News Of The Weak: Conspiracy Edition
Fox host's new conspiracy theory is 'dumb' even by her standards
Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, who infamously peddled false claims about Dominion Voting Systems based on the musings of a woman who claims to have conversations with the wind, started pushing a new conspiracy theory on Wednesday.
During an interview with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Bartiromo complained that House Republicans are getting "stonewalled" in their investigations of President Joe Biden, and suggested that there was something nefarious about the fact that Republicans' purported "whistleblower" had been indicted as an unauthorized agent of the Chinese government.
"Gal Luft was just indicted!" Bartiromo said. "This was one of your key whistleblowers. I want to get your take on what you're going to do about it, because how many more whistleblowers are going to come forward after this guy, who tried telling the FBI and DOJ what he knew the transactions and business deals of the Biden family, now he had to go on the run and now he's getting indicted!"
In fact, Gal Luft was indicted back in November, before Republicans officially took control of Congress and launched their Biden probes.
And as Washington Post reporter Philip Bump notes on Twitter, Bartiromo's description of Luft as "on the run" is highly dubious given the circumstances surrounding his indictment.
"Bartiromo has been completely unmoored for some time, but this is dumb even by that standard," he wrote in reaction to the Fox Business segment. "Why do you think he is on the run, Maria? He skipped bail!"
Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature on Tuesday passed a bill banning most abortions after about six weeks.
The legislation was passed during a rare one-day special session called by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) for the “sole purpose” of enacting new restrictions on abortion. Reynolds celebrated the bill’s passage in a statement late Tuesday and said she will sign it on Friday. “Justice for the unborn should not be delayed,” she said.
Giving makebelieve the force of law is what SCOTUS does best:
Hundreds of demonstrators packed the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines, some shouting “Bans off our bodies” while others yelled “Abortion is murder.” According to the Des Moines Register, at one point supporters and opponents of the bill had to be separated by a state trooper.
Committee hearings sometimes became tense with the sounds of protesters outside the room pouring in.
After the legislation cleared House and Senate committees Tuesday afternoon, lawmakers began floor debates that sometimes became contentious. “If they are not ready to have a baby, they shouldn’t have sex. A lot of people need to review their birds and bees,” Republican Rep. Brad Sherman said at point, while Democrats called the bill “disrespectful” and “obscene.”
Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa pledged to challenge the law in court in a statement released early Wednesday, calling the bill a “devastating blow to reproductive freedom.”
Planned Parenthood North Central States said on Facebook that it would continue to provide abortion care “to the extent legally allowed” and help patients connect with providers and resources elsewhere.
“Every day this law is in effect, Iowans will face life-threatening barriers to get desperately needed medical care — just as we have seen in other states with similar bans,” said Rita Bettis Austen, legal director for the ACLU of Iowa.
In a case decided late last month, the rightwing supermajority of the United States Supreme Court sided with a Christian web designer who said that her right to free speech permitted her to deny services to same-sex couples. Turns out it was another case in history of cases in which the court gave the force of law to makebelieve. And when I say “makebelieve,” I mean literally made up.
The New Republic broke the news. The magazine found that the person who had allegedly requested services from the Christian web designer had never made any such request. He didn’t need her services either. He’s a web designer himself. He’s also not gay. He’s been married to the same woman for 15 years.
The Christian web developer, Lorie Smith, wanted to put a notice on her company’s website, saying that it would not create wedding websites for same-sex couples. She argued that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law would have infringed on her free speech rights. The Supreme Court didn’t require her to have received “a real request,” according to Post reporter Robert Barnes.
Citing “Stewart,” who did not want his full name used for fear of harassment, Barnes wrote that “the court filing in Stewart’s name has left many baffled, including Stewart himself, who said he was concerned that the case had proceeded without anyone verifying if the request was authentic.”
We should all be concerned, but let’s be honest. This is what the court’s conservatives have been doing. In this recent case, it found yet another way of turning makebelieve into law, thus turning fiction into a legal reality that we all must live with. This is not an exception to the rule, however. It is the rule.
There are, of course, serious differences between this case and past cases. The difference is a matter of degree, though, not kind. This court’s supermajority has regularly made law out of thin air. Usually, though, it isn’t obvious about it.
For instance, the court decided recently to overrule the president’s program for student debt relief. It ruled based in part on something called the “major questions” doctrine. You can read more about it here, but trust me, the “doctrine” is makebelieve. (It’s a condition simply made up over time.) It’s so swaddled in the verbiage of courts, however, that it doesn’t look that way.
The court’s supermajority also recently decided to strike down affirmative action, ruling that the consideration of race in college admissions is discriminatory. It ruled based in part on the doctrine of colorblindness. It’s a made-up doctrine. Americans have never been colorblind. But Americans want to believe in it so much that the court’s makebelieve doesn’t look made-up.
“On the legal level,” wrote the legal affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times, “it means the court decided a case that wasn't a real case or controversy. … On the political level, it means that conservative forces in the country have effected a huge change in the law, and inroad on long-established anti-discrimination principles, based on a contrived story that exploited the judicial system and simply did an end-around the requirement of actual facts.”
You don’t need to be a columnist for the LA Times to see the truth of it – that giving makebelieve the force of law is what this court does best. You don’t need to be an expert, on anything, to see that this is what corruption looks like.