Good morning!

Lia: I don’t laugh as much as I’d like to about anything these days. Sometimes I think I’ve lost my sense of humor, which is not something I want to lose. So when something strikes my funny bone, like you just did, I’m so grateful I still have it. Laughing out loud. Thank you for showing me I still got it.

Steve: I couldn’t help but respond because I’m laughing out loud at your comment too. So thank you. I love the way you think women aren’t fit to judge men in politics. You’re probably one who thinks men are better at making decisions over women’s bodies too. I agree with ZL, go stroke, and I will add, that tiny thing between your legs, at home in private, thanks.

Yesica: Yes!

Since I’m in that kind of mood this morning, here’s something else to keep you laughing into this holiday weekend. It’s hilarious in a unsettling kind of way. 😅 From the Daily Kos:

Jimmy Kimmel shows how some people will fall for any ridiculous lie about Hillary

The way that propaganda works is that once people develop a certain perception of something, it is very hard to disabuse people of that opinion. A case in point has played out over the primaries this season with Hillary Clinton. The general belief by many is that Hillary Clinton is a manipulative, cynical veteran of politics who is interested in her own power.

Depending on what side of the political spectrum you fall on this perception, while based in many good bits of evidence, it’s seemingly exaggerated when you compare Clinton to virtually every single liberal moderate politician in America. Bernie and Hillary voted on the same things 93 percent of the time. We don’t need to have a pie fight about that. That’s a fact.

Once again, I’ll note that I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary and that too is a fact. Jimmy Kimmel Live took on that perception in a piece that they occasionally do called “Lie Witness News.” The premise is that they ask people about something in the news, in this case the recent release of more (mostly) unremarkable personal email server emails from Clinton. The humor comes in that they ask people, while leading those people with more and more outrageous “facts” about what was revealed in the news.

Some of the jokes are cute:

Can you believe how many Nigerian Princes she responded to?

To considerably more sinister:

What did you think about the fact that she accepted Osama Bin Laden’s LinkdIn request?

In every case, the people being interviewed lie by saying they heard, or read or know, about these “facts.” In every case, they say things like “it doesn’t surprise me,” and “I can believe it.” The point in the end is that whether or not Hillary Clinton has done anything wrong, or the degree to which she has done things wrong, matters not at all to someone who is ready to apply this general brush of corruption and ill intent on her.

It’s also funny.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

😛😜😝

Happy Saturday, everyone! Thanks for being here.

Blog me. 

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

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Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Good Morning!

Another write about another Wonderful Woman Of The World. From ThinkProgress:

The Supreme Court’s ‘Wise Latina’ Notches Her First Key Victory

Twenty-five years ago on Wednesday, the greatest lawyer of the twentieth century confronted his own mortality.

“I’m old,” Justice Thurgood Marshall told a room full of reporters. “I’m getting old and falling apart.” The man who time and time again had forced Jim Crow to retreat using only the power of his own arguments was leaving the Supreme Court.

Justice Marshall’s retirement left a void on the nation’s highest Court for nearly two decades. Marshall was, as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the year after his retirement, “a man who knew the anguish of the silenced and gave them a voice.” This was a man who’d personally faced lynch mobs while struggling to save innocent black men from a death sentence, a lawyer of unmatched skill and poise who was chased out of Southern towns with warnings that “n*ggers ain’t welcome in these parts after dark.”

Thurgood Marshall, Justice O’Connor wrote, continuously forced his colleagues on the Supreme Court to “respond not only to the persuasiveness of legal argument but also to the power of moral truth.”

Justice Thurgood Marshall (AP Photo, File))

At a superficial level, Justice Sonia Sotomayor is an unusual candidate to take up Marshall’s mantle. Princeton and Yale-educated, Sotomayor began her career as a prosecutor before representing clients such as Fendi and Ferrari.

And yet, Sotomayor’s early work as an assistant district attorney gave her a unique insight into just how easy it is for police and prosecutors to abuse their power. As NYU Law Professor Rachel Barkow writes, Sotomayor’s “experience as an assistant district attorney and trial judge” appears “to have made her attuned to the need for checks on government power.” The justice’s “view in criminal cases is firmly grounded in how things actually work in practice” and “how real people interact with criminal justice policies in the vast majority of cases in the system.”

