By @bakerbk: 'An illustrated guide to american personhood' #HobbyLobby #SCOTUS http://t.co/Tqb8lluUwt pic.twitter.com/SAMoV1MlxI
— Boing Boing (@BoingBoing) June 30, 2014
Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire, on the history of the RFRA and the revenge of ‘Little Nino’ Scalia:
… Back in the early 1990‘s, [Al] Smith and another man were denied unemployment benefits by the state of Oregon because they had tested positive for the active ingredient in peyote, which has been a sacrament in various Native American religions since before bread and wine became sacramental in Christianity. Smith pursued his case all the way up to the Nine Wise Souls then sitting on the Most High Bench, who ruled against him. Not yet short-timing his day job, Justice Antonin Scalia who, of a Sunday, takes bread and wine instead of peyote as part of his own religious rituals, wrote the majority opinion in the case…
Almost everyone from the religious right to the ACLU popped their corks over this and, in purported response, the Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. (And yes, you are still entitled to ask, “Restoration? Where’s it been?”) Bill Clinton, just beginning to triangulate himself toward re-election, signed the thing. Since then, a gradual slippage regarding that act has been quietly underway. The RFRA is no longer about peyote. It has become a Trojan Horse, sliding the country toward a de facto kind of established religion, which today’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby makes eminently clear. Religious freedom exists in the realm of medicine only to those religions that the Court finds acceptable—and, I would argue, only to those religions to which the members of the Court belong. Much will be written, and rightly so, about the boneheaded social subtext of the following nut paragraph in the 5-4 decision read today by Justice Samuel Alito. It is so obviously discriminatory toward ladies and their ladyparts that no explanation seems necessary…
Kat Stoeffel, at NYMag:
… There’s some irony here. When the ACA rolled out, right-wing commenters claimed that Democratic women wanted daddy Obama to cover their “slut pills” and reproductive rights advocates went to great pains to explain that, no, they merely wanted the insurance industry regulated to have a more up-to-date, gender equitable definition of “preventative care.” (For 62 percent of American women, it currently includes contraception.) The ruling amounts to a punt: putting the responsibility for birth control back in the hands of the government while maintaining serious yardage with regards to religious expression, not to mention the status of women’s individual sexual and reproductive lives. It’s still a political battleground, distinct from the many other places religious beliefs could intersect with health care…
Justice Ginsburg takes on all the underlying issues at stake in this exception to the RFRA. “The exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities,” she wrote. Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act “trains on women’s well being, not on the exercise of religion, and any effect it has on such exercise is incidental.” There’s also this: “Accommodations to religious beliefs or observances, the court has clarified, must not significantly impinge on the interests of third parties.” Her dissent includes a subtle reminder to question the protection of religious expression when the “third parties” all happen to be members of the same group, which has been historically discriminated against. In 1966, she points out, the owner of a restaurant chain “refused to serve black patrons based on his religious beliefs opposing integration.” Then, the court upheld the Civil Rights Act, unanimously; today it was split along gender lines.
(As a feminist, I also found it laudable that Stoeffel’s piece appeared in NYMag‘s “Daily Intelligencer” general-news blog, and was not relegated to its ladyblog “The Cut”, which is where most reproductive-news stories end up.)
Erik Loomis, at LGM:
…The absurdity of the Hobby Lobby decision (only contraceptives are exempted for religious beliefs because of sluts) is obviously part of the Republican war on women, but it is also very much a war on the poor. An IUD costs about a month’s worth of wages at the minimum wage. If an executive can’t get birth control because her employer gets too hot and bothered thinking of her having sexy time, she can afford it on her own. A Hobby Lobby floor worker? Probably not. For women workers at closely held corporations, this decision will be devastating.
