NASA has released the first image from the Hubble telescope.

On Monday, July 11, President Joe Biden released one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first images in a preview event at the White House in Washington. NASA, in partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), will release the full set of Webb’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data during a televised broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT (14:30 UTC) on Tuesday, July 12, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Learn more about how to watch.

This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said on Facebook:

The deepest view ever obtained in the universe. Filled with galaxies. The several spiked objects are local stars in our own Milky Way. Ignore them. Everything else is an entire galaxy unto itself. Notice that many distort into arcs. These are distant galaxies that reveal the curvature of spacetime caused by the gravity of a cluster of galaxies in image’s center.

Ignore those pesky local stars elbowing their way into the shot.

Mole at the door has the sarcastic version.

Jill Suttie posted an article a few days ago on how access to abortion improves women’s well-being.

Though people may argue over whether this ruling is sound or not, it likely spells disaster for women’s health and well-being. That’s because research suggests women who have the right to choose whether or not to give birth are happier, healthier, and more economically stable than those who don’t. And their children benefit, too, by having a mother who can afford to nurture and provide for them better.

What a surprise, eh, that women who get to have some control over their lives are better off than women who don’t?

Item one is better mental health.

Many women are made to feel guilty about seeking an abortion; at times, the circumstances surrounding their choice can involve stress and negative emotions. Does getting the abortion hurt their mental health? Not in most cases. In general, women who get a desired abortion tend to have better mental health—even in the short term—than their peers who are denied one.

Maybe because if you don’t want to have a baby, at a particular time or at all, then being forced to have one will make you feel bad: thwarted, coerced, pushed around. Just a wild guess.

Item two is better physical health.

While some have argued that abortions have health risks, those pale in comparison to giving birth. Legal, medically supervised abortions are relatively safe for women. If we don’t keep them that way, women may seek to abort unwanted pregnancies on their own, putting themselves at greater risk for health complications.

Meanwhile pregnancy and giving birth are rough on the body, and genuinely risky. Stats have improved enormously since the bad old days but it’s still risky.

Read onhttps://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_access_to_abortion_improves_womens_well_being.

This guy (who has half a million followers) –

There is nothing even slightly “respectful” about telling a woman to “fall back” and let the men take over. (There’s also nothing respectful about telling women to support men like Matt Walsh – who is a conservative Catholic who opposes abortion rights.) It’s all the more insulting when the woman in question is a philanthropic self-made millionaire (former billionaire demoted because she gave so much money away).

Telling us to fall back – or shut up or go away or sit down or do the laundry – is what this is all about. We’re not going to fall back when men in skirts tell us to and we’re not going to fall back when godbothering sports commentators tell us to either. You fall back.

From The Telegraph:

The Church of England has said that there is “no official definition” of a woman.

Did it say anything about an official definition of a man?

Senior bishops have insisted that until recently, the answer to questions such as what constitutes a woman “were thought to be self-evident”. However, now “additional care” is needed.

Let’s talk about more official definitions. What’s the official definition of “God”? How about “soul”? Sin? Faith? Prayer? Miracle? Magic? Voodoo?

The stance comes as the institution struggles to remain relevant and progressive amid declining congregant numbers and in an increasingly secular society.

So they try to be progressive by telling women that men are also women?

Rev Angela Berners-Wilson, who became the first woman to be ordained as a priest in England in 1994, and who has recently retired, told The Telegraph in response to the Bishop of Europe’s answer: “I’m not totally happy with it. I mean, I do think certain things like men can’t have babies just to say the complete obvious thing.”

The completely obvious thing and the very consequential thing. The fact that women and only women can have babies is one of the reasons women are so ferociously monitored and controlled. The job is crucial, therefore it’s necessary to treat women as inferior and enslaved. Another way to look at it of course would be to say therefore it’s necessary to treat women as valuable and irreplaceable. That wouldn’t be as much fun though.

“But I think we need to be very sensitive and maybe we need to reexamine our boundaries.”

Very sensitive how though? Being very sensitive toward men who call themselves women entails being very insensitive toward women who know that men are men. Why is it only the men who get the extra sensitivity?

Jayne Ozanne, synod member and founder of the Ozanne Foundation in 2017 – which works with religious organisations around the world to tackle prejudice and discrimination of LGBTQI people – described the question as “passive aggressive”.

