Hocus Pocus; Opus SCOTUS

Of today's first big win for the Opus Dei Court's double-header, Charles Pierce looks at a ruling "so obviously discriminatory toward ladies and their ladyparts that no explanation seems necessary." The majority opinion certainly broadcast that, loud and clear—

This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates, that is for blood transfusions or vaccinations, necessarily fail if they conflict with an employer's religious beliefs.

So Pierce suggests—

... let us look also at the religious discrimination embedded in the Court's logic. There are established religions in this country—Jehovah's Witnesses, to name one—that forbid their members to accept blood transfusions and to resist vaccinations. These are not small things. They are the basis for Christian Science. There have been religious objections to compulsory vaccinations going back to a movement among some clergy in Boston in the late 18th century. Until such time as a Jehovah's Witness owns a multibillion-dollar scrapbooking empire, and thereupon declines to offer blood transfusions to the employees of said company, and until such time as someone pushes that case all the way up the ladder, it looks very much to me like the Court, in limiting today's finding in this way, has decided to define what are acceptable religious beliefs... And, moreover, the Court's curious limit as described above lends an undue amount of credence to specific manifestations of Christianity—namely a segment of fundamentalist Protestantism, and the conservative elements of Roman Catholicism.... Garrett Epps argued, convincingly, that a ruling like the one handed down today would privilege some religions over others. In fact, I would argue, as a lifelong Papist, that this decision is nothing if it is not the clearest effect of having three conservative RC's on the Court at the same time and, as such, it has privileged conservative (and politically active) Christianity over all other forms of religion, including other forms of Christianity itself.

Pierce on the other big case, the anti-worker one—

... the conservative majority among the Nine Wise Souls once again played their favorite game of coring out a precedent while, simultaneously, chickening out on what they really wanted to do, but can't do, at least until a couple more of their ideological bro's come on board because, otherwise, they might scare Anthony Kennedy into common sense, and none of them wants that. What happened in this case happened to (for the most part) poor women doing one of the most thankless and necessary jobs that there is—home health-care workers. ... Another delightful 5-4 decision held that unions could not extract fees from all state employees working in specific fields. However, it left weakened, but intact, the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board Of Education, in which the court held that public employees could be compelled to pay for collective bargaining. (The plaintiff in the Harris case was a woman caring for her disabled son at home and she argued that it was unfair for her to have to pay a fee to the SEIU to cover collective bargaining.) Writing for the majority, on the biggest day he's had on the Court since smart people were telling us what a moderate he was, Justice Samuel Alito made it plain that he didn't think much of the Abood decision, but that he didn't have the votes (yet) to blow it up entirely. He referred to it as an "anomaly," and said it was decided "on questionable grounds."...

...

To Samuel Alito and three of his colleagues, health-care workers in Illinois are now freer than they were yesterday, just as the butchers of New Orleans were made more free in 1873, because they no longer have to contribute to organizations through which their wages might rise, and through which they might collectively improve their lives.

Outsourcing Mission, Accomplished

Before this one is down the memory hole: James Risen—

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater's top manager there issued a threat: "that he could kill" the government's chief investigator and "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq," according to department reports.

Siding with the protection racket, U.S embassy officials

... told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy's relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.

And so,

Today, as conflict rages again in Iraq, four Blackwater guards involved in the Nisour Square shooting are on trial in Washington on charges stemming from the episode, the government's second attempt to prosecute the case in an American court after previous charges against five guards were dismissed in 2009.

The shooting was a watershed moment in the American occupation of Iraq, and was a factor in Iraq's refusal the next year to agree to a treaty allowing United States troops to stay in the country beyond 2011. Despite a series of investigations in the wake of Nisour Square, the back story of what happened with Blackwater and the embassy in Baghdad before the fateful shooting has never been fully told.

All involved, as Charles Pierce has it, serving as "shiny new heroes" of privitization.

Credibility

It's not only Fox giving the same old crooks such prominent platforms. It's sure to be smooth sailing from now, as they promote repeats of the foreign policy catastrophes so profitable to themselves.

Passing Giant

Horace Silver died yesterday, at 85.

Some obits, from NYT and LAT.

NPR's piece included audio clips from an old interview, with some memories of how his immigrant father encouraged him when he was young.



Even if the quick summations emphasize the "hard bop" label, Silver had a great melodic gift. The beauty of tunes he composed is inseparable from how it's also impossible to sit still, when hearing the propulsive beat of Silver as arranger and pianist.

Double Your Pleasure

Eric Cantor's loss of his House seat and plan for speakership couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy.

Extra bonus fun: hearing the shock and sadness among members of the "news" media, as they reeled at losing their "young gun."

The downside: the same media about to seriously pounce on a "tea party" as the explanation.

A "party" that would exist, if "party" meant a propaganda infrastructure underwritten by zillionaires. What with the hate radio support the promoted the winner, and his a wingnut welfare professorship...

Patsies

As usual, a pre-made narrative awaited launch—

REPUBLICANS THREATENED TO RUN A WILLIE HORTON-STYLE CAMPAIGN IF OBAMA FREED BERGDAHL IN 2012

In 2012, Rolling Stone ran Michael Hastings'portrait of Bergdahl and his platoon. Hastings remarked about Bergdahl's continued captivity that–

In a sense, Bowe represents a threat to anyone who wants to see the war continue – be they Taliban militants or Pentagon generals. Once the last American POW is released, there will be few obstacles standing in the way of a negotiated settlement. "It's the hard-liners on both sides who want to keep this thing going," says a White House official. "The Taliban is struggling with its own hard-liners. They need space, and this confidence-building measure could give them space."

I hadn't followed read Hastings' piece then, or followed the story for that matter, until recent days. But immediately after Bergdahl's release came the tell in this kind of thing catapulted into instant media uproar.

For years, Obama was a traitor for not bringing the guy home; now he's a traitor for bringing the guy home.

Main sources for accusations against Bergdahl: soldiers enlisted by GOP operatives.

And Obama is to be scolded that "Americans don't negotiate with terrorists" by Oliver North.

The beard style wingnuts adored not so very long ago now makes the father suspect.

As usual: all grist for the mill, 180s being turned, and so on.

Most serious would be the charge that several soldiers died during the search for Bergdahl. Yet if concern for dead soldiers were real, it wouldn't be hard to come up some celebrated names responsible for very much higher death counts during the wars they—not the likes of a Bergdahl—chose to start.

After all his years in captivity, it's not as if Bergdahl had made it home (or even out of medical care) when the character assassination began. He's been unable to defend himself; unsurprisingly, a flag-waving media pack has been only too pleased to spread the smears.

And the "worst of the worst" terrifying terrorists who've been released... appear to have been a mix of working for "our" side—or trying to switch sides—when they were locked away, never to be tried.

So much for the family and hometown celebrating Bergdahl's release. The guy will have to go into hiding if he does make it back to private life.

The media's pack behavior is in no way surprising. Though it is (if this were needed) a depressing demonstration of the ever-accelerating speed with which a powerful agenda can insert character assassination by questionable sources into "the national dialog."