The Harris case is specifically about home care workers in Illinois. Who are home care workers? Women. Poor women. Lots of African-Americans, lots of Latinos, lots of undocumented workers. Home care workers are a major emphasis for SEIU right now; a close friend of mine has spent over a decade on a campaign to organize them in one city alone. Harris threatens all of this. But moreover, it shows how little Alito and the boys care about rights for women wherever they are. It’s hardly coincidental that this case comes down the same day as the contraception mandate. The Court evidently believes that the home is not a workplace, but of course it is a workplace, especially if someone is getting paid to do work. That it is women working in the home, as it has always been, just makes it easier for conservatives to devalue that work…
.
.@NinaTotenberg Or Koch Industries, $115 bn?
— billmon (@billmon1) June 30, 2014
NotMax
“Hobby Lobbyists”
That’s shoving the cutesy-poo beyond credence.
ruemara
I genuinely wonder when the next conservative legislative stalking horse will wind up before the Supreme Court to argue that slavery is their religious belief and why are all these lesser black people wandering about instead of being put into the loving, tender care of hard working white folk who can help them unlearn their ignorant culture of violence? I hate these conservatives. I rarely hate, but these ones, I do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Listening to I forget which talking head reading the Alito opinion, it was just that absurdity that struck me. A corporation acting according to its religious convictions… how can anyone see that sentence as anything but ridiculous? This is fucking insane.
I also saw Ilyse Hogue of NARAL make a point that’s been driving me crazy: The notion that health insurance is not compensation, but a gift bestowed on the lowly workers by their liege-lord-job-creators, who can decide what their serfs may or may not do with that gift. War on women and neo-feudalism rolled into one by five crotch sniffing corporatist god-bothering goons.
ETA: anyone get a sense that this is spreading beyond the usual outraged percents of the blogosphere? I keep waiting for people besides the Tea Baggers to get mad.
schrodinger's cat
@ruemara: There are economists who argue that minimum wage laws hurt the poor.
Baud
I don’t blame Congress or Clinton for the RFRA. As Justice Ginsburg’s opinion shows, it can be interpreted as it was intended and not in the offensive way that Alito used it.
Stella B.
I was too depressed to read my usual blogs today. I’m doing Weight Watchers, but I’ve never looked at their message boards until today. The ladies of Weight Watchers are pretty darn irked today. The Hobby Lobby thread had 122 responses of which about 5 were in favor of the ruling. I’m sure that this is good for John McCain in some way.
gnomedad
@NotMax:
Well, aren’t we Mr. Crankypants tonight? Maybe this will cheer you up.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I agree. I almost love how radical it is, how they’re busily creating whole bizarre concepts and repeating them as if the whole world accepted them and always has. The pronouncement nature of this odd combination of words feels unreal, as if saying something with enough conviction makes it “true” and not just pulled out of his ass.
David Koch
@Baud: they’re nothing more than “judicial activists” who are “ruling from the bench”.
progressives need to hammer them that way.
Patrick
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It is insane. The whole point behind a corporation is to create shareholder value. Why in the world is the USSC bringing in religion into this?
And like the previous poster said about slavery; how can the USSC decline an exemption for a corporation that believes in slavery (or whatever) when it has already allowed the Hobby Lobby religious belief on birth control.
Needless to say; I can’t figure out what the heck the USSC was thinking on this one. Then again, this has become par for the course with this USSC with Citizens United and racism being in the past.
I saw earlier on a right-wing blog that they didn’t think it was fair that they had to pay for someone else’s birth control. This is such a stupid statement on so many levels. But for one, I had to pay for their stupid Iraq war. Do they even realize how selfish they are?
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That goes back a long time and we never should have accepted the original lie. Obviously, health insurance is compensation, because what else can it be? A gift? They do it with pensions too. As if people don’t earn pensions.
It was a rhetorical scam and we never should have allowed them to get away with it.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have been wondering if they’re going to start telling their employees what they can spend their paychecks on. Or what activities they’re allowed to engage in on their PTO, if they get any in the first place.
Oh, why the fuck am I looking for logical consistency or principles from conservatives? Other than “whatever the rich white dudes want”, of course.
Baud
@Kay:
It’s hard to counter because it’s done at the personal level, whenever a boss interacts with his or her workers.