She said: “Mr Kendy’s question is sadly a prime example of a passive aggressive question that is designed to upset the LGBT+ community and particularly the trans members in our midst.

Speaking of passive-aggressive – there is no “LGBT+” community. The T is not part of the LGB.

And the question is not designed to “upset” anyone: it’s designed to find out who still knows what women are and what men are, and who is pretending to think it’s all a matter of self-definition.

Dr Jane Hamlin, president of Beaumont Society charity, which supports trans people, added: “I am puzzled why some people are so obsessed with defining ‘woman’. Why might this be an issue for the Church of England?

“Is it that women should be treated more favourably or less favourably? Why does it matter to the Church of England whether someone is a woman or not a woman? Surely it only matters to the individual themselves.”

Unless you’re in a hospital or a prison or running for office or trying to break into a field dominated by men or competing in a sport or…………..

And we’re back! WordPress tripped over its own feet but sainted webmaster fixed the problem.

Pink News tells us:

A gay couple are suing a California fertility clinic after they requested a male embryo but ended up having a baby girl.

Well they didn’t “have” a baby girl did they. Having a baby=giving birth. They didn’t do that; someone else did it for them. They paid a woman to gestate the baby and push it out.

According to CBSNews, Albert and Anthony Saniger were determined to be fathers to two sons. Before the couple wed in 2013 they had already chosen the names of their future kids and even created Gmail accounts for them.

The HRC Fertility clinic and fertility specialist Dr Bradford A Kolb reportedly assured the couple that they could make this happen. The couple were explicitly clear that they wanted a male embryo implanted in their surrogate.

Not just implicitly clear, mind you: explicitly clear.

Also “implanted in their surrogate” is a peculiarly ugly phrase.

In May 2020, the couple provided their sperm, and after two unsuccessful attempts their surrogate became pregnant in December. She gave birth to a baby girl in 2021.

The couple’s lawsuit claims that the fertility clinic “negligently, recklessly, and/or intentionally transferred a female embryo to the Sanigers’ gestational carrier.”

More ugly language: “their surrogate,” “the Sanigers’ gestational carrier.” Pink News talks about this woman as if she were an appliance.

At any rate, as many people are pointing out, the guys could just assign the baby male: problem solved.

Let’s play will he won’t he again.

Steve Bannon, the onetime strategist to Donald Trump who was involved in the former president’s efforts to invalidate his defeat in the 2020 election, has opened discussions with the House January 6 select committee about testifying to the inquiry into the Capitol attack.

I don’t see why he gets to open discussions. I don’t see why they don’t just tell him to bring his ass in for questioning.

Bannon signalled in an email to the select committee, first obtained by the Guardian, that he was prepared to initiate discussions about a time and place for an interview, after Trump said in a letter he would waive executive privilege if he reached an agreement to testify.

If who reached an agreement? Bannon, I guess. But more to the point, Trump has no “executive privilege” to waive.

The email broadly reiterated Bannon’s legal defense that he was previously unable to comply with a subpoena from the panel because at the time, in a claim that has been disputed, the former president had asserted executive privilege over his testimony.

Yes “disputed” is putting it mildly. Trump has no such privilege, he’s just making shit up as he always does.

That would mean Bannon could, in theory, reveal to House investigators about his conversations with Trump ahead of the Capitol attack – Bannon spoke with Trump on the phone the night before – and strategy discussions at the Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington.

Reveal information about his conversations, presumably. At any rate I wonder how many lies he will tell and if the House investigators will know when he’s lying.

Bannon’s offer to testify appears to be a strategic move ahead of his trial for criminal contempt of Congress, scheduled to start on 18 July, that comes after justice department prosecutors charged him for refusing to comply with the select committee’s subpoena last year.

The move to testify to the panel now would not “cure” his contempt since he faces criminal contempt and the prosecution is for the past failure to comply with the subpoena, according to former US attorney Joyce Vance.

But the email offering to testify could have the effect of reinforcing his legal defense that Trump did in fact assert a legitimate executive privilege claim in October 2021, and that he cannot be prosecuted because of that invocation, according to his letter on Saturday.

How could such an assertion possibly be legitimate? Trump had no “executive privilege” in October 2021. He wasn’t the relevant “executive” then.

