Unconscionable
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Trumpās legacy. Untold human suffering.
The political question is simple - does US society want women to have more-or-less easy access to abortions or not ? Thereās no broad agreement about the answer. Thatās the problem.
Faced with that problem the federal legislators shrank, and continue to shrink, from passing a federal law granting that access as a right. They could, and in my opinion they should, but they donāt have the balls.
So instead campaigners on both sides have tied themselves up in more than 50 yearsā worth of complex competing arguments over whether the US constitution grants the right to abortion. I imagine if we were able to ask the people who wrote the constitution they would say that it wasnāt their intention to do that. Given that, Iām not so surprised that the Supreme Court can make a legal case for striking Roe vs Wade down. Legal decision-making is their job. Politics isnāt supposed to be, but thereās no way of holding them to account over that - theyāre the Supreme Court, after all.
Thatās the issue, for sure. I think itās been ignored for some time, but now the Supreme Court has shifted right, they can do something about it.
It does seem that the USA is a terrible democracy. Having a Supreme Court that is explicitly political is bizarre, and the split of powers between federal and state is also really odd.
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They would say they are a brilliant democracy.
The US Supreme Court isnāt explicitly political, but its lack of bias depends on the honour of the individual judges, so if political animals get appointed then there is a risk that āpoliticalā judgements will follow. But they donāt always. Ruth Bader-Ginsburg is said to have found for the Republicans when she thought it was legally correct to do so.
Our Supreme Court is not so directly political. The judges are appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister who, in turn, has a name recommended by a selection commission. The PM canāt advise the Queen to pick anyone other than the commissionās chosen individual. The selection commission is made up of the current Supreme Court president and members of other commissions. However most of these are convened by the Lord Chancellor. Thatās Dominic Raab. A politician ā¦
The independence of the states might look odd to us but it looks normal to the Americans. They say that it allows the voters of California to decide what happens in California, and likewise in Mississippi. If you donāt like California then you are free to move to Mississippi, and vice versa. Thereās a degree of federalism in other places e.g. Germany.
We found the differences in laws across states when living in Straya quite revealing of the states themselves. For instance, homosexuality was still prosecutable under Tasmanian law until relatively recently while WA and the NT had extremely harsh laws on vagrancy which were really quite racist and targeted at the traditional communities.
As it was in Northern Ireland until the end of 1982, I think, and in the Isle of Man until 1992.
In more general terms the UK seems to survive the laws in Scotland being different from those in England and Wales.
Shit I just now learned.
The Isle of Man on Man had different laws 
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Honour of the judges on the Supreme Court.
Should be a meatman.
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Looks ill with indignation. Gets my vote for meatpoobah.
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How the fuck could he do that? Isnāt he supposed to to ride in the back of the wagon?
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Itās hearsay, she never witnessed it. The driver and the secret service agent are prepared to go on oath to state it never happened. Thatās the problem with hearings, evidence that wouldnāt see daylight in a Court is allowed
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It may not be true but on the other hand do the secret service want it known they were incompetent enough to allow a passenger in one of their vehicles to potentially take control and crash it?
He wasnāt in the ābeastā he was in an (armoured) SUV that day
Perhaps he had a Maggie Simpson steering wheel in the back
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