Lesson They’ve Likely Already Learned.  Didn’t see any Black cops in those pictures, did you?  This in a county with a large Black population that voted for Biden.  No doubt the cops down there enjoy the same privileges that cops in Delaware enjoy–they do what they want, and nobody can touch them.

What do you want to talk about?