From the Archives, 2004: Republicans end the assault weapons ban and the usual suspects are there!

By Spy Archivist Aula Minerva
with Texas Correspondent Gus McCrae

As predicted in last week's Spy (see below) the horror of the Buffalo supermarket assault weapon massacre was wiped off the front pages and A blocks by the carnage at the Uvalde elementary school in the heart of America's gun country, Texas.

Before the next massacre by assault rifle, we thought we'd drill down into the cause of this plague.

It's so simple: Republicans.

Thus we were surprised when a number of the usual Republican suspects were heard to express how shocked, shocked they were by the most recent massacres.  They also bemoaned the mysterious inability of our society to come up with effective solutions to the agony of massacre by assault weapon, like not selling assault weapons to any 18-year-old with his daddy's Visa.

Here are a few examples of Republicans decrying the unbearable events of Buffalo and Uvalde:

Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC:

This is incredible - must watch: https://t.co/hfh5HlFuVv

— Nicolle Wallace (@NicolleDWallace) May 26, 2022

 

And Republican pollster and fixer Frank Luntz:

This may be controversial, but I don’t think this teen should be able to purchase an AR-15 once his current legal matters get sorted out. https://t.co/R74nKPyDml

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) May 27, 2022

And what does David “Axis of Evil” Frum think about the anguish caused by teenagers wielding assault weapons powerful enough to rip bodies apart? 

It’s precisely *because* they cannot legislate murder out of the human heart that civilized societies regulate the instruments of murder in human hands.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) May 27, 2022

Let's just ingest one more dose of Republican shock and horror over assault weapons massacres. Here's Steve “Vote Palin for VP” Schmidt: 

Ignoring this is lethal. Deadly. The magnitude of societal reform we need is on the same level as where this country was between 1890 and 1915. Social Media Companies, school officials, cops, politicians, ect. The Bayeux Tapestry isn’t big enough for the failure list. Disgraceful https://t.co/TIpHkzRkgR

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) May 28, 2022

Disgraceful is the word for it. More specifically, why are assault weapons with their 30-round magazines and body-shredding power readily available to any untrained nitwit? 

There was a time in this country when the sale of assault weapons was generally outlawed. That ban expired in 2004, when Republican President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress let it expire, as explained by The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - Despite widespread popular support, the federal law banning the sale of 19 kinds of semiautomatic assault weapons is almost certain to expire on Monday,...

While President Bush has expressed support for legislation extending the ban,..he has not pressured lawmakers to act, leading critics to accuse him of trying to have it both ways.

Efforts to renew the ban, which polls show is supported by at least two-thirds of Americans, have faltered this year on Capitol Hill....while Republican leaders have opposed the ban.

"I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire," Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said on Wednesday.

The House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, dismissed the ban as "a feel-good piece of legislation" and said flatly that it would expire Monday, even if Mr. Bush made an effort to renew it.

"If the president asked me, it would still be no," Mr. DeLay said. "He knows, because we don't have the votes to pass the assault weapons ban. It will expire Monday, and that's that."

Democrats decried the influence of the rifle association and said the ban could be renewed if the president wanted it to.

 

Senator Bill Frist?  Is he the same guy who said this week:

pic.twitter.com/VxRll17sed

— Bill Frist, M.D. (@bfrist) May 25, 2022

 

 

Actually, the time to act was 2004, when Frist could have pushed through an assault weapons ban that could have saved countless young lives in Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and other places from dying in agony.  But like the surgeon that he was, he's excised his own past.  

That bit of amnesia led us to wonder what Nicolle, Dave, Frank, and Steve were doing back then. Let's find out!

On September 8, 2004, the Bush campaign's press secretary was – wait for it: Nicolle Wallace, then doing business as Nicolle Devenish:

Schmidt's appointment is part of a reshuffling of the White House communications operation as Bush gears up to sell major initiatives to a skeptical Congress and public. In a series of changes likely to be announced this week, communications director Dan Bartlett and chief speechwriter Michael Gerson will be given loftier titles and wider responsibilities. Bartlett will be succeeded by Nicolle Devenish, who was communications director for the Bush-Cheney campaign and formerly headed the White House Office of Media Affairs, which serves regional and specialty organizations.