More than just a voice of criminal defendants who are often pushed around by a system designed to empower law enforcement, however, Sotomayor has also embraced Marshall’s role as the Court’s teller of difficult truths about race. During her confirmation hearing, conservatives tore into Sotomayor for saying in a 2001 speech that she would “would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” But her tenure on the bench has shown that there is wisdom in these remarks. Sotomayor is one of only three people of color who have sat on the Supreme Court, and she brings a perspective that was long absent in the justices’ conference room.

“It is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims” of humiliating police scrutiny, Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion last week in Utah v. Strieff. “Race matters,” Sotomayor wrote two years earlier, in response to conservative colleagues who insist that the only way to eradicate racism is to ignore the fact that race exists.

Race matters to a young man’s view of society when he spends his teenage years watching others tense up as he passes, no matter the neighborhood where he grew up. Race matters to a young woman’s sense of self when she states her hometown, and then is pressed, “No, where are you really from?”, regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country. Race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language, which he does not understand because only English was spoken at home. Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: “I do not belong here.”

These words, like her warning about racial injustice in Strieff, were written in a dissenting opinion. Yet they also presaged one of Sotomayor’s greatest — and most unexpected — triumphs.

The Triumph

No one thought Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin would turn out the way it did.

Fisher was a case, spearheaded by the same activist behind the Court’s decision gutting much of the Voting Rights Act, targeting affirmative action in university admissions. When Fisher first reached the Supreme Court in 2012, few people expected race-conscious admissions programs to survive contact with the justices. Oral arguments in the case, where potential swing-voter Justice Anthony Kennedy complained that the University of Texas had created an admissions program where “what counts is race above all,” only heightened this sense that affirmative action was on its death bed.

Then Sonia Sotomayor stepped up to the plate.

According to Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic, the justices initially split 5-3 after the 2012 oral arguments in Fisher (Justice Elena Kagan was recused), with the majority intending to strike down UT’s affirmative action plan. In response, Sotomayor “drafted a dissent suffused with the personal experience of her Puerto Rican Bronx background.” The justice’s message to her conservative colleagues, according to Biskupic, could be summarized as “you haven’t lived it and you don’t get it.”

With tensions growing within the Court, Justice Stephen Breyer, a center-left Clinton appointee, saw an opportunity to broker a compromise, and he eventually convinced Kennedy to pen a more moderate opinion allowing affirmative action to survive another day. Seven of the eight justices hearing this case eventually signed on to this opinion.

The justice’s message to her conservative colleagues . . . could be summarized as “you haven’t lived it and you don’t get it.”

Yet, while Kennedy’s first Fisher opinion permitted the University of Texas to continue using race as a small factor in its admissions process, it was widely viewed as nothing more than a stay of execution for affirmative action. The opinion returned the case to one of the most conservative federal appeals courts in the country, and it did so with instructions that no affirmative action may survive judicial review unless there are “no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity.” Sotomayor and Breyer’s efforts may have bought affirmative action a few more years, but the writing on the wall still seemed to show that race-conscious admissions was on its death bed.

Flash forward to last Thursday, when Kennedy handed down his second opinion in the Fisher litigation. “Something strange has happened since our prior decision in this case,” Justice Samuel Alito complained in response to Kennedy’s opinion. He had a point. For the first time in nearly 30 years on the Supreme Court, Kennedy voted to uphold a race-conscious admissions program. Affirmative action was saved.

Justice Sotomayor, for her part, played only a small supporting role in Fisher‘s final chapter. She quietly joined Kennedy’s majority opinion without writing an additional word. But she did not need to. The groundwork she’d laid the last time Fisher was before the Court delivered a result that once seemed impossible.

