Opinion

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, recently tweeted: "We now have evidence to support the story of the worst presidential political offense against the Union in American history."

OK, good. Bring it. Please.

The beginning of May before midterm elections signals the official start of primary season and the kickoff of fall campaigns. Because midterms are usually referendums on a president’s performance, the conventional view now is that Democrats are in deep trouble because Biden’s approval ratings are in the cellar.

But the conventional view doesn’t account for the Trump factor, which gives Democrats a fighting chance of keeping one or both chambers.

Who are the elite of America? If you watch Fox, or spend time in rightwing media bubbles, you’ll probably think of celebrities, musicians, actors and athletes – all those fashionable bicoastal entertainers who look down on hard-working middle

A recent ProPublica report based on IRS tax files from 2013 to 2018 shows this vision of America’s upper-crust is thoroughly misleading.

Turns out there was more than one leak of the draft opinion promising to strike down Roe. Three, according to SCOTUSBlog. The last two were in Politico. The first appeared in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

“While not formally presented as relying on a leak, the editorial transparently does,” wrote Tom Goldstein. “The most obvious example is that it predicts that Alito is drafting a majority opinion to overrule Roe, but gives no explanation for that prediction and none is apparent.”

For almost five decades, Roe v. Wade has been established American law, guaranteeing the constitutional right of choice to all Americans. Even those Supreme Court justices now ready to toss that precedent aside have previously testified under oath during their Senate confirmation hearings that they believed Roe is established law that ought to be respected.

They lied.

Despite the fact that forced childbirth has been a major goal and central organizing strategy of the GOP for approximately four decades, Republican political strategists don't exactly seem stoked about a leaked draft opinion indicating that the GOP-controlled Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade outright. Turns out that abortion rights are very popular, likely due to people's well-documented enthusiasm for fornication without procreation. With the midterms just a few months away and Democrats signaling that they intend to make this a major issue, Republicans are scrambling for a political strategy to make their mandatory childbirth policy seem not as bad of an idea as it obviously is.

On Tuesday, Axios leaked a three-page talking points memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). The strategy that the Republican campaign strategy group suggests is to lie. A lot. Lie every chance you get. Lie about everything, all the time. Lie so often that the media stops bothering to fact-check you and your opponents grow exhausted trying to disprove your lies. It's a tried-and-true trick for the GOP.

Anyone who has been reading my writing here at Salon over the past few months knows that I am a big proponent of using negative partisanship to win the midterm election. The Republicans are so outside the mainstream that the midterm elections may not be the rout everyone expects if Democrats get out of their defensive crouch and make the case.

My view is that the country is suffering from a mass case of PTSD, still reeling from four years of non-stop Trump-induced chaos. The natural way to register their dismay that things have not yet returned to a sense of normality is to "throw the bums out," which usually means the party in power. But the Republicans are so radical right now that people may just understand that they are not a viable alternative. But Democrats must spell it out.

The U.S. Supreme Court appears ready to launch a legal and political bombshell into the 2022 elections nationally and in Pennsylvania.

A leaked copy of a draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, revealed by Politico and other news organizations, would uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban and overturn the viability standard established by Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 case that established a constitutional right to abortion, and the 1992 Pennsylvania case, Planned Parenthood v Casey, which built upon it.

If a majority of Supreme Court justices follows through on its plans to outlaw abortion, then America will cross the threshold into full-blown fascism. This is controversial, so let me explain.

Any discussion of fascism quickly veers into jargon, qualifiers, and deep history, because it can cover many different movements with contradictory ideas. But there is an easy way to understand what drives fascism and how it relates to abortion.

The GOP’s coordinated tantrum about the leak of a Samuel Alito-authored draft opinion to overturn Roe should be the ultimate reminder of an essential truth about American politics in 2022.

Republicans celebrate one thing.

Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation was, to me, the end of an era. From that point, the Democrats could no longer trust the US Supreme Court to back their efforts to protect and advance individual liberties.

It used to be different.

Despite glib right-wing claims to the contrary, as many legal scholars and constitutional experts were quick to point out, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's leaked draft opinion ending abortion rights opens the door wide open for the reversal of decades of human rights litigation. At issue is Alito's rejection of the ninth amendment, which states that the "enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Or, in plain English: Plenty of rights are guaranteed by implication in the Constitution — such as a right to privacy — even if not explicitly delineated. Despite his alleged "originalism," however, Alito was quite clear that he feels the opposite is true: If it ain't singled out by name in the Constitution, it's not a right.

"The Constitution makes no reference to abortion," he writes in the draft opinion that was leaked to Politico. As political scientist Scott Lemieux noted, this is a "junior high school debate society" argument unworthy of anyone with a law degree, much less a Supreme Court seat. But it does open the door to repealing birth control rights, same-sex marriage, and decades worth of social progress that religious zealots like Alito deplore.