Bartlett is likely to become counselor....Devenish will be his principal deputy 

Schmidt?  Who's Schmidt? Is it the same Schmidt who now tells us we need first magnitude social reform, whatever that means?  Reader, you know this one: of course it is.  Here's the Washington Post report of June 15, 2004: “ "The economy is firing on all cylinders," said Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman.” And as soon as the President he advised did nothing and let the assault weapons ban expire, mass shooters started firing on all cylinders, not to mention schoolchildren, shoppers, churchgoers, and others.

Guess who made America safe for assault weapons?

And that Frank Luntz fella?  Surely he wouldn't be the guy who remorselessly shopped talking points and catch phrases for Republicans who saw nothing wrong with assault weapons for sale next to the six-packs and Slim Jims?  What was he doing back in 2004?

With voter anxieties about Iraq shadowing this year's campaign, pollster Frank Luntz has some advice for fellow Republicans: Mind your language.

Luntz...says minor changes in language used by politicians can lead to major differences in voter perceptions -- turning a potential liability into an asset.

Among his suggested talking points,... It's not the war in Iraq -- it's the war on terror. "

Hell, if he could spin the Iraq debacle, surely he had no problem defending Republicans who brought shock and awe into the classroom with legal assault weapons, which, to be fair, have caused far less carnage than Bush's pointless Iraq War.

And David Frum?  A man who now speaks so eloquently about the need to regulate lethal weapons could have been no part of the Administration that let the worst of them be sold like corny dogs at the Texas State Fair.  Indeed, by September 2004, Frum had left his gig as a speechwriter for George W. Bush and taken up a no-heavy-lifting gig as a writer for that well known advocate of safe and sensible gun regulation, the National Review.

The captious may ask what is our point.  After all, if Wallace, Frum, Schmidt, Frist, and Luntz have now seen the light and speak well of a ban on assault weapons, isn't that a good thing?

It's better, to be sure.  But their advocacy elides the central political point, which is there is but one reason why would-be mass murderers can celebrate their 18th birthday with a shiny new assault rifle capable of shredding 40 children a minute.  That reason is Republicans.

Not using the R-word in your sententious bleats about gun violence helps your fellow Republicans avoid responsibility for their cruel and immoral refusal to adopt gun safety laws.  It also obscures the solution.

If these apostate Republicans really want to solve the problem that they helped to create by their own deeds and words, then they should devote their energies to making the case that Republicans are to blame for dead children and shoppers with the same snap and verve that they used to rebrand the Iraq War.

Imagine the possibilities if, for example, David Frum were to call out the NRA, elected Republicans, and white racist militias as the atrocious joint venturers they are.  If only there was a pithy way to describe three apexes of America's gun violence tragedy.  How about “the Equilateral Triangle of Evil”? 

If David, Nicolle, Frank, Bill, or Steve has any better ideas, our comment page is wide open. 

CORRECTION, MAY 29 – It turns out the killer didn't need his daddy's Visa card to buy his weapons of mass destruction. The company offers instant financing to buyers:

The Spy regrets the error, unlike the company that supplied the tools of mass murder, which regrets nothing.

You read it in the Spy ... two days ago.

 

https://realmassachusettsspy.blogspot.com/2022/05/i-love-paradeof-horribles.html

I love a parade...of horribles

By Izzy Stone
Washington Correspondent

Who doesn't love a parade?  We do! And as we get ever closer to a midterm election with everything on the line, we thought we'd get the ball rolling with a parade.

Specifically, a parade of the horribles that will happen should Republicans take the House and Senate in 2022 because their hate-addled base showed up and Democrats didn't.

Parade of horribles: coming soon thanks to you!

We hope the parade doesn't pass by, but with predictions of $6/gallon gasoline and endless whining from segments of the Democratic Party base who should know better (by definition, all of them) about the manifold shortcomings of President Biden and the nominally Democratic Congress, we're not optimistic.

As the parade warms up let's review who cares about this upcoming election:

Maybe more significantly, Democratic interest in the midterms has increased — from 50 percent of Democrats in March who indicated a high level of interest (either a “9” or “10” on a 10-point scale) to 61 percent now. That’s compared to Republicans, who were at 67 percent high interest two months ago, versus 69 percent now.  