The Struggle

Yet, despite her quiet success in Fisher, Sotomayor spends far more time in dissent than she does building unexpected majorities. At a time when much of the nation is awakening to the extra burden people of color carry within our criminal justice system, Sotomayor is a lonely voice — often a voice speaking only for herself and no other justice — about the need for greater checks on prosecutors, prison officials and law enforcement.

Just weeks into her second term on the Court, Sotomayor took up the case of Anthony Pitre, a Louisiana inmate engaged in a self-destructive protest — after Pitre was transferred against his will to a particular prison facility, he protested the decision by refusing to take his HIV medication. Prison officials allegedly retaliated against this decision by “subjecting him to hard labor in 100-degree heat,” duties he could not safely perform in his weakened medical state.

Both a trial court and an appeals court rejected Pitre’s plea for lighter duty. A magistrate judge even labeled his claims “frivolous” and wrote that Pitre was “hoist by his own petard” for exacerbating his own medical condition to the point where he was unable to perform hard labor. The Supreme Court voted not to hear Pitre’s case, with Sotomayor as the lone voice registering dissent.

Citing “the principle that a competent person has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment” and precedents establishing that prisons may not inflict “punitive treatment [that] amounts to gratuitous infliction of ‘wanton and unnecessary’ pain,” Sotomayor offered scorn for the magistrate judge’s approach to this case. “I cannot comprehend how a court could deem” Pitre’s allegations “frivolous,” she wrote.

“To be sure, Pitre’s decision to refuse medication may have been foolish and likely caused a significant part of his pain,” Sotomayor admitted. “But that decision does not give prison officials license to exacerbate Pitre’s condition further as a means of punishing or coercing him.”

Sotomayor similarly took up the charge of Israel Leija, a man who allegedly was unlawfully shot and killed by a police officer after leading police on a high-speed chase and threatening to shoot at them if they maintained pursuit. In an unsigned order, a majority of the Court held that the officer who killed Leija was immune from suit because he did not “violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

Only Sotomayor dissented. The officer, she wrote, “fired six rounds in the dark at a car traveling 85 miles per hour. He did so without any training in that tactic, against the wait order of his superior officer, and less than a second before the car hit spike strips deployed to stop it.” This, she added, is simply not allowed. “It is clearly established that the government must have some interest in using deadly force over other kinds of force” before it can take lethal action against a suspect. Even dangerous criminals have this right.

Neither Pitre nor Leija was a sympathetic litigant. One was a convicted criminal who willfully endangered his own health and then demanded an accommodation for doing so. The other behaved recklessly and directly threatened police. But Sotomayor’s insight in both cases was that no one loses their constitutional rights because they are unsympathetic — or even because they may have behaved badly.

This, after all, is the core insight behind a Constitution that protects the rights of the criminally accused — individuals that, by their very nature, are likely to be unsympathetic.

*****

The forum is now open.

Talk to me. 

Happy Friday!

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Good Morning!

I love when I discover someone who is doing something wonderful for the environment. As I’ve said before, we count on our environment to sustain our lives. If we don’t take care if it, we will for sure perish, and so will the plant and animal life, but Earth will continue to live on in whatever manner it is left in.

I so want us to take care of our Mother Earth so that we and all of the other life can continue to live and prosper on this beautiful rock that we reside on.

A write from ThinkProgress:

This 21-Year-Old May Have Found The Way To Clean Up The Plastic In Our Oceans

Boyan Slat wants to start the largest ocean clean up ever with the help of nets and ocean currents. He began testing his prototype this month.

Boyan Slat was just 16 when he realized he wanted to rid the oceans of plastic. It all happened after he dove into the problem in the most literal way while snorkeling in Greece and finding more drifting plastic than fish swimming.

“I thought, that’s a real problem. How can we come up with a solution for that?” Slat recalled during an interview with ThinkProgress.

Indeed, the problem is real and large. Around eight million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans every year, according to a 2015 study. In addition, recent research found so-called garbage patches in every major ocean. Plastic is so pervasive that it’s been found in sea ice, and also inside 50 percent of all species of seabirds, 66 percent of all species of marine mammals, and all species of sea turtles.

