Greg Olear starts with the Texas law and the Supreme Court’s “Sure, go right ahead.”

After a day of excruciating silence, the Court voted 5-4 to let it be, citing some pusillanimous procedural technicality. Chief Justice Roberts sided with the three “liberal” justices, but the five other Federalist Society stooges on the bench—Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh—gave Texas the green light to go full Fascist, thus confirming what most of us feared all along: that Roe v. Wade is not safe, that the government is at war with women, that the radical Catholics who took over the Court are pro-tyranny.

We’re stuck with them except maybe for Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh is different.

I’m reading Jesse Singal’s review of Helen Joyce’s book in the Times, and I’m interrupting my reading to say this one thing.

A primary goal of those who adhere to gender-identity ideology is to enact “gender self-identification,” or the idea “that people should count as men or women according to how they feel and what they declare, instead of their biology,” into norm and law. According to self-ID, as I’ll call it henceforth, once an individual reveals their gender identity, that trumps anyone else’s understanding of it. If you say you are a man or a woman, or both or neither, that is exactly what you are.

When followed faithfully, gender-identity ideology has important implications. 

Yes, it does, but … Read the rest

Brazil could be having its own insurrection moment.

Supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro pushed through police barriers to advance towards Congress in Brasilia on Monday night, the eve of a day of planned demonstrations to back the far-right leader in his dispute with the judiciary.

Trucks honked their horns as hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters dressed in the green-and-yellow national colors cheered them through, videos posted on social media showed.

But they failed however to reach their target of surrounding the Supreme Court, which some demonstrators have planned to occupy in a protest modeled on the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.

…

Thousands of demonstrators are expected to march in the

It’s announcing plans day north of the border.

Nicola Sturgeon is to set out the Scottish government’s plans for the year to come at Holyrood.

So she did that and @theSNP tweeted them all.

FM: "It will make the existing process of gender recognition less degrading, intrusive and traumatic.

It will make life easier for one of the most stigmatized minorities in our society. I think that is something any Parliament should feel a responsibility to do." #ScotPfG

— The SNP (@theSNP) September 7, 2021

FM: "And, in some parts of the world, from lawmakers intent on taking away basic freedoms and removing the rights of women to control our own bodies." #ScotPfG

— The SNP (@theSNP) September 7, 2021

Eliza speaks the truth.

"We need to rethink the category of woman"—but don't worry, the new crop of abortion bounty-hunters, sex-traffickers & johns, & religious fundamentalists of all stripes will still know exactly who they're targeting. The rest of us just won't be able to talk about it. pic.twitter.com/ZX4dPf9akK

— Eliza Mondegreen (@elizamondegreen) September 7, 2021

For the sake of the Twitter haters I’ll just arrange the rest of what she said as an essay.

Gender identity problematizes, denounces, and confuses what women need to make clear: Our sex matters.

Women’s healthcare depends on the recognition of sex difference on the part of medical providers, scientific researchers, health communicators, and patients.

Gender identity trades clear language and targeted research into

Speaking of that interview with Judith Butler…

Right @guardian. I will be lodging a formal complaint about your apparent policy of blaming and shaming victims of sexual offending in your pages.

We have known for some time that the man who entered the WiSpa changing rooms is a sexual predator. This is outrageously defamatory pic.twitter.com/05g43PFrgv

— Lydia Lambfruit (@Kings_of_Lydia) September 7, 2021

And so she did. It’s an excellent letter.

Sent. pic.twitter.com/2wTL8GlNxK

— Lydia Lambfruit (@Kings_of_Lydia) September 7, 2021

… Read the rest

Judith Butler doing her tedious thing:

…what it means to be a woman does not remain the same from decade to decade. The category of woman can and does change, and we need it to be that way. Politically, securing greater freedoms for women requires that we rethink the category of “women” to include those new possibilities. The historical meaning of gender can change as its norms are re-enacted, refused or recreated.

Yes, of course: what it means changes, the category changes, and obviously securing greater freedoms entails that, not least because it’s the same thing. We change the meaning by gaining the freedoms. That doesn’t mean we “change” it by including men in it. That’s not change … Read the rest

Wow. Years of collaboration just torched as if they had never been.

They WHAT??

First, the claim:

Next, the email:

Is it August 2015 again? The echo is strong. There were three SBM editors and Hall was one of them, but suddenly a minor contributor becomes “an editor” to bolster the Gorski-Novella excuses for plunging the knife into Hall’s back.… Read the rest

Republicans in the spotlight for encouraging violent sedition resort to threats to avoid attention for encouraging violent sedition. It’s a bit like pouring ammonia on a burn.

Top Republicans under scrutiny for their role in the events of 6 January have embarked on a campaign of threats and intimidation to thwart a Democratic-controlled congressional panel that is scrutinizing the Capitol attack and opening an expanded investigation into Donald Trump.

It’s almost as if bullying is literally all they know how to do.

The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, decried the select committee’s investigation as a partisan exercise and threatened to retaliate against any telecommunications company that complied with the records requests.

Thus demonstrating what a law-abiding and conscientious guy … Read the rest

It’s always worth being reminded of how illegitimate the whole situation is. Bush 2 lost the popular vote, Trump lost the popular vote, McConnell blocked Merrick Garland because he could and then rushed in Amy Coney Barrett because he could. A minority rules over us.

The confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett did more than install a supermajority of conservatives in the court. The locus of power on the court shifted from the more mainstream conservatism of Justice Roberts to the more ideological and rigid extremes of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

As the Texas ruling underscored, this is a court far more conservative than the nation whose constitutional meanings it is meant to protect. And it is a court

This one is hilarious – it’s so unabashed in its FOCUS ON ME rule for life. Hello world, unlearn everything you know to fit me into your worldview.