In the interest of stirring up the 40% of Democrats who don't seem to care who wins this fall, let's strike up the band and get this party started!

1.  The impeachment of President Biden.  Every Republican vying for influence or just an interview with Tucker “Where's Mommy?” Carlson is backing this horrible, so let's start here.  Even though there's zero chance Biden can be removed (as long as 34 Democratic Senators remain alive and voting), it will be a spectacle that could run all year, dominating the headlines and cable news and setting the stage for taking Biden down in 2024.

Republicans ran this play before in 1999, and although it was a shambolic farce that revealed Republicans to be petty pious frauds, not one Republican suffered any consequences for the persecution.  Right, Lindsay?  And it dampened enthusiasm and support for Al Gore, while inspiring enough disaffected Democrats to follow the bold if demented leadership of Ralph Nader.  You remember what happened next.

What grounds would there be for passing article of impeachment against Joe Biden?  You're asking the wrong question.  The fact is that the mouth-breathing GOP base is as hot for impeachment as Madison Cawthorn was for his cousin:

With numbers like that, the Republican House won't trouble itself much with the basis for any charges against Biden.  If they do, the deep thinkers in their caucus are ready:

Today, Congresswoman [No free plugs from us – Ed.] introduced three impeachment resolutions against Joe Biden for his dereliction of duty in Afghanistan, his violations of immigration law causing a national security crisis on our Southern border, and his usurping of the Constitutional balance of power by ignoring the ruling of the Supreme Court.

Ah yes, the end of the Afghan war, which established media gasbags were telling us would define the Biden Presidency. As Hedley Lamarr would say: “Right as always, sir.”

Anyway, the point of impeaching Biden is not to remove him from office.  It's to provide hundreds of hours of free airtime to every Republican whack job in Congress to advance their own careers.  If the spectacle distracts the electorate from the corruption and subversion of Republicans, that's just an added bonus!

And that's just the beginning of the parade.

2.  Government shutdown.  We know this will happen because every time in the last 30 years when there has been a Republican Congress and a Democratic President, it has happened.  Again, although the Conventional Wisdom has it that such a shutdown is bad for Republicans, we are unaware of any elected Republican who was unelected because he or she drove our government into the buffers.

It's fun for Republicans to shut down the government, an entity they don't really have much use for, except for the part with the heavily armed guys shooting at Black protesters in the streets. If millions suffer because government aid is cut off or government initiatives, like, say, inspection of baby formula plants, are suspended, who cares?

In fact, Republicans enjoy government shutdowns because they prove the Republican talking point that government can't do anything (other than protect the lives and property of white men).  And the usual bloviators will both-sides a shut down and bemoan the lack of sensible bipartisanship that should have resulted in keeping government functioning as long as Democrats are willing to give up – their foolish opposition to asylum repeal on bogus “public health” grounds.

If you think that no one would be dim enough to spout nonsense like this after Republicans proved themselves in favor of overthrowing democracy, then read for yourself the musings of a proud Brandeis grad and retired columnist who married into a real estate fortune in the May 22 New York Times  (We don't link to pisspoor content anymore).

And if you don't think Republicans will hesitate to shut down the US Government for any f***in' stupid reason, we call your attention to ancient history (December 2021) as recounted in The Guardian:

Could there be a worse reason to shut down the Government?  If there is, Congressional Republicans will find it!

Where there's a shutdown there's a ....

3.  Debt default.  We know Republicans will cause the United States to default on its debt in a time of global political, military, and economic crisis because, once again, they've done it every time they hold Congress and a Democrat squats (in GOP eyes) in the White House.

During the Obama administration, the price for raisinig the debt ceiling was a ridiculous set of budget caps that proved so unworkable they were quietly abandoned after causing years of havoc and suffering.

Although Dems can be justly accused of learning slowly, they've caught on that there's no point to playing this game and we suspect the Biden Administration will respond to Republican extortion with a polite finger.

The resulting financial chaos will of course be blamed on both sides, but to Republicans any economic calamity is only pure gold for their 2024 campaign to win or steal the Presidency.  Wall Street titans will rumble about how bad a debt default is, but the trailer-trash MAGA base (many of whom live on ironclad public pensions) doesn't care what Jamie Dimon thinks, for f***ks sake.  As for Janet Yellin, who enjoys the special regard Republicans lavish on women and Jews,

one can only imagine the hearing at which her concerns were treated by House Majority Gym Jordan with the same seriousness he once gave to the cries of violated college wrestlers he coached.