Once back in his native Netherlands, Slat delved into the topic as people told him that cleaning up the ocean was impossible. Still, Slat, a young inventor who by then already held the world record for most high-pressure rockets simultaneously launched, persisted until he found what he was looking for.

“I saw this animation where they used computer models to show that plastic actually moves” through ocean currents, Slat, now 21, said. “And then I thought, why should you move through the ocean if the ocean can move through you.”

Slat, chief executive officer of The Ocean Clean Up, has taken his eureka moment and turned it into a collection system based on floating barriers attached to the sea bed that use the ocean’s energy to gather plastic waste. After obtaining over $2 million through crowdfunding and more from Dutch government financing, Slat unveiled the first prototype last week in the North Sea, just off the coast of Netherlands.

Less than a mile in length, this prototype is but 10 percent the size of the actual system Slat wants to build to conduct what he describes as “the largest clean-up in history” on a large mass of marine debris floating in the Pacific Ocean called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The prototype will be in the North Sea for a year as the foundation tests if the system can withstand corrosion, storms, and more in the open sea.

“The question that we are trying to answer with this prototype is: can we build a floating barrier which is able to survive at sea for years,” said Slat. In the next twelve months, sensors will track the prototype’s every move and gather data to inform the development of the larger system. The North Sea’s minor storms are actually worse than the most powerful storms in the Pacific Ocean, Slat said. “It’s pretty safe to say that if it survives here it will survive anywhere, and certainly in the [area] of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch where we intend to deploy it.”

The Ocean Cleanup’s cleaning technology uses long floating barriers creating a v-shaped artificial coastline that catches ocean debris in its center. There, a solar-powered hydraulic pump and conveyor system scoop up waste that boats then collect and take to landfills or recycling centers. This suggests a massive logistical effort depending on how far from shore the system is placed, and the sorting of trash or other bycatch that would follow. Right now however, testing the floating barriers is crucial, so for the next year, they are focusing solely on the barrier. Therefore, plastic collection is unlikely. But “if that goes well we should be ready to deploy the first operational pilot system late next year, and that should put us on track to start the largest clean up in history by 2020,” Slat said.

Slat’s plan has received some criticism, however. One worry is that the barriers will cause too much bycatch — where marine life gets accidentally caught and dies, normally in fishing nets — though the foundation’s preliminary impact statement study found a low risk of that happening. “There shouldn’t be any impact because the barrier is 1.5 meters deep (roughly 4 feet),” Slat said. “It’s really small when compared to the Pacific Ocean, and the current flows underneath it.” Still, he said this test is part of making sure the system is safe. “We are not only testing the technology,” Slat said.

Chelsea M. Rochman, a marine ecologist at the University of Toronto who’s studied the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, welcomed the clean up plan, though she favors preventing plastic from reaching the sea in the first place. “I personally think that preventing it before it goes into the ocean … is better than placing something that large in the middle of the ocean where it’s very hard to monitor,” she said. “Putting things like what he’s doing at the mouth of a river may also be more effective.”

One example of a comparable system placed in a river is Baltimore’s inner harbor water wheel, also known as Mr. Trash Wheel. This device uses the Jones Falls River current to turn a water wheel which picks up debris into a dumpster barge. When the current is weak, a solar panel is in place to provide the necessary power. Since 2014, the cartoon-looking Mr. Trash Wheel has collected 420 tons of trash, including hundreds of thousands of plastic bottles, polystyrene containers, plastic bags, and million of cigarette butts, according to the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore.

The Inner Harbor Water Wheel, or “Mr. Trash Wheel” to locals, combines old and new technology to harness the power of water and sunlight to collect litter and debris flowing down the Jones Falls River.

But whether the plastic collection happens in rivers or oceans, Rochman said solving ubiquitous plastic pollution requires “people like Boyan, who are doing it on their own.” At the same time, she said, more top-down solution like the federal ban on microbeads approved in December or plastic bag bans need to happen. Furthermore, developed countries have to help emerging countries in creating better waste management, she said, since emerging nations are increasingly contributing to plastic pollution. In fact, more than half of all plastic reaching the oceans comes from China, Indonesia, the Philipines, Thailand, and Vietnam, according to the Ocean Conservancy.