It’s 2021 people! You should have already been focusing all your attention on me! What’s the holdup?!

Also I love the time-sensitive aspect. What happens in 2022 I wonder? Will everything have been reversed so that we have to focus on “Them” in order to fit “Them” in our worldview all over again but opposite?… Read the rest

Huh. It’s not boys sexually abusing girls, it’s generic “children” doing it to generic “children” – according to the BBC.

Reports of sex abuse between children double in two years

Between children? Really?

Reports of children sexually abusing other children doubled in the two years to 2019, according to police figures obtained by BBC Panorama.

But were they reports of “children” doing this?

It’s not until paragraph 5 that we get

And overall, a big majority of cases involved boys abusing girls.

You don’t say.… Read the rest

Well of course they do.

To be honest, teenagers almost always have more nuanced conceptualizations of gender than their parents.

— Jack Turban MD (@jack_turban) September 5, 2021

Their “conceptions” of “gender” are “more nuanced” because that’s what’s available to them. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right. That question still has to be decided on the merits.

Sometimes teenagers are indeed in the vanguard in a good way: civil rights activists in the 1960s for example. Even then, though, there were plenty of teenagers on the other side, and besides that, not every vanguard is On the Right Side of History.

By “gender” Jack Turban means sex as well as gender. By “nuanced” he doesn’t mean “people can wear whatever … Read the rest

Elliot Kirschner on Lassen National Park, which he knows well from childhood summer vacations:

For those who have never been to Lassen, or maybe haven’t even heard of it, it is one of the true gems of the National Park system, although far less famous than its cousins like Yellowstone and Yosemite. It’s a place shaped by an active volcano, Lassen Peak, which last erupted a little over a century ago, and all the geothermal activity that goes with it. Its streams, lakes, meadows, and forests teem with wildlife and vistas both epic and intimate. As much as the sights, I remember the smells. Around the bubbling mud baths came the pungent odor of rotten eggs from the hydrogen

Bottom line? Women stink. Not just “stink”=are bad but STINK: smell of rotting fish.

So I'm recording the "right side of history" response to seeing a group of women on a train in Scotland.

It's really mind blowing https://t.co/tjAn7rnmpi

— Kat "I'll bring the sausage rolls" (@KatarinaHill2) September 4, 2021

pic.twitter.com/PB6Lh4E7jV

— Kat "I'll bring the sausage rolls" (@KatarinaHill2) September 4, 2021

pic.twitter.com/wknysbp10M

— Kat "I'll bring the sausage rolls" (@KatarinaHill2) September 4, 2021

The new misogyny is indistinguishable from the old misogyny.… Read the rest

There’s a very simple explanation.

Melania Trump, perhaps the most private first lady in modern history, has retreated more and more from the spotlight since departing Washington last January.

…She views her husband’s continued impact on the GOP landscape as his job, not hers. “You’re not going to see her at rallies or campaign events, even if he ‘officially’ says he’s running again,” said another person aware of the disinterest Trump has shown in supporting the former President.

Lack of interest, not disinterest.

…so often was the answer “no” when Trump was asked by then-candidate Donald Trump’s staff to appear at events that eventually, “We just stopped asking altogether,” said a political operative who worked on team Trump in

Alex Massie points out the familiar inconsistency:

This Scottish government has no time for those who deny the reality of climate change but it is an administration busy enthusiastically denying the reality of biological sex. We must follow the science on one matter but abandon it on the other.

I can see doing that in some contexts – there are some where science is beside the point. Moral conflicts for instance aren’t a scientific issue, although science may be able to bolster a case. But when the core issue is as brutally physical as this one, just drawing a big X through the science is stupid.

Nicola Sturgeon, of course, is “a feminist to her fingertips”, which makes one wonder

This starts out seeming to be a serious and interesting analysis of a familiar slogan:

I’m a philosopher and bioethicist. My research suggests “my body, my choice” was a crucial idea at the time of Roe to emphasize ownership over bodily and health care decisions. But I believe the debate has since moved on – reproductive justice is about more than owning your body and your choice; it is about a right to health care.

I was interested because I got into a brief wrangle on Facebook by saying I’ve always thought the slogan was stupid, because it’s not true. Choices about one’s body are not always solely personal. A couple of men replied to call me stupid with no … Read the rest

Hilary Mantel:

Mantel also waded into the controversy surrounding Rowling’s beliefs on transgender rights which have divided the literary world.

The Harry Potter author wrote a personal essay last year which included examples of where she believes demands by transgender activists were dangerous to women, which were described by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups as divisive and transphobic.

Later Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood and others wrote an open letter warning that the spread of “censoriousness” was leading to “an intolerance of opposing views” and “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism”.

Mantel said the online attacks on Rowling after her essay were “unjustified and shameful”.

She added: “It is barbaric that a tiny minority should take command of public

To go all nostalgic for a moment…again Trump is padding the books by paying himself out of his PAC.

Tenants at Trump Tower have been floundering, which means he’s not collecting those high high rents.

But through all that — as Trump Tower has dealt with imploding tenants, political backlash and a broader, pandemic-related slump in Manhattan office leasing since last year — it has been able to count on one reliable, high-paying tenant: former president Donald Trump’s own political operation.

Starting in March, one of his committees, Make America Great Again PAC, paid $37,541.67 per month to rent office space on the 15th floor of Trump Tower — a space previously rented by his campaign — according