As Julie Bindel points out, this is a series of three men cheerily shrugging off women’s rights.

“Let people live their lives”=Let men claim to be women and steal everything women have fought for and treat women as the domineering entitled privileged sex.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Councillor Homophobe.

How is it that these “feelings” are not only given a pass, but are enthusiastically supported, and defended with bullying, threats, intimidation and emotional blackmail?

It’s actually much worse than this. It’s not just a matter of celebration and valourization. It’s also about recruitment. How many other disorders or delusions are promulgated by the power of state institutions and backed up by the force of law? The idea that you’ve been “born in the wrong body” is not just introduced to a wider audience than it would have othewise. It is promoted to children and teens who might not have considered this until it was offered, or thrust upon them, as the answer to all their adolescent anxiety and discomfort. “The answer is you’re trans. What was the question?” It’s suggested that accepting this “condition” is somehow courageous and signifies a particularly unique individuality and specialness. Instead of being boring gays and lesbians, you’re something even better. How many insecure kids can resist the siren song of personal specialness, sacredness, and importance promised by the happily-ever-after tales presented by the love-bombing agents of trans siblinghood? “We know the real you better than anyone, and you’re brave and stunning!

Along with the glittery rainbow, however, comes the threat of societal hatred and persecution, which instills suspicion towards doubting outsiders, including parents, driving new devotees further into the arms of their “loving” recruiters. Exploration of the difficulties and problems being experienced that suggest causes or solutions which are “non-trans” in nature are branded as hateful, bigoted “conversion therapy.” Suicidal ideation is presented as a handy tool to access the demanded “life-saving treatment.”

Scientology can only dream of this level of power and influence. The tide seems to be turning in the UK, but it’s going to take a long time for things to turn around in North America. In the meantime, many innocents will suffer horrible pyschological and physical trauma. Those who are medically “transed,” and those who are punished for questioning or resisting genderist ideology will pay the price. But until it costs lawsuits and money, nothing will be done. That is perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of this.

The World Health Organization has updated its “gender mainstreaming manual,” whatever tf that is.

The first edition of the manual dates from 2011, and WHO is now updating it in light of new scientific evidence and conceptual progress on gender, health and development.

Conceptual progress? More like regress.

The review and update process will build on the extensive work already featured in the manual. It will focus on:

1. Updating key concepts around gender;

…

3. Going beyond non-binary approaches to gender and health to recognize gender and sexual diversity, or the concepts that gender identity exists on a continuum and that sex is not limited to male or female.

4. Introducing new gender, equity and human rights frameworks and tools to further support capacity building around these concepts and the integration of their approaches in the work of WHO.

But of course sex is limited to female and male. Oh so fascinating and enigmatic Jonquettamin is still one or the other, even if intersex. It’s embarrassing to see a UN body talking teenagery nonsense.

Historian Catherine Allgor explains “coverture”:

Coverture is a long-standing legal practice that is part of our colonial heritage. Though Spanish and French versions of coverture existed in the new world, United States coverture is based in English law. Coverture held that no female person had a legal identity. At birth, a female baby was covered by her father’s identity, and then, when she married, by her husband’s. The husband and wife became one–and that one was the husband. As a symbol of this subsuming of identity, women took the last names of their husbands. They were “feme coverts,” covered women. Because they did not legally exist, married women could not make contracts or be sued, so they could not own or work in businesses. Married women owned nothing, not even the clothes on their backs. They had no rights to their children, so that if a wife divorced or left a husband, she would not see her children again.

Why? Well, you know…it’s obvious. I mean I don’t want to be rude or anything but it’s obvious female people are just inferior, so the law naturally has to reflect that. Women are too weak and dim and kind of blobby to have any legal identity.

Married women had no rights to their bodies. That meant that not only would a husband have a claim to any wages generated by his wife’s labor or to the fruits of her body (her children), but he also had an absolute right to sexual access. Within marriage, a wife’s consent was implied, so under the law, all sex-related activity, including rape, was legitimate. His total mastery of this fellow human being stopped short, but just short, of death. Of course, a man wasn’t allowed to beat his wife to death, but he could beat her.

I’m not sure where the “of course” comes in. If he’s allowed to beat her he’s allowed to beat her to death, because what’s he supposed to do, know for sure when to stop? Duh, no, so you can tell him to try not to but that’s all.