Suzanne
@Stella B.: I’m doing Weight Watchers, too. Typically I find it really simple. Today I want to eat a whole cake and drink until I forget that I have a uterus.
David Koch
If Hobby Lobby said they would not allow their insurance carrier to pay HIV treatment because of their religion, Anthony Kennedy wouldn’t stand for that (rightfully so). But when it comes to women, he has no problem fucking them over.
Baud
@David Koch:
There will be a staggering amount of litigation that will happen as people try to figure out where the line for what “religious” corporations can do and can’t do.
Cacti
@David Koch:
You mean the same Anthony Kennedy who found that counting votes in Florida irreparably harmed the constitutional rights of George W. Bush?
That Anthony Kennedy?
Keith G
This country’s Right has created so much ammunition that can be used against them, and yet it seems that no one has found a way to put together a winning formula to confront them. They continually find ways to insult, disenfranchise, and objectify large numbers of our population without facing the complete accountability that is due them.
Of course they’re going to continue acting in this way as they have yet been made to consistently pay a real price for their actions.
Cacti
Personally, I look forward to the first lawsuit from a Muslim employer for an exemption for his company’s “deeply held religious beliefs”.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Cacti: Kennedy has been fairly decent on gay rights. Which is, of course, a mirror image of an “aside from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?” type of thing.
Kay
@Baud:
I think it went the other way. I think they framed it as a gift and so people thought they had to treat it as a gift.
It’s pay. It can’t be anything else. It’s all pay; health insurance, 401k, pension. It’s all compensation.
They also want it both ways. It’s a gift unless they’re bitching about hourly workers. “Well, it’s 12.50 an hour but it’s really 22 because they have health insurance!” It’s pay AND a gift, depending!
Baud
Corporations are people too!
Ken
@Patrick:
They’re fortunate in that the First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Nothing in there forbidding the Supreme Court from picking and choosing which beliefs (and denominations) get special treatment.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, I’m mad… and I’m not even a US citizen. I’m so glad I live in a country where we don’t have to put up with this shit.
SuperHrefna
@Cacti: Yes, Islam forbids paying or accepting interest which could lead to all sorts of legal shenanigans.
Jeffro
@ruemara: This, and also Cacti’s comment above: SO ready to form a corporation that believes it should have nothing to do with funding the Defense Department, or the home mortgage deduction, or the carried interest tax break for hedge fund mil, er, billionaires.
Religious exemptions and considerations are for INDIVIDUALS (and then only in certain instances), not for corporations. Why do these 5 people worship corporate autonomy uber alles? Is it just the desire for a king of some kind, to rule the masses?
David Koch
crackpot homophobes will now use this to deny service and employment to gays.
congratulations, Justice Kennedy
geg6
We aren’t people to them. Corporations are, but actual live, breathing humans with xy chromosomes aren’t. We now know that we are less than gays and on even par at best with black people. Black women should be more outraged than anyone. They are doubly less than human by virtue of race and gender.
I hate these mother fuckers with every inch of my being. Every fucking inch. They must be crushed.
SuperHrefna
@SuperHrefna: And just to make things even more fun, as far as I am aware Islam also forbids insurance.
BBA
At this point we can consider it a partial victory that the court didn’t take this opportunity to overturn Griswold and ban birth control for everyone.
polyorchnid octopunch
@SuperHrefna: Oooohhh…. yesh. Probably a good time to reach out to some Muslim company owners, see if they can sue to have banks give them interest free loans. After all, it’s an undue burden. Gotta find the right person for this one…. but it’d be so worth it.
Patrick
@Ken:
So the USSC can for all practical purposes decide which religion we should all believe in, or at the very least which religion gets to be favored. Isn’t that exactly why the original immigrants/our founding fathers left Europe, ie religious persecution?
Cassidy
Eventually, people will get angry. Most if America knows they’re being fed a shit sandwich. They’re just not willing to admit it.
geg6
I am glimpsing 60 on the horizon and ready to go all Madame DeFarge. I know how to knit and I’m not afraid to use it.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Patrick: Originalist FTW!
