It's not extraordinary. In your link there's a big difference between 2007 and 2014.

Not only that, you know it depends on how the question is asked. Current surveys don't leave out abortion banning states when they come up with less than 10% of the population wants a total ban.

I see you didn't address my explanation. Here, I'll repeat it:

Some people are arguing no laws against abortion. That is being misconstrued into claiming they are for 9th month elective abortions. You can't be that stupid, I know you aren't.

Abortions are not done on viable infants in the third trimester except for fetal demise, impending demise or serious risk to the mother.

How do I know? Oh I don't know, I've only been a medical provider since 1985 and an RN since 1976.

I'm not going to argue this other **** with you, you provide some evidence doctors go around murdering viable infants in the third trimester. It's ludicrous.

I believe Dr Tiller, before he was murdered by a deranged pro-life idiot, described a third trimester abortion on a 12 yr old incest victim. And that was in the early 3rd trimester.

Bottom line, these are not willy-nilly abortions for no reason other than the mother's choice.


If people want to debate laws against abortion they need to stop lying about the pro-choice POV about those abortions.

:rolleyes:

Like I said, people want the government out of the bedroom, period. That is being misconstrued as people wanting and getting late 3rd trimester abortions. No, because at that point the physician or midwife would not decide to do this for no reason.

And as for restrictions, those were allowed after a follow-up SCOTUS ruling that I believe had a second trimester cutoff.

From Wiki:
So the rate has been decreasing.

Planned Parenthood V Casey There were more details but in essence states could make restrictions on abortions but not ban them before viability.

This whole thing is about a bunch of religious hooey. If 'Christians' want to end abortions, making them illegal doesn't do it.

They don't care about those unborn children, they care about punishing the pregnant persons. It's a single issue voter cause celeb' that has been exploited by the GOP since Falwell noticed how profitable is was in terms of donations and that the issue got his Evangelicals votes and therefore political power.

That is where an honest debate should be. Not this nonsense that making abortions illegal is somehow saving unborn babies. It is not.

And people who want no restrictions whatsoever simply want the government out of the decision that should be between a pregnant person and their provider. Claiming they want abortions in the late 3rd trimester is dishonest because it assumes there is no healthcare provider involved in the decision.


Anyone care to have an honest debate about this?

The entire Right -Wing message, including White Christians can be boiled down to this: Empathy is Bad. Considering another's point of view is treason.

Here is a video of Debbie Reynolds describing her fetus dying in the 7th month of her pregnancy and not being able to have it removed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iF9pI_Szuk

To poke at Zig's 2014 Religious Landscape Study results, they have error bars in the +/- 7 point range, and note that there was a 7 point drop in religion between 2007 and 2014. And this is supposed to be solid evidence that in 2022, 8 years later, religious beliefs have remained the same or increased, so that the 51% (+/-7%) of North Dakota residents against abortion is both the same or higher and solid evidence that the state should outlaw abortion.

Eli was not asked directly if he had seen a letter from the Whitehill School.

Sure. In both cases, they didn't have to answer a question they were not directly asked. It might be considered morally wrong that they allowed the questioners to believe something that was false but legally, it can't be classified a lie.

Well, then, to repeat myself: What do you think the titular lie was?

I don't know. He withheld a letter his parents should have received but (wrong as it is) he didn't tell an actual lie.

It's somewhere between that and simply being unable to comprehend that these points of view exist. There is a continuum that has FOX news grifters on one end and OAN viewers on the other.

The page at the end of the PDF I linked to is an ELA lesson. Do you think it is at all possible that you misunderstood the story and/or what "lying" means? Or is it more likely that Kurt Vonnegut doesn't understand the English language as well as you do?

Call it "lying" if you wish but your appeal to authority doesn't prove anything.

This is an art that is skillfully practised by politicians. Instead of being nailed down on a specific question they are allowed to waffle around it so they can't be accused of telling a direct lie.

Lies are a subset of deception. I would have thought this was obvious to people who spoke a language or, you know, experienced existence as a human, but apparently not!

Don't you get it? Nobody asked the direct question!!!

How can you say, "you didn't volunteer the workings of your mind therefore you lied" ?

These justices being transparent about future rulings would be completely contrary to the "balls and strikes" mindset that is part of a formalist/originialist outlook and on top of that would be unethical.

The only thing they can do is respond in generalities because otherwise they are testifying that they will approach cases with a closed mind.

The whole angle that these justices were dishonest is abject nonsense even were it based on more than hurt feelings. It's a pretty vivid example of the liberal "have the fascists arrested on a technicality" obsession.

Not to segue into the literature forum, but that wasn't the eponymous lie. The lie was that the family didn't see themselves as entitled. "A Remenzel never asks for anything"... so long as they never need to. Eli was actually the only honest one of them.

I think the fact that Thomas invited challenges to same sex marriage and contraception belies your argument.