So what happened to coverture? The short answer is that it has been eroded bit by bit. But it has never been fully abolished. The ghost of coverture has always haunted women’s lives and continues to do so. Coverture is why women weren’t regularly allowed on juries until the 1960s, and marital rape wasn’t a crime until the 1980s. Today’s women encounter coverture during real estate transactions, as I did, in tax matters, and in a myriad of other situations around employment and housing. Encounters with coverture can be serious, but often they are just puzzling annoyances, one more hoop to jump. Still, the remnants of coverture are holding us back in unsuspected ways.

The thinking behind it hasn’t disappeared either. The planet will be fried to a crisp before it is.

Updating to add: I forgot to h/t Valerie Tarico.

More homophobia from the LibDems:

She’s a councillor in Faversham (Kent).

She doesn’t welcome conversation with the peasants who replied to her “Absolutely not” though.

Boo lesbians and gays, hooray for men in womanface. How did we get here?

Arwa Mahdawi on the conservatism of the Dems:

Some top establishment Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, have been very busy throwing their weight behind Henry Cuellar, the last anti-choice House Democrat, in the primary for Texas’s 28th congressional district. I’m not sure exactly what makes the gun-loving, abortion-hating Cuellar a Democrat, because he seems to have basically all the same policy positions as a Republican, but he has a (D) next to his name. Even when they knew Roe was on the verge of being overturned, top House Democrats chose to help Cuellar – the incumbent – fend off a challenge from Jessica Cisneros, a pro-choice progressive. In the end Cuellar won by just 289 votes. The Democrats have the gall to send out fundraising emails demanding people vote for them so they can safeguard our reproductive rights while simultaneously spending donor money to help prop up an anti-choice Democrat. It truly beggars belief. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated on Twitter, Democrats rallying for “a pro-NRA, anti-choice incumbent … was an utter failure of leadership”.

It’s strange that Republicans keep marching ever farther to the right while Democrats…keep trying to catch up with them. Wrong direction! Your team’s goal is over THERE!

More on Cuellar and Cisneros:

The race in Texas’ 28th Congressional District pitted one of the most conservative Democrats in the House against a challenger backed by progressive stalwarts, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cuellar, who has held the seat since 2005, had the endorsements of top House Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.

…

Cisneros ran on a distinctly progressive platform, with support for Medicare for All and pro-labor legislation.

Cuellar, who holds more conservative views on abortion, immigration and gun control, painted Cisneros as a far-left candidate who wouldn’t be effective in Congress. He touted his deep ties to the district and ability to get things done.

We have a choice between Republicans and rabid Republicans.

Freelance sex education is a thing in UK schools. The results are what you’d expect.

Providers of sex education in schools are teaching children that prostitution is a “rewarding job” and failed to advise a 14-year-old girl having sex with a 16-year-old boy that it was illegal.

Outside organisations teaching children about sex also promote “kinks” such as being locked in a cage, flogged, caned, beaten and slapped in the face, The Times has found.

One organisation encouraged pupils to demonstrate where they like to touch themselves sexually, in a practise criticised as “sex abuse” by campaigners.

And everyone else with a functioning brain.

Relationship and sex education (RSE) became compulsory in English secondary schools in 2020, with many contracting out the teaching. Since then an industry has sprung up of providers who produce resources and go into schools to teach sex education and gender issues.

With, apparently, no filters or oversight or questions or any other form of caution, just “Have at it, thanks very much, send us the invoice.”

Staff do not need education or child development qualifications and there is no professional register or regulation of their curriculum.

Bring on the groomers!

One organisation, Bish, is an online guide to sex and relationships for children aged over 14. It is written by Justin Hancock, who teaches sex education in schools and provides teacher training on sex education.

Ok, so what does Google offer us in order to learn more about Justin Hancock? His Twitter, for one thing, so I discover he has me blocked even though this is the first I’ve heard of him. He must use The List, so that tells us one thing about him.

“Bish” has a website, with an about page packed with words about it and him (the two are one and the same really).

My name is Justin Hancock

Yes, my name does have the word cock in it. Lol! I do all the posts (apart from the guest bloggers), answer the questions, do the drawings and the really badly animated videos. I wrote this bit and this bit.