I really can’t underline how angry this makes me. I gotta get up offa this thing; I think I’ll go catch a band or something.
Baud
@Kay:
We need to stop calling them workers and start calling them “capital creators.”
SuperHrefna
@polyorchnid octopunch: It would be lovely to watch right wing heads explode, wouldn’t it? Islamic banking is quite a big thing internationally and I would laugh til I was sore if this despicable ruling was the wedge that brought it to the US in a big way.
polyorchnid octopunch
As an outsider looking in, how can you have both that and this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grBmQwLSlDw
Baud
@Cassidy:
They admit it. They just spend all their energy debating who who the cook is.
Heliopause
@Keith G:
They never will pay a real price, as long as the nominal left in this country thinks that blog commentary and tweets will accomplish their goals.
beltane
@BBA: No, it would have been better if they had gone all out. If they came out and banned birth control because doing so would incite so much immediate hatred towards conservatives that 2014 would be a repeat of 2006 and not 2010.
polyorchnid octopunch
@SuperHrefna: Well, banking in the West is sorely in need of reform. I don’t necessarily buy into the “interest is evil” thing, but I can’t help but note that even Adam Smith recommended never allowing anyone to charge more than 8% for a credit instrument of any kind; his reasoning was that “true wealth comes from making things; making things returns only 10% in the best of all possible years; allowing people to invest in lending money at higher rates than that will meant that resources get invested into usury rather than production; this leads inevitably to bad results for everyone: the only question is how long it takes for those bad results to reach everyone.”
Mastercard vs. Republic of California is the true demarc of the beginning of the end for the US, and by extension the rest of the West.
PurpleGirl
Say it and keep saying it: Feminism is the radical idea that women are people.
Baud
@PurpleGirl:
I happened to come across the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments recently. Sadly, much of it holds up well today.
Violet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Is there some place that someone can ask the corporation what church they go to? Does the corporation teach Sunday school? Does the corporation sing in the choir? Does the corporation drive the church van for mission trips? All those things are done by church members. If the corporation has religious convictions, they must be active in a church or other religious organization. Which one is it? Can we see the sign-in register and learn when the corporation was last in the pews?
Kay
@Baud:
I think we made progress with that. I laughed when I read that Eric Cantor announced to the House political committee that “most people are not bosses.” I can’t believe he has to say that to them, but he does. Compare that to Chuck Schumer, who said after the health care law passed that Democrats wouldn’t get any political gains out of it because white college educated people already had health insurance. True. He is aware of reality.
SuperHrefna
@PurpleGirl: Yeah. I just feel so hollow and sad when I think over how much ground we seem to have lost in the past twenty years or so.
Baud
@Kay:
And he’s the out-of-touch one!
Maybe it’s time he told his political party that most people are not men. They don’t seem to be aware of that fact either.
Keith G
@Heliopause: But they do it with such intensity and conviction, and let’s not forget…snark.
beltane
@Violet: When was the corporation baptized/confirmed, etc.? Has the corporation been ritually circumcised? Do we hold funerals when corporations go bankrupt? Do corporations go to hell? Will defunct corporations be resurrected on the judgment day and allowed to sit on the right hand of Christ? Will Pan-Am and TWA be born again to ferry Circuit City and Borders to the afterlife?
If the conservative justices were true believers and not corporatist hand puppets, they would have been too frightened to put such blasphemy in writing. We know who their real god is.
Violet
@efgoldman: Doesn’t mean we can’t ask. Just the asking sometimes raises important questions and points. What church does Hobby Lobby belong to? Is their picture in the church directory? Can we see it? Is it under “H” or “L”? Is the picture the corporate logo or something else? Can we hold hands with Hobby Lobby and pray? Why not? Because Hobby Lobby doesn’t have hands and in fact isn’t a living breathing person? Oh…..
catclub
@Cacti: well if an employee is in the hospital and the hospital serves pork, the whole hospital visit is right out.
