RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/06/abortion-politics-at-a-late-stage/

“The Supreme Court’s decision to accept Alito’s draft has handed a lot of painful moral decisions to all the voters and legislators in fifty states. Many surprises lie ahead. But most Americans seem unlikely to endorse post- and partial-birth abortion with the nearly unanimous alacrity of the Senate Democrats.”

Now that the US Supreme Court has adopted Justice Alito’s leaked draft judgment and overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade precedent that found a constitutional right to abortion in the ‘penumbras’ of the US Constitution, it will be a revolution in American life. It will be a democratic revolution too, because it won’t outlaw abortion—as pro-choice protesters angrily claim—but instead transfer decisions on it from the US federal judiciary to the voters and legislators of the fifty states.

Doubtless that will bring us many, various and unpredictable legal surprises. For, though you would never guess it from the media, neither most Americans nor other Westerners think or know a great deal about abortion law. Sixteen years ago, I described my experiences when the topic was raised over dinner tables in Washington and Paris:

Washington liberal: “Mr O’Sullivan, our American obsession with abortion is so embarrassing. Why can’t we be like Europe? They’re much more sophisticated. It’s not even a political issue there. Please pass the blue sweetener.”

Myself: “Well, that may be because the laws in most European countries are much stricter than those in the US. Women have no constitutional right to an abortion. In Britain, for instance, except in cases of severe handicap, abortions are not permitted after the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.”

Washington liberal: “What! That’s barbaric.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-6-23-progressive-utopian-vision-versus-the-constitution

It’s already been a bad week in the Supreme Court for progressive shibboleths. Just today, the key provision of New York’s gun restriction regime — under which the authorities had discretion to deny you a gun permit if they thought the reason you gave for wanting one was not good enough — got struck down under the Second Amendment. For what it’s worth, I’ve long thought that that provision was obviously unconstitutional, and that the Second Circuit’s decision upholding it was not a good faith application of existing Supreme Court precedent. In practice, the authorities denied almost all requests for gun permits except from politicians, big political donors (to Democrats) and celebrities. The decision has caused a good deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth over in the precincts of the Left.

And there’s plenty more to come. Without doubt you are already familiar with the case involving Mississippi’s abortion law, likely to spell the end of the long reign of Roe v. Wade. But today I’m going to focus on another high-impact case, West Virginia v. EPA. This one was argued back in February, but the decision still has not been issued. They tend to issue the decisions in the most important cases at the very end. In the West Virginia case, there is significant potential that the Supreme Court could significantly rein in the regulatory assault that the Biden Administration is currently waging against the fossil fuel industries, and maybe some other regulatory assaults as well.

You can tell that there is concern over this one because the New York Times is not waiting around for the decision to start its parade of hit pieces. On Monday, the lead story, occupying about half of the front page, dealt with this case, with the headline “Republican Drive to Tilt Courts Against Climate Action Reaches a Crucial Moment.” The byline is Coral Davenport.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/3535437-bidens-war-on-oil-is-funding-putins-war-on-ukraine/

President Biden’s bizarre and implacable hostility to U.S. oil producers is helping Russia win its war against Ukraine.

No joke, as Biden might say. Not only has the president’s unswerving effort to squash domestic oil and gas production caused higher prices for consumers, a looming recession as the Federal Reserve struggles to dampen inflation and disastrously low approval ratings, it is also funding Russia’s destruction of its neighbor.

The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer. Because of the COVID-19 shutdowns, but also because of the many restrictions and costs piled onto domestic producers by the Biden administration, and in recognition of those likely to follow, U.S. output has declined from 13.1 million barrels per day in February 2020 to 11.9 mb/d today.

Taking over 1 million barrels per day off the world market amid what was until recently a global economic expansion has helped boost prices. And higher prices are funding Putin’s war with Ukraine.

Consider: On June 10 the central bank of Russia dropped its key lending rate by 150 basis points, the fourth such cut in the past few months.

This even as financial authorities around the world, including in the U.S., are pushing rates higher to dampen demand and squash inflation.