I’m a qualified and experienced sex educator

I’m a qualified youth worker and sexual health trainer. I’ve worked with young people since 1994 and I’ve been doing sex and relationships education since 1999. You can see my linkedin profile here if you want to see the kinds of work I’ve done. As you can see I’m one of the leading experts in the field of sex and relationships education. I’m also now a member of the World Association for Sexual Health.

Yebbut qualified how? Where, by whom, with what credentials? He never says. I think if there were anything to say he would say it, so I think by “qualified” he means self-qualified. He decided he was qualified so now he’s qualified, because he says so.

Back to the Times article:

The website features a question from a 14-year-old girl having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old male. She states that she is worried about becoming pregnant because they are not using contraception and are using the “withdrawal” method. In his response Hancock, who describes himself as a freelance sex and relationships educator, said that “your risks of pregnancy are very, very low”, a statement described as “dangerously reckless” by campaigners. He also failed to mention that the relationship was illegal and advised using lubricant during anal sex.

Dangerously reckless and decidedly wrong according to all of human history.

In another post on the site, a reader wrote to say that she felt “dirty” after being coerced into having sex for money. Hancock replied: “There are many many people doing sex work who do enjoy what they do — even if they don’t necessarily enjoy the sex. It can be a really difficult job but many people find it rewarding — just like other jobs.

“This is especially true if sex workers mainly have good clients, which I don’t think you do. If you did want to continue, maybe you could get better clients?”

Aw, brilliant, problem solved. What a good thing she asked him! She went out and got better clients that very day and has been one happy sex worker ever since. Guy’s a genius.

In a post about “kink”, Bish links to a blog that provides a list of sexual activities including using manacles and irons, whips, swinging and beating.

Nothing risky about that, no sir. I hope he encourages the kids to experiment with choking, that’s lots of fun.

Tanya Carter, spokeswoman for Safe Schools Alliance and an early years practitioner, said: “We are very much in favour of sex education but it should be for the benefit of children — learning about rights, how to protect themselves, and how to get help if someone is abusing them. It should not be about promoting prostitution and abuse to already vulnerable children.

“We don’t think Bish or Justin Hancock should be anywhere near children because he clearly doesn’t understand child protection. It’s completely indefensible what he’s been promoting to children and some of it is verging on a criminal offence.”

But he’s an expert, he says so himself.

Oh ffs. Not MORE of this crap.

I saw this

So I hastened to Google for enlightenment, and Google obliged with

Sorry, he says flippantly and dismissively and rudely. “No you’re wrong you’re not invited, I checked and somebody fucked up so it sucks to be you, sorry for any blah blah, just kidding about the sorry part.”

Absolutely disgusting.

Bari Weiss shared this essay by UCLA Anthropology Professor Joseph Manson as another item on the long list of woke students running amok list. I think the story isn’t quite as stark as she and Manson think it is.

I’m a 62-year-old professor—by academic standards, still young. But I am retiring this summer because the woke takeover of higher education has ruined academic life. “Another one?” you ask. “What does this guy have to say that hasn’t already been said by Jordan Peterson, Peter Boghossian, Joshua Katz, or Bo Winegard?”

Well, for one thing, how about items of interest to women? There’s actually quite a lot of conflict among feminist women and trans-obsessed students in academia right now, in case you hadn’t noticed, so I doubt that four men have completely covered it…especially Peterson and Boghossian.

But Manson doesn’t address any specifically feminist issues.

I’ve been a professor in the Anthropology Department at UCLA since 1996; I received tenure in 2000. My research has spanned topics ranging from nonhuman primate behavior to human personality variation. For decades, anthropology has been notorious for conflict between the scientific and political activist factions in the field, leading many departments to split in two. But UCLA’s department remained unusually peaceful, cohesive, and intellectually inclusive until the late 2000s.

Gradually, one hire at a time, practitioners of “critical” (i.e. leftist, postmodernist) anthropology, some of them lying about their beliefs during job interviews, came to comprise the department’s most influential clique. These militant faculty members recruited even more militant graduate students to work with them.

I can’t recount here even a representative sample of this faction’s penchant for mendacity and intimidation, because most of it occurred during confidential discussions, usually about hiring and promotion decisions. But I can describe their public torment and humiliation of one of my colleagues, P. Jeffrey Brantingham.

