Sunday, September 26, 2021

[U] SB-8 Collateral Fallout: When The Quality Of The "Bounty Hunters" Is Of This Caliber, The So-Called "Pro-Lifers" Have Already Lost The War, In Texas...


In the end, SB-8 will die. The Supremes simply cannot allow "vigilante justice" to be the rule here. There are manifold ways in which the bill, even as written, will be used to supress clearly enumerated Constitutional rights. But between now and when the Supremes get it, the anti-abortion forces will have a vast quagmire of miscreants to clean up. As will the Governor and the local judges, in the Longhorn State.

And by that, I mean the supposed "privately-injured parties", who are now filing state and federal suits with the aim of recovering $10,000 per violation -- in Texas, from alleged service providers. Take this first, most notable one. No really. . . . Please -- take it.

It is brought by a convicted felon, serving home confinement for 15 years (now in his twelfth year!) in Arkansas (the bill imposes no geographical limits). Oh -- and by his own admission, he's a disgraced, and a disbarred former attorney, and a federal tax cheat. He is the face of this White-Knight / "justice effort" -- in Texas. Charming.

I won't quote any of his suit -- as it is in the main, a rambling diatribe against the federal authorities who have properly convicted him of tax scheme felonies (and taken his freedoms) -- but along the way he demands up to $100,000 from these chuckleheaded Texas statutory schemes -- as a supposed bounty hunter.

These are the kinds of "advocates" one draws, when one doesn't have the brains to think things through -- and then makes pacts with the worst of the MAGA elements.

Updated, on Monday morning -- consider this (as an observation in reply to a below comment), from the latest filed emergency petition before the Supremes:

. . .It is a foundational principle of our federal constitutional system that "the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution," and States may not nullify federal rights through "evasive schemes" designed to foreclose federal judicial review. Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 17–18 (1958). Had a State after Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294 (1955), enacted a similar law authorizing private citizens to sue anyone integrating a school, there can be little question that this Court would have immediately stopped that act of lawlessness. That S.B.-8 seeks to frustrate the right to abortion rather than the right to equal protection cannot justify different treatment. . . .


Welcome to the public relations nightmare, you Roman Catholics (among others), in Texas. You clearly bargained for it.

नमस्ते

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it's so painfully obvious that they'll strike this down, why did SCOTUS choose not to stay the law pending legal challenges in front of the court? The split-hair dance around 'standing' can't possibly be enough justification to ignore the obvious end-around on Roe precedent. Why would they let it become law now only to strike it down in 6-9 months?

condor said...

I genuinely cannot explain the court’s declining to take it immediately. There has been a second emergency request — filed late Thursday with the Supremes, which I linked in my first paragraph.

I do fear the court will permanently damage its reputation with this case.

But unless they wish to cause the end of life tenures on the court, they WILL ultimately kill Texas SB-8.

If this was some form of political gamesmanship, I am beyond disgusted.

It is already causing neighboring Oklahoma family planning clinics to see surges of Texas resident women. The women will get abortions.

Texas has achieved. . . nothing, with this malevolent “law.”

Insane.

condor said...

Here’s the link to the “surge” into Oklahoma, and other states story:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/us/oklahoma-abortion.html

Namaste. . . .