There may come a time when the debt crisis starts to hit the pocketbooks of funders of Republican insanity, like Charles Koch or the Mercers, but before that happens, we'll bet that trillions of dollars of savings will have been wiped out and millions of lives will have been ruined by economic chaos.  

4.  Judges.  If Clarence Thomas strokes out in 2023 or 2024, do you think that a Republican Senate will confirm any replacement?  Or any appellate judge needed to repair bent circuits like the Fifth, Sixth, or Eleventh?

5.  Global warming.  With a Democratic House and 52 Democratic Senators Coal Mine Joe and Ditzy Kristen won't have a death grip on legislation to save the Earth from frying to a crisp.  We might even get a crash program to wean us from fossil fuels thereby ending the unbearable curse of $5 gas going out the tailpipe in summer traffic jams.

But the Democrats are so disappointing!

6.  COVID.  A million dead later, over a third of whom died to Republican opposition to vaccine and mask mandates (see below), and Republicans are still refusing to fund the measures needed to limit the death toll of the next wave of COVID, already upon us in the Northeast. 

7.  Abortion rights.  Abortion will be gone well before the election, a human, moral, and legal tragedy that may nonetheless be good for Democratic turnout.  Thinking that a Democratic Congress might be able to protect women from coathanger abortions and criminal prosecutions for leaving hellholes like Missouri to obtain health care?  Good luck with Speaker of the House Elsie Stefanik '06!

8  Duck and cover.  Somewhere in America the next victims of America's gun lust are shopping, davening, working, going to arithmetic class or just walking down the street, unaware that their lives will soon end in violence and agony.  With Republicans intent on putting assault rifle vending machines outside every school and supermarket, the number of future victims, likely to be women, Black people, Jews, or children, can only increase.

9.  Democracy.  To cover up their corruption and extremism, and to fluff their base and their Tangerine-Faced Leader, the Republican Congress will pass new legislation making it even more unlikely that future elections will be won by the candidates with the most votes.  Do you really think that Republicans won't pass every piece of s*** they can think of to block Democratic voters, and let their local henchpeople deliver Electoral College votes to the FLG? If so, why?

10.  $4 gas.  The price of gas is caused by many things.  The identity of the party in power on Capitol Hill isn't one of them.

As the parade of 2023 horribles pass by, ask yourself whether you are looking forward to the reality they portend.  If you're disappointed in the results the Democrats obtained with a narrow dysfunctional majority over the past two years, ask yourself if the Republican parade is worth making the point that you were too principled to vote Democratic.  And if you can articulate what that principle is, be sure to tell the rest of us.

The first million

By Vincent Boom-Batz, M.D.
Medical Editor

The front page of The New York Times today looks like this:

Yes, we're number one!  The first country in the world to lose one million people to COVID.  Chalk up another victory for American exceptionalism.

If you wanted to know how many died unnecessarily, you'd have to dig deep – all the way back to NPR's report on Friday's All Things Considered:

So anti-vax drivel, propelled by the Former Loser Grifter and his retinue of whack jobs and hatemongers (a/k/a Fox “News”), led to the preventable deaths of 319,000.  That's a big number.  For comparison, 319,000 equals

• the number of times Maureen Dowd has rubbished Hillary Clinton over the years, before she figured out that her Electoral College defeat in 2016 had led to the loss of abortion rights.
• the number of visits by New York Times reporters to rural diners to take the pulse of white male racists since 2016
• the number of days in Chris Sale's rehab before he starts for the Red Sox.

[They get the drift – Ed.]

And of course that's only a portion of the unnecessary death and suffering.  Although harder to quantify, there's no doubt that failure to mask in indoor spaces has led to thousands of additional deaths, no matter what Times newsletter writers and Atlantic galaxy brains say:

But a growing body of evidence — from laboratory experiments to real world studies conducted around the world — suggests that masking provides benefits in a variety of settings, including schools, scientists agreed.

“You can pick apart any one study,” said Linsey Marr, an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech. But, she noted, “there’s overwhelming evidence that masking has a beneficial and small effect on reducing transmission in schools.” 