“I don’t think there is one solution to plastic debris, I really don’t,” said Rochman. “I think it’s like hundreds of little things and the more that we have that are out there and that are highlighted, I think the greater chance that we have.”

*****

Readers: This is so cool. This young man, Slat, has come up with a wonderful idea, and it seems like it is going to work. So I’m excited that in spite of people telling him it was impossible, he held his vision and persisted. As much as I agree with Chelsea M. Rochman, we need to prevent plastic from reaching the sea in the first place, the fact is right now, we have seas full of plastic, and something needed to happen to rid our oceans of the debris that is harming the wildlife.

The fact that Slat, got two million in crowdfunding just tells you how many people are concerned about our oceans and want to do something about it. It took Slat’s epiphany and vision to see it through. I applaud him. I’m excited to see this come to fruition. The fact that plastic has been found in sea ice, and also inside 50 percent of all species of seabirds, 66 percent of all species of marine mammals, and all species of sea turtles, is just heartbreaking. I can’t imagine that his invention would leave the sea life in a worse state than they are now. Let’s hope that it’s safe for our underwater friends, and this year of testing will confirm that.

Thoughts?

Blog me. 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"

Good Morning!

Hi, Devin: Of course. I had a feeling this was your thing. Would love to hear more, so yes please.

Hi, Lin: I HOPE to as well. I don’t see it being a problem as long as we women stick together and make it happen. Speaking of making it happen…wow. You girlz really went for it, supported each other, rallied together, and succeeded in getting your first female leader. Amazing! So happy for you! I’m speechless. I hope the women here are reading and can get excited enough to do what you all did together. YOU are the inspiration. Thank you for all the wonderful wishes and support.

I can’t help but dedicate this write to you, the rest of the girlz, and all the readers who commented on this victory for women. It shows that when women succeed, things happen. Lots of wonderful things happen. Social Butterfly: I gave gratitude. Nice, Ruth, AF: I agree!

Wonderful Women of The World is usually a write reserved for Sundays, but you can bet this year I will be including them on any day that I please. Here’s a WWOTW Stephanie Toti featured in a write from the Huff Po:

This Lawyer’s First Supreme Court Case Just Decided The Fate Of Abortion Rights

Stephanie Toti, 37, is arguing the biggest abortion case of the decade before the Supreme Court next week.

It was pouring rain, but the Capitol Police would not let the 26-year-old and her colleagues pitch a tent. So they laid in sleeping bags on the concrete, miserable, huddled together. The next morning, they stood in line in their soaking-wet clothes, hoping to get seats for oral arguments in the most important abortion rights case of the last decade.

After camping in the rain all night, Toti and her co-workers — junior employees at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group that defends abortion rights around the globe — managed to nab a few spots in the last row.

“Some of our colleagues who had tickets to the arguments came around in the morning and brought us suits so we could change our clothes after we got into the courthouse and be appropriately dressed,” Toti said. “I remember sitting in the back and thinking, ‘Wow, this courtroom is so big!’”

Toti’s side lost. In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the high court upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act — a federal law passed in 2003 that prohibited a specific kind of surgical abortion procedure.

Now, a decade later, Toti is preparing to argue her first Supreme Court case — the most significant abortion trial of this century. On March 2, she’ll take the lead in oral arguments on Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a case that could determine whether women in Texas and across the country will have access to abortion services in their communities.

The case challenges the constitutionality of two Texas abortion restrictions passed in 2013 that were designed to shut down most of the clinics in the state. The decision will not only determine the fate of abortion access in Texas; it will also send a signal to other states about the appropriateness of similar laws.

Most litigators who argue big cases before the Supreme Court are white men who have done it before. An elite group of 66 lawyers — only eight of whom are women — argued nearly half of the cases before the high court from 2004 to 2012, according to a 2014 Reuters analysis of 17,000 attorneys. Some of those attorneys have argued dozens of cases before the court, and nearly half of them are graduates of Harvard or Yale law schools who clerked for Supreme Court justices after graduation. That narrow representation turns the court into what the Reuters investigators described as an “echo chamber.”