I do wonder how those Justices would look on someone testifying under oath before them who deliberately gave misleading answers to hide the truth? Would anyone be held in contempt or charged with perjury as a "technicality"?

Please present evidence of this.

This will be a sh*tshow:

If it doesn't get fixed legislatively at the national level, trying to just address it with executive orders is just going to very quickly end up climbing up the judicial ladder until it hits the SCOTUS which will swat it down.

Evidence that 2022 is 8 years later than 2014?


Or evidence for Zig's claim, that we're all disputing, that a 2014 religious survey is good evidence for beliefs about abortion today? Because...I can't provide evidence for that. I don't believe it's true. Given the 7 point drop between 2007 and 2014, I'm fairly certain that the same survey conducted today would show fewer religious adherents.

I mean, it's Thomas. He lost it a while back.


It has been SOP for appellate judges to note the long term implications of a decision. Usually aren't quite that blatant about inviting challenges though.

I'm sure that's true, but even if people aren't adherents of a particular religion anymore, they often retain many of the religious ideas.

I don't think so. The alt-right judges on the Court love themselves some Executive Power - they will be reluctant to set precedent curtail, when they can instead just make sure that their guy will undo it on the first day in office.

When people leave a religion, they tend to stop following it's proscriptions, and they certainly stop attempting to force those religious beliefs on others.

If a person is currently swinging an axe at your head and you object and your defense against this is because they said that they had no plans to cut your head off, well, that's about what is going on here.

I'm not going to ever defend these judges in general. The point is that an awful lot of people are fixating on something that, ironically, was an example of behavior that wasn't unethical.

There is no formalist answer to questions about Roe besides acknowledging it is settled law and will be treated as such. Same about the value of precedent.

That's the Justice Roberts approach. The new gang isn't exactly into that and will shamelessly now rule curtailing that power and then later rule expanding it when it suits them.

You are right that in theory a judge should avoid approaching a case with a 'closed mind'.

However, to some of us there is a difference between:

"We heard a case that was unique, and the lawyers pleading the case made some compelling arguments"

and....

"We jumped on the first abortion case that came along, that wasn't really unique in any way, in order to take away women's rights. Our decision was written by a guy who claimed that the original Roe decision was wrong, and the reasoning behind it is complete bunk (citing a centuries-old 'expert' who prosecuted witches, and making a claim that 'women won't be harmed')".

One of those examples illustrates a judge exhibiting an open mind in coming to their decision. The other illustrates judges who were close-minded and were always going to rule against abortion rights, regardless of whatever they claimed about it being "settled law".

I believe the 3 Trump appointees lied during their confirmation hearings. However, I do recognize that there is no way to build any sort of legal case against them for perjury, or to have them impeached. (Note however that I think a case could be made against Drunky McRapeface for perjury during his testimony, but for other reasons.)

I think I misread your comment and was asking for what you too were asking: evidence that religiosity has been increasing anywhere in the USA.

Precedent is meaningless to this bunch. They decide the answer they want, then they backfill the legal-sounding justification. If there is a conflict between their rulings, they just find some arbitrary difference, no matter how small, and use that to explain away their hypocrisy.

The Supreme Court is an unelected political Super-Legislature, not neutral arbiters of the law.

Expect baiting Conservative Hissyfitting about the evils of Executive Orders any second now.

Don't you get it, they all knew damn well they would overturn Roe the first chance they got.

The reason they were not asked directly (if they weren't) is because the Senators know that answer: "I cannot address anything specific" or something to that effect. So the Senators were asking the only questions they knew they could get an answer to.

The members lied because they knew full well their answers were purposefully deceptive. You can bitch all you want that technically blah blah blah :words: It doesn't change the fact THEY LIED.

Seems... doubtful.

Conservatives stopped loving unitary executive theory as soon as Obama took office & they learned to love it again as soon as Trump took office. These 6 conservatives are not special, just because they happen to hold the highest judicial appointment in the land, and will follow the same pattern.

Yes, Bill Clinton said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..." and then claimed he defined sexual relations as including an emotional involvement.

Taking their answers at face value is formalistic pretense at it's most naked and shameless, yes. However, we've abandoned the whole of the judiciary to this sort of formalism and this seems an odd place to start being mad about it given the way they've used this sort of pretense to obliterate civil rights and liberties.

Close enough. I was actually pointing out the absurdity of using a survey that showed religiousity dropping 7 points in 7 years as evidence that 8 years later those 51% (with 7 point error bar) results would stay the same.

Yep, and he was charged with perjury over it.

At this point I can't image the court NOT arguing that all the mob boss did would tell the shop owner what a nice little shop he had and what a shame it would be if anything were to happen to it...

"I'm not wrong and evil because I've mad an arbitrary set of formality that I'm following" is way to common these days.

Nobody, literally ******* nobody here, is acting under any pretense that the candidates where unaware of what they were being asked. This whole "Well I gave them a mathematicians answer that wasn't technically wrong" spiel can go cut bait.