Anne Laurie
@Baud:
Too many of Cantor’s political party think that a woman is three-fifths of a person, at best.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@BBA: They are coming after Griswold; it is the price that the Corporatists need to pay to get the Fundies to sign on to a return to Lochner era jurisprudence.
Baud
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
Must….resist…..Michele Bachmann….snark…….
⚽️ Martin
I’m always amazed how Jesus always tells people to do what is most profitable: enslave workers, deny hiring women, deny paying for healthcare benefits, etc. You’d think sooner or later Jesus would say ‘hey, do this expensive thing’ and we’d get lawsuits over employers lavishing women with benefits. Funny how that never happens.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): This is why I have no problem putting Republican politicians on the spot regarding their reproductive histories. If they are not pumping out a baby every single year they need to be asked why not. Every wingnut who doesn’t reproduce like the Duggers is, in my opinion, either infertile by the grace of God or simply a lying, hypocritical piece of shit.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@beltane: Or the wife will simply not let her husband touch her – and who could blame her?
Kay
@Baud:
Eric Cantor is already on the grift gravy train.
He’s appearing with Campbell Brown. She used to be a journalist, you know. That’s why we all have to take her uninformed opinions as fact and why she gets such prime (free) space in America’s media outlets. They know her personally, and that’s enough for them.
beltane
@Kay: Isn’t Campbell Brown married to the unindicted war criminal Dan Senor?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@beltane: The other thing about Griswold is that it is not just about birth control. It is about the right to privacy.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m sad to see Khan on that list. I like his videos. He received a lot of money from Bill Gates, so maybe that’s how he got hooked into that network.
The speaker list looked refreshingly non-bi-partisan.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Meh. The only true privacy rests in our metadata.
beltane
By the way, this decision seems to have caused quite the shitstorm on FB among women who rarely post anything political. People are planning to hand out free birth control outside of Hobby Lobby stores in protest. We don’t have any Hobby Lobby stores here or I would join them.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Baud: IMO, it is inter-related. I am willing to get just as worked up over this as I can get over the 4th A. issues with surveillance and the like.
Violet
@Baud: @Kay: Frank Luntz is on the list. First of all, didn’t he retire? Second, WTF? Is he going to be teaching them how to spin things for soundbites and how to make words change meaning?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Violet:
It’s what he does. Less effectively these days.
Kay
@Baud:
The site is fine, but the universal gushing acclaim for him is a matter of great amusement in the public school advocacy community :)
It’s a nifty website, but it’s videos of math lessons and then math problems. My fifth grader likes math and he thinks Khan is okay, but he’s about as impressed by it as I would have been had a math tutoring program been on television.
Videos on the internet are not amazing to him, as educational television was not amazing to me
He and his 5th grade friend actually questioned the public school online test prep program. They were feeding it nonsense numbers and it was supposed to be “personalizing” and they claim it puts the same series of problems up no matter what you answer. They were cackling maniacally. I don’t know what they learned. That someone got horribly ripped off on that program?
I hope they aren’t using that “data” to measure the two goofballs. It’s not at all “valid”.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s not. It’s bipartisan. The new Broad Foundation President came right from Duncan’s DOE. I think the revolving door hit him in the ass it was swinging so hard. There’s a bunch of former DOE’s working in the industry and related consultancies and business ventures.
Violet
@Kay: That’s awesome. I do that kind of thing with dumb online tests (“Which ‘Downton Abbey’ character are you?”) or surveys like that political leaning one that was going around the other day. Just keep changing the answers to see what you get.
Glad to see challenging the test makers is alive and well among the younger generations and with tests that matter more than dumb online surveys.
Kay
@Violet:
I think his retirement was a huge lie, don’t you? It was a stunt. It got him like two days of publicity, right?
They’re really good marketers and awesome lobbyists. Trust me, Luntz is right where he belongs.
burnspbesq
Remind me again why I should give a shit what Pierce or Loomis thinks, when there are folks who actually know what they are talking about weighing in.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2014/06/hobby-lobby-part-xvii-upshot-of.html
Kay
@Violet:
It really was cute because the whole thing is taken so seriously and it’s so relentlessly grim and joyless. I love how they’re still young enough to just take a notion to go wandering off after the cat in the middle of data collection.