But in the most consequential abortion rights cases, the reproductive rights movement has repeatedly turned to relatively inexperienced women.

Sarah Weddington (WWOTW!)was 27 when she argued and won Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion throughout the United States. Weddington had no previous experience with the high court. “Because I hadn’t been able to get a job with a law firm, I didn’t have any real experience,” Weddington told Ms. Magazine last year. “I had done one adoption for my uncle, some divorces for people with no real assets to divide up, a couple of wills for people with very little money. I had not done Big Law.”

In 1992, reproductive rights advocates chose Kathryn Kolbert (WWOTW!) to represent them in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which challenged a Pennsylvania law requiring a 24-hour waiting period and spousal notification before a woman could obtain an abortion. Kolbert, then a 40-year-old attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, had only argued one case before the Supreme Court, but she claimed a narrow victory over Pennsylvania’s Republican attorney general. The court ruled that states can regulate abortion, but cannot place an “undue burden” on the right to obtain one. 

Being underestimated is “frustrating, but motivating,” Toti said.

In the 2010 midterm elections, a new crop of ultra-conservative Republicans swept statehouses across the country, bringing with them a fresh determination to rid the country of legal abortion. Over the next five years, these lawmakers passed an unprecedented number of abortion restrictions that shut down dozens of clinics across the country. Their strategy was simple: Instead of passing outright bans on legal abortion that would be difficult to defend in court, states passed so many new regulations on abortion clinics and doctors that few providers would be able to meet the requirements and stay open.

In 2013, Texas enacted two of these so-called TRAP laws (“TRAP” stands for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers). The laws mandate that all abortions take place in ambulatory surgical centers, or mini-hospitals, and that all abortion providers must have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The extensive renovations required to turn a clinic into a mini-hospital, such as specific hallway widths, large janitors’ closets and new ventilation systems, are too expensive for most clinic owners to undertake. And hospitals in Texas often refuse to grant admitting privileges to abortion providers for political or religious reasons that have nothing to do with the doctor’s experience or safety record.

By the middle of 2014, 20 of the state’s 42 clinics had shut down, forcing many women in poor, rural areas of the state to travel up to 300 miles to the nearest clinic. Women’s health advocates complained that the restrictions did not appear to be medically necessary — abortions are already remarkably safe, and in the event of an emergency, hospitals have to admit women whether the doctor performing the abortion has admitting privileges or not. “These laws don’t provide any material benefit to abortion patients,” Toti said.

In August 2014, the Center for Reproductive Rights — with Toti as lead counsel — sued Texas, arguing that the new restrictions were irrelevant to women’s health and imposed an unconstitutional burden on their access to safe and legal abortion. Toti won in district court and lost in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In November, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case.

Toti’s task in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt is to convince the court — specifically, Kennedy — that the new regulations are not medically necessary, that lawmakers passed them with the sole intent of eradicating legal abortion in Texas, and that the rules do indeed impede women’s ability to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion.

Her team has taken a novel approach in its argument, submitting a document to the court in which 113 female attorneys share stories of their own abortions and explain how access to the procedure allowed them to break the cycles of poverty, abuse and teenage motherhood in their families and rise into successful careers.

The state of Texas will argue that the clinic regulations are necessary to protect the health and safety of women. “The state has wide discretion to pass laws ensuring Texas women are not subject to substandard conditions at abortion facilities,” Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, said in a statement when the Supreme Court agreed to review the case last November.

The death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this month does not change much about Toti’s case. If Kennedy sides with Whole Woman’s Health, the Texas restrictions will be struck down. But if he sides with the state, that will create a 4-4 tie, which will mean that a lower court decision that upheld Texas’ abortion restrictions will stand.

As she prepares for next week’s oral arguments, Toti is trying to avoid psychoanalyzing Kennedy. Instead, she is practicing with experienced Supreme Court lawyers who shoot rapid-fire questions at her in moot courts, interrupting her as the justices will. These dress rehearsals can be humbling.

