Fox News Calls Ruth Bader Ginsburg an Ignorant Misandrist, Amanda Marcotte, Slate, August 1, 2014
Ginsburg’s comments inspired comical levels of umbrage-taking on The Five on Fox News, where Andrea Tantaros worked herself into full-blown “misandry!” mode. “Isn’t she sort of saying, ‘Keep men away from this court?’ ” she complained. “I get it. She’s a fan of birth control, but she is an enemy to the Bill of Rights.”
“Can you imagine if Justice Scalia would say the same thing about the women on the court, that they have a blind spot? In other words, they’re not reasonable?” Tantaros said. That is an interesting hypothetical, given that, in his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito specifically shut down the possibility that any other kind of health care would be affected by this ruling. He’s the one who singled out contraception as a lesser form of health care, not Ginsburg. But hey, maybe the court will soon rule on whether male-only health care counts as health care enough to be protected as health care, and Tantaros will see her theory put to the test. I’m sure that will happen any day now.
A Reminder: Texas Murdered An Almost Certainly Innocent Man, Scott Lemieux, Lawyers, Guns & Money, August 4, 2014
You will be shocked to know that the jailhouse informant telling a farcically implausible story that, sadly, was the best evidence against Cameron Todd Willingham was lying when he said that he wasn’t promised anything by the prosecution in exchange for his manufactured testimony.
The raging contradiction at the heart of the conservative “reform” movement, Sean McElwee, Salon, August 3, 2014
[R]eform conservatism sticks to “wonky” economics plans, where attempts to distinguish themselves from centrist Democrats fall away. Had the Obama administration chosen to push for a more progressive plan (which likely would have failed to pass), then the reformicons may well have proposed something very much like the Affordable Care Act. Obama instead chose the conservative route: expand already existing programs and keep the private insurance system broadly in place. The fact that Obama’s plan was drawn from Heritage documents and implemented previously by Republicans is inconsequential — the important point is that it is philosophically conservative. That is, it prefers market mechanisms when possible and expands old bureaucracies (Medicaid) rather than create new ones.
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Because of Obama’s conservatism, the “reformers” have been forced to take on an increasingly reactionary tone.