YOUR FUTURE is ON THE LINE HERE! Put the cat down.
FlipYrWhig
Number 1, corporations don’t have religious views or rights or freedoms of conscience, being remorseless and soulless by design. Number 2, even if they did, they are being ordered to buy a certain form of health insurance, not to provide contraception; contraception is something that takes place at one degree’s remove, at least, from what the corporation has been directed to do. Done and done, throw the fucker out, it’s an obviously groundless complaint.
This is like saying that a company that doesn’t believe women should drive is being harmed by having to pay a business licensing fee that goes to the local government that might or might not be used to pave roads on which women might or might not drive. Just, no. Come the fuck on.
Violet
@Kay: I thought it was a stunt at the time. There were those articles talking about his “depression” and how he was giving it all up. It seemed ridiculous. And then about two weeks later he pops up doing pretty much the same thing he’s always done. Depression over!
I see that entitled Mrs. Dan Senor has founded some organization called “The Parents Transparency Project”, which is fighting teachers unions and tenure and so forth. They’ve come up with something called the “Common Sense Contract” (I cannot hear “common sense” these days without cringing–Sarah Palin has ruined that phrase for me) in which they’re asking for things like this:
Yes because “best teachers” in no way would translate into “lowest paid thus cheapest teachers” in the real world and would never mean that older, more highly paid teachers would be let go. Never works that way.
Kay
@Violet:
She’s horrible. The whole meat of her crusade is that teachers are pedophiles. That’s how she gets the fake headlines, then she does this whining “for the children” bit, something, something, union thugs, but the click bait is PEDOPHILES.
It’s classic conservatism. The (legit) gripe with charter school regs is it’s public money but there’s no transparency. So of course she forms a foundation for transparency in public schools! Zing! Backatcha!
She asked the “tough questions” on CNN. That’s where she learned “hardball” :)
FlipYrWhig
@burnspbesq: IANAL but it seems to me like the exemptions that were set up to placate the religiously-affiliated institutions like colleges and hospitals were themselves excessive and based on specious reasoning about the consciences of conscienceless institutions. I don’t like that and want to see it nipped in the bud before it metastasizes any further.
BenW
Someone’s probably already pointed this out, but the pics of the “activists” on the FP of the NYT are really awful. #womenincontrol? Really? Because every woman in that pic looks like she could afford birth control without insurance, so they have “control” independent of this decision, but poor women, as Erik Loomis pointed out above, have LOST CONTROL, because if they can’t afford it out of pocket, now they don’t get it.
Violet
@Kay: Interestingly, if you click through on the conference page to “Featured Speakers“, Eric Cantor is nowhere to be found. Either he’s a last minute add or he’s not “featured”
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@BenW:
Are you for real? 1. The appearances don’t matter. 2. Birth control and abortion are medical matters that are between a woman and her doctor – and no one else unless the woman chooses to bring someone else in. As a result, they should be covered by health insurance. 3. What the fuck is the matter with you?
Scamp Dog
@Violet: no, no, the principal just knows who the best teachers are. That they’re his/her best friends is entirely a coincidence. Or maybe it’s a sign of the principal’s excellent ability to judge character.
Sir Nose'D
@Baud:
True that.
Kay
@Violet:
That is funny. He was there. Virginia actually has really strict charter regs and they ignore or resist most ed reform. His state.
This is why kids cannot be reliable marketing tools:
Such a douche. He spent the day asking them to trash public schools. Good for that kid. He’s not playing that game!
chopper
i can tell you exactly how this all went down.
Scalia, Roberts and Kennedy all walk back into the chambers. Alito and Thomas are there but the icky lady-parts ‘justicettes’ are gone for the day. Thank fucking god, the harpies.