“There have definitely been moments of remorse,” she said. “Everyone’s jumping in and asking these really hard questions, and I reach a point where I’m like, ‘When is this going to end?’”

At the gym or at the grocery store, Toti listens to audio recordings of past oral arguments on her headphones. Sometimes a dream about the case will wake her up in the middle of the night, and she’ll jump out of bed to scribble down the ideas cycling through her head. The notes rarely make any sense the next morning. “I’m not going to give you a specific example,” she said, laughing, “because I don’t want to tip off the other side to the kind of nonsense I’m coming up with.”

When the Supreme Court agreed to take the case, Toti’s bosses briefly considered replacing her with a more experienced Supreme Court lawyer. She lobbied to keep the case, noting that she had already taken the lead in district and appellate arguments. She convinced them. When she found out she’d argue the case, she was “really excited,” she recalled. “And then, you know, a moment later, slightly terrified.”

Lawrence, her co-counsel, isn’t as worried.

“Stephanie knows the case backwards and forwards,” he said. “Every nook and cranny of the case, she knows. That is an asset that cannot be undervalued.”

“I would not have wanted anyone else to argue this case,” he added. “Including myself.”

*****

Readers: The story may be out about the SCOTUS decision to reject Texas’s attempt to block access to abortions to women in its state, but the story to be told about the woman who argued it before that court deserves my blog time too. Talk about commitment to her fellow sisters. This woman has got it going –  Toti is focused and tenacious even in the face of men not respecting her position as lead counsel. I so applaud her for her efforts, for her “dream ideas,” for hanging in there under intense pressure. Yes, millions of women counted on her and she didn’t disappoint.

As usual it takes a female to make clear the negative impact laws men pass to impede the equality of women and their right to determine their own health care. Since no man can truly walk in a woman’s shoes, he can certainly try to obstruct progress, and unfortunately he has in the past, but he can’t understand the negative impact of his laws, nor will he care as much about them because those laws don’t affect men.

The proof is in the fact that three relatively inexperienced women have argued and won the three most important cases in America history. 

This is a more staggering feat than one would imagine on first blush until one learns that there is an elite group of 66 lawyers who have argued nearly half of the cases before the high court from 2004 to 2012, according to a 2014 Reuters analysis of 17,000 attorneys, and only 8 of them have been women.  I believe my point about men not truly understanding applies here too. This is where sympathy ends and empathy takes over.

Can you imagine what women could do for women, for the country, if we were in power positions? I can. 

If women wake up, they will see why all the more this demands a woman get her chance to not only change the often draconian laws men have passed to the detriment of women, but to promote new legislation that will right the ship. I for one am ready for it, and am planning on doing my best to ensure that our girl Hillary is our next president. I KNOW there are plenty of women who will join me. I’m counting on all of you. The time is now and there is no better time than now. #I’mWithHer.

Herbert: How lucky are you?! I wish I could’ve been there to see our President. It would’ve been one of the highlights of my life.

So nice to hear all about PRIDE from so many of you! Janice: Wow – so many films being shown. Cool. I didn’t know about that. Thanks for letting me know. Please Brittany et al: Send me notice of your PRIDE events ahead of time and I’d be happy to include them in my write next year! Karen: Thanks for the heads-up for Oakland in September.

Patricia: I love the idea too. He’s got my vote.

Ohh. I love ending on an up note. 

Your turn, Blog this BABE. 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

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Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Good Morning!

Woo hoo! A victory for women!! Great news. 

Thank you SCOTUS…Specifically: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, along with Stephen G. Breyer, who wrote the majority opinion, and Justice Anthony Kennedy.