How about trains and planes, when you could be sitting next to a MAGA Typhoid Kevin for anywhere from two to 92 hours, depending on weather and pilot existence?

One study about workplace masking estimated that that mask mandates could have reduced deaths by 47,000 early in the pandemic (before vaccines lowered mortality rates substantially).  47,000 is a lot of people.  For comparison, 47,000 is [You are not doing this again. – Ed.] 

Had the Former Loser Grifter and Republicans in general not mobilized their MAGA idiots against vaccine and mask mandates, the current death toll from COVID would have been somewhere around 600,000, a difference of 400,000 thousand people who would still be living and not mourned and missed by their parents, children, siblings, and friends.

Now 400,000 is a big number. For comparison, 400,000 – [You're fired – Ed.]

Let's review what the world looked like before we could prevent the loss of 400,000 or more of our fellow citizens. As everything prior to say last Tuesday has gone down our collective memory hole, it take some effort to recall the frightening days of spring 2020, when the pandemic so ravaged New York that it could not handle the bodies:

The number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus in New York State rose on Wednesday by only 200 from the previous day, officials said on Thursday, ...
But...more than 18,000 ailing patients — nearly equal to the capacity of Madison Square Garden — were still packed into New York’s hospitals, and the daily death toll was near 800 for the second day in a row, bringing the state’s total fatalities to more than 7,000....

NYC Spring 2020: the sirens never stopped

There are now so many people dying in private homes that soldiers and members of the National Guard have started to haul the bodies out in rented vans.

On Wednesday night, the New York City Medical Reserve Corps sent out an email calling for “strong, willing” volunteers to serve as “body handlers” to tag and store dead bodies in refrigerated trailers. On Thursday morning, Mr. Cuomo [Who? – Ed.] said he would authorize out-of-state funeral directors to practice in New York to alleviate the burden on their overworked colleagues.

And while New York was crushed by a tsunami of COVID disease and death that at the time had no cure or effective vaccine, here's how the Republican Tangerine-Faced Grifter Administration reacted:

we have entered a bizarre space in which [the Former Loser Grifter] makes concrete claims refuted by objective reality that people can see with their own eyes. We are supposed to wear masks and gloves: They are difficult to find on store shelves. He has claimed that everyone who wants a coronavirus test can get one, a falsehood disprovable in most circumstances by asking for one at a local clinic. He hoped the virus would “miraculously” vanish with warmer weather. It has not.

No masks. Health care workers issued garbage bags instead of real protective gear. Horse dewormer. Those were the days.

And after all that, 74,000,000 of your fellow citizens signed up for another four years of death and denial.

As we said not long ago, despite the current apathy, COVID is very much with us and we're still dying from it.  Yet because a depraved corrupt bigot did not want to smear his greasy orange bronzer when taking off a mask, the Trumpublican Party mobilized against vaccine and mask mandates, and called it...freedom.

We flew from Washington to Boston last week and wore a mask the whole time.  (The flight took about 44 minutes.)  Wearing a mask didn't feel like an unbearable intrusion on liberty to us.

Certainly not compared to the strip search ordeal that all airline passengers “volunteer” for at the TSA checkpoint.  We're still getting patted down or worse because some idiot once tried to set off a bomb in his gattkes that killed 0.0 people?   Why isn't that unbearable tyranny?  

Is it because the Tangerine-Faced Bigot never flies on an airline, so he has no reason to stir up his mouth-breathing followers?  You also won't see Tucker “Where's Mommy” Carlson queuing up in Boarding Group C, so he's not interested either.

Between judicial interference with vaccine and mask mandates, and a political climate in which every simple no-downside public health measure must run a gauntlet of entitled white men demanding to review the data sets underlying for each one, our governments have essentially given up on controlling the further spread of a pandemic that's still taking over 300 lives every single day:

Chart: The New York Times

It's not that COVID mitigation has been “politicized.” It's that Republicans have mobilized against controlling pandemic spread for political advantage.

The first million COVID deaths might have been “unimaginable,” but we can imagine easily the reason for most of the next million deaths. It's Republicans.

The public health lesson is plain: between frustrating reasonable COVID mitigation measures while ensuring that every teenage white supremacist has immediate access to high powered assault weapons and nonstop incitement to use them, the leading cause of preventable death in America is – Republicans.