They’ve been out drinking all afternoon. Kennedy pulls a three-footer out from his robe and starts packing it up. “This calls for some G-13, assholes! Best of my stash! LET’S SHIT IT UP!”
Scalia looks over. Alito is sitting on an ottoman. “What the fuck? What happened to you, shithead?”
Alito turns his head. In a voice reminiscent of Droopy, he sighs loudly.
“I dunno, guys. This whole decision we’re about the send off. I’m not sure it makes sense.”
Scalia instantly turns red. “WHAT? FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE! THIS IS THE DEFINING MOMENT OF MY CAREER!” He yells out a bunch of dago gibberish, I don’t know what it means.
“Hold on, hold on, dogg.” Kennedy, always the cool one. “Cool it. Okay, what the fuck are you going on about?”
“Well, what if some Jehovah’s Witness company starts saying they don’t want to cover blood transfusions?” he says between sniffles. What a pussy douche. “That wouldn’t be good.”
“Holy shit! This asshole’s got a point!” Kennedy coughs out, then he blows a smoke ring. Then he puffs out a cloud that looks just like a dick and balls which floats through the ring. Awesome.
The rest sit down, crestfallen. Fucking bitches, they got us again. Shit.
After what felt like ten minutes but was really two because, well, weed and shit, Roberts suddenly shoots up. “Got it! I’ve fucking got it! Listen, shitheads, cause this is why I’m the Chief of this shit. Okay, got your fucking ears on? Alright: we put in a little paragraph in the end of the decision. We say some shit like yo dogg, this only applies to contraception. BANG! Done.”
“Waitwaitwait, but all the legal shit we just said opens up the door for all of that garbage,” Scalia says. “Fucking Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Kennedy spits under his breath.
“No, shitheads, listen. All we have to do is just say that shit. It doesn’t matter what we wrote before. We’re the supreme fucking court!”
Suddenly Thomas, who has been quietly but furiously masturbating in the corner stops and turns around. “MOTHERFUCKER!” he yells, stuffing his junk quickly back under his robe. “DID YOU SIT ON A GENIUS?”
Alito, Scalia and Kennedy all stare, mouths agape. “Motherfucker hasn’t spoken in fifteen years, so you know you’re onto something,” Kennedy croaks out. Then they ate pizza.
cmorenc
If the conservative majority is willing to live by slim 5-4 majorities to craft fundamental changes in constitutional law and statutory interpretation, they’ll have to someday (hopefully soon) live to see those changes die by 5-4 majorities. By contrast, Brown v Board of Education was 9-0 and even Roe v Wade was 7-2, not 5-4.
chopper
man, a long screed and everything, but in moderation hell. too many swears?
Eric U.
seems to me that this pokes some big holes in the corporate veil that most closely held corporations would rather not have. It’s basically a SCOTUS level recognition that small corporations are not really corporations at all.
Kay
@chopper:
I took it out of moderation for ya. Now I have to go to bed because I have to work 12 hours a day because every third day is some kind of holiday or celebration of something or other, and then I have to return 500 phone calls when I get back :)
I’m exhausted by vacation days. This summer is killing me.
Keith G
I am left to wonder why the Obama communications team thought today would be a good day to have the President address the public on his view that he needs to begin unilateral changes to the country’s immigration system.
I mean this is important policy and it could be winning politics if anyone heard and had the time to digest what he was saying.
Opportunity lost.
Original Lee
I’m pissed as hell. SCOTUS has effectively ruled that corporations are MEN. Gee, thanks, guys. I work for a closely-held corporation and am now waiting for the owner to decide that diabetes is against his religion.
David Koch
@Keith G: Cuz it was the lead story on the evening news, ding-a-ling. Hobby lobby got buried inside.
eta: just because immigration is an issue rarely discussed on the front pages of blogs doesn’t mean it doesn’t get coverage.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Keith G: Oh, that is is easy. It is because Obama is disappointing. Do I win the prize?*
*Christ, do you really want to pick on White House messaging today? Especially given that the subject on which the WH spoke is a valid one?