Jeff had developed simulation models of the geographic and temporal patterning of urban crime, and had created predictive software that he marketed to law enforcement agencies. In Spring 2018, the department’s Anthropology Graduate Students Association passed a resolution accusing Jeff’s research of, among other counter-revolutionary sins, “entrench[ing] and naturaliz[ing] the criminalization of Blackness in the United States” and calling for “referring” his research to UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Research, presumably for some sort of investigation. This document contained no trace of scholarly argument, but instead resembled a religious proclamation of anathema.

As you won’t be surprised to hear, Jeff is not a racist, but a standard-issue liberal Democrat. The “referral” to the Vice-Chancellor never materialized, but the resolution and its aftermath achieved its real goal, which was to turn Jeff, who had been one of the most selfless citizens of the department, into a pariah.

Ok, but there’s one bit here that stands out, I think. To repeat:

Jeff had developed simulation models of the geographic and temporal patterning of urban crime, and had created predictive software that he marketed to law enforcement agencies.

Does that sound potentially sinister to you? Because it does to me. Manson never mentions that potentially sinister vibe, so I went looking for a little analysis. From 2018:

A pioneer in predictive policing is starting a troubling new project

By Ali Winston and Ingrid Burrington

Jeff Brantingham is as close as it gets to putting a face on the controversial practice of “predictive policing.” Over the past decade, the University of California-Los Angeles anthropology professor adapted his Pentagon-funded research in forecasting battlefield casualties in Iraq to predicting crime for American police departments, patenting his research and founding a for-profit company named PredPol, LLC.

PredPol quickly became one of the market leaders in the nascent field of crime prediction around 2012, but also came under fire from activists and civil libertarians who argued the firm provided a sort of “tech-washing” for racially biased, ineffective policing methods.

Now, Brantingham is using military research funding for another tech and policing collaboration with potentially damaging repercussions: using machine learning, the Los Angeles Police Department’s criminal data, and an outdated gang territory map to automate the classification of “gang-related” crimes.

Read on

I don’t know, I’m not particularly well-read in this subject, but the project sounds ripe for abuse, and it’s a for-profit enterprise, not some sort of altruistic Trying to Help, so frankly I’m not at all convinced that this is a case of too-woke students and a bullied academic.

Moral of the story: not all cranky academics fed up with woke students are our friends and allies. Read their stories with a raised eyebrow.

Rats fleeing sinking ship?

Former President Donald Trump left the board of his social media firm, Truth Social, weeks before it was served with a federal subpoena, records show. 

According to a June 8 filing with the Florida Department of State’s Division of Corporations, Trump was removed from his position as chairman of the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG).

He needed to devote all his time to learning to read.

TMTG is the parent company of Truth Social, the social-media platform Trump launched after he was banned from mainstream social media following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. 

Truth Social says it’s all a misunderstanding; Business Insider doesn’t believe them.

Enjoy.

Chipping away at voting rights.

Wisconsin Supreme Court outlaws ballot drop boxes for elections

A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the use of ballot drop boxes, which increased substantially across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, is illegal under state law.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority also said voters cannot have other people return their completed ballots in person to a clerk’s office, though it declined to rule on whether anyone other than a voter can send in ballots by mail.

In other words the court made voting more difficult for people in Wisconsin. What does making voting more difficult accomplish? It reduces voting by poor people, non-white people, disabled people…aka people likely to vote for the not-Republicans.

Wisconsin is likely a key battleground in the 2024 presidential election. In 2016, Trump won the state by fewer than 25,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast, and in 2020, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, carried Wisconsin by fewer than 21,000 votes out of 3.2 million cast.

They need that thumb on the scale.

In dissent, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley – joined by the court’s two other liberals – said the decision erected a new barrier to voting with little justification.

“Although it pays lip service to the import of the right to vote, the majority/lead opinion has the practical effect of making it more difficult to exercise it,” she wrote.

Naturally enough, since the whole point of drop boxes is to make voting easier.

The dissent also argued that the decision to bar other people from returning ballots to clerks’ offices would primarily hurt homebound residents, including disabled and sick people.

And people with small children at home and no one else to take over the child duty. That’s a lot of people – mostly women, of course.

Her “government service” forsooth.

Also, way to make it about her.

Also, it’s not the mere death, much less the “passing,” it’s the assassination.

In happier times –

Heads of state and…Goldilocks?