How will this ripple effect other States? Read on…

Here’s the write from the NY times:

Abortion Ruling Could Create Waves of Legal Challenges

Dr. Willie Parker at Reproductive Health Services of Montgomery in February in Montgomery, Ala. Dr. Parker, a roving doctor who performs abortions at two clinics in Alabama and at a clinic in Mississippi, said on Monday that the Texas decision was “a huge victory.” CreditMelissa Golden for The New York Times

The latest admitting-privilege law, though a weaker one than that in Texas, is due to take effect on July 1 in Florida. Gov. Rick Scott said he was studying the implications of Monday’s Supreme Court decision. The Florida law allows clinics, as an alternative, to have a general transfer agreement with a nearby hospital, but it is unclear whether all of the state’s clinics can comply.

The clearest and probably quickest effect of the Supreme Court decision will be in the other states with admitting-privilege laws — which mainstream medical groups say are medically unnecessary, and which clinics in some regions cannot meet because of hostility to abortion.

Such laws threatened to force the shutdown of four of five clinics in Alabama, three of four clinics in Louisiana and the sole abortion clinic operating in Mississippi. Given Monday’s decision, none of the laws in those states, or in others where similar requirements are temporarily blocked, including Kansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, are likely to survive.

Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, said in a statement: “Today the court has put women’s health and safety on the back burner for the profits of Planned Parenthood and abortion providers.”

He added: “As a pro-life legislator, I will continue to support legislation that protects the life of an unborn child and the health of the mother.”

On the other side of the issue, Dr. Willie Parker, who as a roving doctor who performs abortions at two Alabama clinics in cities where he cannot obtain admitting privileges and at the one clinic in Mississippi, said with relief that the Texas decision was “a huge victory.”

After years in which ever more forceful anti-abortion laws spread in the South, he said, “now the chain reaction can go in the other direction.”

Admitting-privilege requirements that are now in effect in Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee may also come under new challenge. Five other states, besides Texas, impose some form of surgery-center standards on clinics performing abortions in the first trimester. The effect of the new ruling may have to be considered state by state, legal experts said.

While surgery-center laws outside Texas have forced a few clinics to shut down, the laws in several states including Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Virginia allow for waivers to the strict requirements, allowing some existing clinics to be exempt from rules governing, for example, storage space or flooring materials; the Texas law struck down Monday was, by comparison, inflexible.

Because the Supreme Court case was focused on provisions that were justified in terms of women’s health, the ruling is likely to have a less direct effect on some other contested abortion restrictions such as waiting periods or ultrasound requirements.

But the same standards would presumably apply to legal efforts to restrict nonsurgical, medication abortions in the name of protecting women. Battles are underway, for example, in some rural states over whether doctors can remotely prescribe abortion-inducing drugs. The greatest effect of the decision may come in the future, as the battle over abortion takes new forms.

Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the New York-based legal group that represented Texas clinics before the Supreme Court, said, “This opinion makes it clear that the court is going to look at the stated justification for a law, and look at the burdens it imposes.”

“It’s about making sure that regulations are truly justified,” she said.

For now, the Supreme Court is expected to make sure that states where cases are pending, like Louisiana and Mississippi, follow the principles laid out on Monday.

*****

Readers: I’m soo sick of men making comments, no…decisions, about women’s health as if they have a vagina of their own and the ability to give birth. Last time I checked they don’t. That’s a nod to you, Paul Ryan, and all the other anti-abortionists who want to control women and their rights over their bodies. They aren’t concerned about protecting women’s health like they espouse.

How is it better for a woman’s health, when the state a woman resides in to get an abortion severely limits her access to safe and legal procedures? How is it better for a woman’s health when she is in a desperate situation and may resort to an unlicensed rogue practitioners because she has no other choice? How is it better for a woman’s health when all she wants is to have an abortion but is faced with stressful situations from abortion clinics who, discourage her desires, make her go through long waiting periods, and mandate fetal sonograms?

I don’t know about you, but if that’s your way of protecting my health, I want nothing to do with you, thank you. Just let me make my own decisions freely as I should be able to since abortion is legal.

I can’t believe that in this day and age we’re still talking about and fighting over this. We have the right to have an abortion but those who oppose are always trying to make it hard for women to exercise that right. I will echo Hillary’s tweet:

This is a victory and a good reason to celebrate. AND we aren’t done yet.

What’s on your mind? Blog me. 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2016

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"