The usual suspects in the Cafe Republicain are shocked to learn the abortion game was rigged

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling with
Washington Correspondent Izzy Stone in Chevy Chase, Maryland

In case you were wondering, Chevy Chase, Maryland, across the Northwest border of Washington, D.C., is lovely this time of year.  The dogwoods are in bloom, the azaleas are a riot of hot pink and red and the parks are alive with the sounds of – women protesting the imminent loss of their right to a safe, legal abortion in the United States, a right firmly established in law since 1973.

What happened to disturb the sylvan silence of the elegant tree-shaded suburbs of Washington in May?

That well-known straight talking feminist, Jennifer Rubin, explains it all to us:

The Supreme Court’s approval ratings have been in sharp decline for a while. But in revealing itself to be a partisan gang seeking to impose a specific version of Christianity on the rest of America, the court might finally have gone a step too far. The leaked draft opinion foretelling a reversal of Roe v. Wade has boomeranged on the partisan, radical majority. 

Partisan majority, eh? That sounds pretty bad. What kind of partisan majority, Jen? 

She's too polite to say so but it's a Republican partisan majority: Long Dong Thomas (appointed by Republican Bush Senior), Sulky Sam Alito (appointed by Republican Bush Junior), and the Former Loser Grifter trio: Gorsuch (who filled the seat held open by Moscow Mitch McConnell's refusal to consider a nomination in an election year), Rapey Brett Kavanaugh, and Handmaid Amy (added a few weeks before the 2020 election following Republican willingness to consider, wait for it, a Republican judge in an election year).

Standing off to one side hoping to repeal Roe by weeks, rather than all at once, is the Pride of Harvard, John “Split the Difference” Roberts '76, L'79, also appointed by li'l George.

That's more than 30 years of Republican court-packing. So if you supported Republicans (like Jen!) at any time since 1988, you own a piece of the bloody carnage and ruined lives to come in states where abortion will be outlawed the day the bent Supreme Court issues its final decision. 

Page A1, July 3, 1991.  Who knew?

In her defense, how could anyone have expected that supporting Republicans running for President and Senate could lead to taking away a fundamental right?  It's not like 30 years of Republican hacks were honest about what they were doing.  Here's what New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis observed way back when:

Today's George Bush is against abortion. He is in an Administration that has opposed Planned Parenthood and the U.N. world population program because they do not take a rigid view against abortion. His party's platform calls for a Constitutional amendment that would keep any state from allowing women to make the choice.

In the Western democratic world those are extreme positions. Hardly any European country, for example, bars abortion in such absolute terms: not Britain, not Germany, not France, not Spain, not Italy.

What changed Mr. Bush's view? Politics did. He decided that he had to please the extremists of the anti-abortion movement in order to get anywhere in today's Republican Party.

Well, OK, that might have been a clue.

So when he nominated Clarence with the Good Pubic Hair, The New York Times reported that anti-abortion groups were pleased:

Anti-abortion groups hailed the choice, in the apparent belief that Judge Thomas's generally conservative views would lead him to vote for reversal of the 1973 ruling that women have a Constitutional right to abortion.

By the way, that 1991 dispatch was sent over the telegraph wires by Maureen Dowd, who, before her retirement, uh, career as a columnist, was a hard-news Washington beat reporter. Don't worry, we'll get back to Kevin's sister.

Before we do, let's just spend one second on Jennifer Rubin's evaluation of the man who sold out his political principles to curry favor with anti-abortion rights zealots:

Throughout his life [George H.W.] Bush 41 understood that service, country, tradition, the norms of democracy and the Constitution itself come first....If we needed a reminder that Bush 41 will and should rank in the top tier of presidents,... 

Sure, Jen.

Next in seniority is Sulky Sam Alito, who actually wrote and perhaps leaked the appalling draft opinion, which relied on the lack of protection for abortion rights in the original Constitution and the musings of the 17th Century advocates of marital rape.  What the relevance of these tidbits are to the construction of the term “due process” in the Fourteenth Amendment (ratified in 1868) is clear only to Alito and his four henchpeople.

