Opinion

The Supreme Court just offered their blessing to the Texas abortion ban, which rewards bounty hunters for snitching on those who "aid and abet" abortions. Now less than one week later, Republicans are looking to use similar mechanisms to ban not just abortions, but the teaching of history.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has offered up the use of this novel enforcement mechanism to fight the culture wars in classrooms and corporations, which should send a chill down any freedom-loving person's spine. Called the "Stop WOKE Act," the bill would allow any parent to sue a school district for teaching "critical race theory."

Yesterday, the Fed’s policy committee announced it would both end its bond-buying program and likely raise interest rates sooner than had been expected. “Inflation is more persistent and higher, and that the risk of it remaining higher for longer has grown,” Fed chair Jerome Powell explained. Translated: Powell and the Fed are about to slow the economy — even though we’re still at least 4 million jobs short of where we were before the pandemic. And even though, as a result, millions of American workers won’t get the raises they deserve.

I think that’s a big mistake. Powell’s medicine has nothing to do with the real reason for inflation: the increasing concentration of the American economy into the hands of a relative few corporate giants with the power to raise prices.

President Joe Biden released 1,500 of the documents from the JKF assassination out of the 10,000 that were expected to be released. This comes at a time that a group of QAnon conspiracy theorists await in Dealey Plaza for his son, John F. Kennedy Jr. to reappear and reveal that he faked his death.

The Dallas Observer parodied some of the followers so that they could share some of the conversations overheard as they wait for the former president's son, who died in a plane crash over 20 years ago.

it happened twice on Tuesday, and one person was involved both times: Liz Cheney. The House Jan. 6 committee has been moving in the same direction the Watergate investigation moved for a while now, but the thing with Mark Meadows' text messages is what turned the corner. Cheney took center stage the way Sen. Howard Baker gained the spotlight during the Senate Watergate hearings in the summer of 1973 when he asked his famous question: "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

Baker's question was prompted by the testimony of former White House counsel John Dean, who had just blown the roof off the Senate hearing room when he testified that he discussed the cover-up of the Watergate burglary with Richard Nixon at least 35 times. Cheney's question was apparently prompted by the revelation of a series of texts between former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and several members of Congress on Jan. 6 as the assault on the Capitol was underway. "We know hours passed with no action by the president to defend the Congress of the United States from an assault while we were trying to count electoral votes," Ms. Cheney stated grimly. "Mr. Meadows's testimony will bear on a key question in front of this committee: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress's official proceeding to count electoral votes?"

Regular readers know of my interest in “regime change.” That’s the term I’ve been using to describe when one party and its ideas prevail among a majority of Americans until they fail to meet the political demands of the moment. That’s the start of a period of transition, during which decadence, instability and decay reign, until the other party and its ideas prevail among a majority.

“Regime change” is another way of describing what some political scientists call “the cycles of political time.” The theory is that political time is not linear, moving in one direction that, as many Americans believe, leads us toward some kind of enlightened end. Instead of political time progressing, as many liberals believe, it moves in cycles so there is no end at which point society is much improved comparatively. Instead, old problems become current, current problems become old. History doesn’t repeat itself. It’s just familiar.

After a full day of silence, the hosts of Fox News finally quit ignoring their bombshell text message scandal and came out swinging. It's unclear, however, why they needed an entire day to draft their responses as what they finally offered was both lazy and incoherent.

The text messages sent to Donald Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, on Jan. 6 indisputably prove that Fox News hosts deliberately lie to their audiences.

For millennia, religious leaders have offered guidance, redemption and fellowship for those interested in dedicating themselves to a life of charity, compassion and hope. But what happens when religious leaders support beliefs or prevailing social customs that significantly harm others?

Today, just as in centuries before, there are religious leaders propagating beliefs that are both harmful and deadly. Since March of 2020, more than 5 million people worldwide, including 800,000 Americans, have died from the coronavirus. Americans are still dying at a rate of about 1,400 people per day. Despite these incontrovertible facts, confirmed by a long trail of death certificates, burials and cremation urns, some religious leaders around the U.S. continue to deny the severity of the pandemic and discourage others from taking basic life-saving precautions to protect themselves from infection.

Monday night, the House of Representatives' bipartisan Jan. 6 committee voted to advance a contempt of Congress resolution against Donald Trump's former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, for suddenly dropping his cooperation with the probe after Trump engaged in his favorite sport, witness intimidation. While the vote was expected, it came with a true and welcome surprise when the committee offered what can only be described as dispositive proof that Fox News hosts knowingly and shamelessly lie on air.

Text messages that were turned over to the committee by Meadows, prior to his withdrawal from further cooperation, prove two things: Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade and Laura Ingraham, as well as Donald Trump Jr., all believed Trump was to blame for inciting the Capitol riot — and believed Meadows was the only person who could call it off.

More than five and a half million Americans out of work in January found jobs by November. In the same period, the jobless rate fell from 6.3 to 4.2 percent, a drop of one-third. Jobless claims in November hit a 52-year low. Real GDP growth for 2021 is expected to be 5.9 percent. (Between 2000 and 2019, real GDP growth stayed lower than 3 percent.)

Biden’s temporary child tax credit, which provides direct cash payments to poor families, cut child hunger rates from 30 percent to 21 percent. That’s 2 million fewer kids who went hungry.

This past Friday, the Supreme Court upheld Texas' near-absolute abortion ban and gave their blessing to the novel enforcement mechanism, a Stasi-reminiscent system that depends on private citizens surveilling their neighbors and claiming bounties on anyone caught "aiding and abetting" an abortion. Despite some misleading headlines caused by a confusing decision, the bottom line is, in Texas, bounty hunters can still stalk people seeking abortion and legally harass and bankrupt anyone who helps them.

The decision was surprising because the court is also widely expected to overturn Roe v. Wade outright in June. Soon over two dozen states — including Texas — are expected to have laws that allow police officers to simply arrest people for abortion. Friday's decision not only creates a mess of legal headaches in managing the bounty hunters, it opens the door for blue states to use similar systems as a back door ban on guns, something California is already moving to do.

Last week a federal court agreed to schedule Steve Bannon's contempt of Congress criminal trial for July of next year — just as the fall campaigns go into full swing. He must be very pleased. Bannon would like nothing more than to have a big show trial at that moment and be carted off to jail where he can write his Great Replacement manifesto.

With the news that there was a PowerPoint presentation called "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for JAN 6", reported here by Brett Bachman, Bannon's revolutionary proclamations on his Jan. 5th podcast have become clearer. Recall what he said:

There is no area of American life that has not been impacted by the color line in a society where white people are granted unearned advantages over nonwhite people. This is not an opinion, but an empirical fact. American society is literally structured by racism and white supremacy.

That is not to say that racism, white supremacy and white privilege benefit all people deemed "white" in the same way or to the same extent. Likewise, those same societal forces do not impact all people deemed "Black" or "brown" or otherwise not white in the same way either.

Here comes my favorite season of the evangelical political calendar. It's time for the righteous war to save Christmas from the evil progressives with their "Happy Holidays" and their zero-tolerance policy for nativity scenes. Those heartless liberals will attempt once again to destroy the true meaning of Christmas, burn down all the Christmas trees (not just the one outside the Fox News building), spell it as "Xmas" and generally rip all mention of God from this holiest of holidays.

This article first appeared on Salon.