BenW
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Hm. I think we agree. Somehow our wires are crossed.
Petorado
If a corporation such as Hobby Lobby is going to actively discriminate against women due to the company’s alleged religious views, shouldn’t they be required to disclose such perspectives prior to hiring any women? Maybe all “Closely Held Religious Corporations” should have to include CHRC in their name, just like LLCs have that term added to their name, so everyone will publicly know who they are.
I can see this being the next round of lawsuits where “closely help” companies will deny contraception coverage at their whim without notifying their employees prior to denial of benefits. Of course this will be a “burdensome regulation” that the right will bitch about when the time comes.
pseudonymous in nc
Next time someone cheats you out of something that’s rightfully yours: you got hobbylobbied.
pseudonymous in nc
@Petorado:
There should certainly be official notification if a corporatoperson gets some old time religion. Baptismal records, perhaps?
Shortstop
@chopper: I really, really needed that laugh. I owe you.
David Koch
@burnspbesq: If you think this is a “win-win” then you’re still in the first of the five stages of grief. Let us know when you’ve returned to a reality based model of analysis.
TG Chicago
NY Mag said: “Then, the court upheld the Civil Rights Act, unanimously; today it was split along gender lines.”
I wonder how Justice Breyer feels about that.
Violet
@TG Chicago: Flattered he’s seen as one of the girls?
dww44
@burnspbesq: Maybe so, but I read Lederman’s piece at your link. Vvery lawyerly, but not exactly comprehensible to those of us not versed in interpreting lots of legalese. So, Pierce and Loomis are much easier to digest and understand.
seaboogie
Let us harness our outrage and anger, and GOTV for the mid-terms, and beyond. The 50% with the two X chromosomes has a vested interest, as do our enlightened companions. ’twill be even better than the AA Dems voting for Thad Cochran! Boys – you know that if you piss off most women, you have a bit of a situation on your hands….
Chris
@geg6:
This is pretty much the history of American conservatism in a nutshell. “States’ rights.” “Free markets.” “Religious freedom.” States have rights, corporations have rights, churches have rights… actual human beings may or may not have rights, but in either case these rights come second to those of the above entities which aren’t actually persons.
Amir Khalid
@SuperHrefna:
Not entirely true. There is takaful.
Johannes
@burnspbesq: Lederman’s a pretty smart guy, but this doesn’t work; because there’s a governmental work around, we should accept that for-profit corporations have [statutory, but the opinion often seems to forget that] free exercise rights that must be accommodated and outweigh the rights of actual people? Corporations are separate from their owners legally and financially, except when religion is involved?
Not so much.
Applejinx
Which commandments do corporations have to follow?
If they are Catholic, can the Pope excommunicate them?
Hey, the Supreme Court’s Catholic… HMMMMM…
For fuck’s sake, someone send up the Pope-signal D:
Fred
Actually I don’t see why a corporation would need to justify it’s religious beliefs by trotting out share holders. Just declare the company’s affiliation in the articles of incorporation and presto: Slumlord INC. is officially a Christian Scientist, a Seventh Day Adventist or whatever gets it’s little corporate soul to Heaven and saves it bucks on this side of the veil of tears.
Paul in KY
@polyorchnid octopunch: Adam Smith was a very smart man.
Paul in KY
@efgoldman: Agree. Any person here who ever voted for GW Bush and/or Nader should feel deep, deep shame.
Paul in KY
@Keith G: Hope he hits that hard today.
Peter
@efgoldman: That was my thought when I heard that Alito had written the opinion — Roberts was willing to join it, but didn’t want to take responsibility for writing it. Let Alito get the historical trashing.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes. The question is how long it will last.
Matt McIrvin
@TG Chicago: Proud, I hope.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): The activists BenW was talking about were anti-contraception-coverage activists, waving signs about how they didn’t need “bosses’ handouts.”
LAC
@Keith G: funny I heard him. And it was reported on. Maybe you missed it.
LAC
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): it is hard to hear over the sound of Keith ‘ narrative whining machine. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!