Who could have guessed that Alito would be waiting for Roe with a dagger? Perhaps anyone with a New York Times subscription, which noted at the time of his nomination

Among his noteworthy opinions was his lone dissent in the 1991 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the 3rd Circuit struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

We won't know where George Junior ranks among great American Presidents according to Jen for a while, as he appears to be hale, hearty, and enjoying toe painting in Dallas.  But if you supported his election, like Jen, Nicolle Wallace, or any number of latterly-outraged Republicans, you own the end of the right to abortion.

Speaking of Nicolle, what's she been up to since rioting in Dade County to stop the 2000 Florida recount?  She's been thanking pro-abortion rights guests who drop by her daily MSNBC show:

Thank you @CecileRichards https://t.co/ngfMPzCQaf

— Nicolle Wallace (@NicolleDWallace) May 4, 2022

Thank you, Nicolle, for your support of reproductive freedom.

By the way, when your boss George W. Bush was busily scheming to put Roberts (who supposedly wants to overrule Roe but allow abortions up to 15 weeks until the next case, a technique known in legal circles as “boiling the woman like a frog”) and the aforementioned Sulky Sam on the Court, what did you have to say?  You'll never guess:

The Bush campaign unveiled a television commercial that questions Mr. Kerry's priorities and attacks him for voting against legislation, since signed into law by the president, that makes it a separate offense to harm the fetus in a federal crime against a pregnant woman....Because the law treats the fetus as a separate person, its opponents have described it as an effort to roll back abortion rights....

In a conference call with reporters, Nicolle Devenish [As she was then known – Ed.], the communications director for the Bush campaign, signaled that the commercial would be the start of a concerted effort to counteract what she described as an effort by Mr. Kerry...to reinvent himself.

Nicolle Wallace's political views have, um, evolved

....''John Kerry began this process as the duckling of the far left and hopes to emerge at his convention as the swan of the heartland,'' Ms. Devenish said. ''Only the truth about his record will prevent this phony makeover of the nation's most out-of-the-mainstream senator.''

Sounds like she was A-OK with efforts to undermine abortion rights in a close election. Had John Kerry, rather than W., managed to eke out a victory, do you think Sulky Sam would have made it onto the Court? 

Any other woman gasbags shocked and horrified to learn that Roe is headed for the dumpster? Kevin Dowd's sister Maureen weighed in:

This week’s stunning reversal on women’s rights is the apotheosis of the last 40 years, through Reagan, Schlafly, Meese, Rehnquist and Scalia, climaxing in Mitch McConnell, who made a Faustian bargain to support chuckleheaded T---- to get a conservative court. Because of McConnell’s machinations blocking Merrick Garland and ramming through Amy Coney Barrett, T---- was able to name three anti-abortion conservatives to the court, all of whom prevaricated under oath before the Senate about their intentions on Roe.

To Maureen, the Republican effort to take away the right to legal abortion had been a clear and present danger for 40 years.  Which leads us to wonder: was there any other time before last Sunday when she could have sounded the alarm and led the cheers for Hillary Clinton as the only thing standing between women and forced birth?

They say you can't tell a book by its cover, but let's look at the one for her collected Election 2016 wit and wisdom:

Ha-ha, amirite?  How dare Hillary kick a man who, not content to grab women by the pussy, now through his three minions has an iron grip on all of their reproductive organs?

Like the standup gal she is, Maureen blames the current state of abortion-rights advocates on those who failed to sound the warning about what a Former Loser Grifter victory would mean for Roe and women.

Nah, we're just s***in' you.  She blames, wait for it, Democrats:

When will the Democrats stop being betas? As an emotional Gavin Newsom said at Planned Parenthood’s L.A. headquarters, “Where the hell’s my party? Where’s the Democratic Party? Why aren’t we standing up more firmly, more resolutely?” 

Where was Maureen when standing up more firmly, more resolutely, more unambiguously might have made a difference? And, to ask a question no one cares about, where was brother Kevin?

If Jen, Nicolle, Maureen, and so many others like them are going to sit all night at the Café Republicain flirting with or drinking White Russians and decrying the death of Roe and the imminent deaths of women denied legal abortions, it's only fair to ask them, like Yvonne to Rick, where they were last night.

We already know their answer: “I can't remember that far back.”

"Didn't you realize the Republicans wanted to take away your freedom?"