What are "pro-choice proclivities"?

 The entire premise of this Prospect article is wrong.  

Since Dobbs, voters in Republican Kansas, Ohio, and Montana have rejected far-right overreaching ballot measures and affirmed their support for the right to abortion even with curbs in place. In last year’s midterm elections, voters’ concerns about the loss of that right helped keep the Senate in Democratic hands and blunt the Republican wave in the House that overconfident prognosticators repeatedly claimed was nigh.

This fall, upcoming gubernatorial elections in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana will test just how deep the revulsion over these far-right Republican excesses runs in the South, and what those races may presage in abortion access politics beyond the region. All three states have Republican supermajorities in their legislatures. The Dobbs decision specifically affirmed a Mississippi statute devised to explicitly challenge Roe v. Wade. But many Republicans have been shaken by the backlash.

No. Louisiana's gubernatorial election will not test voters' aversion to GOP anti-abortion politics in any way.  I understand why national political analysts would like it to. It certainly could do that.  The mid-term results and the single ballot issue results this article cites do, indeed, indicate that abortion rights can be a winning issue for Democrats in supposedly "red" territory.  But that can only happen if the Democratic candidates run on defending those rights. The Democrat in our Governor's race is decidedly not doing that. 

The Prospect article wants to pretend that he is, or could be. But the closest it can come to achieving this pretense is to describe him as having "Pro-choice proclivities." 

Louisiana holds its open primary in mid-October. Gov. John Bel Edwards, an anti-abortion Democrat, is term-limited. Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is running to succeed Edwards, sticks to the loud and proud extremes favored by the far-right Republicans on abortion. If he survives attacks from his Republican opponents in the already nasty “jungle” primary, he appears to be poised to romp over Democrat Shawn Wilson, an African American former state transportation secretary and first-time candidate with pro-choice proclivities and little statewide name recognition. Like their Mississippi neighbors, Louisianans mostly vote along racial lines.

To demonstrate those proclivities, the Prospect cites Wilson's extremely milquetoast rhetoric in support of rape and incest exceptions as well as the fact that he affirmatively answered a yes/no debate question about a hypothetical statewide referendum on abortion.  This is hardly anything.  Certainly it is not indicative of the "Post-Dobbs strategy" of full-throated support for abortion rights the article wants these elections to "test." 

In fact, in interviews, Wilson sounds very much like a 90s Third Way Democrat seeking to accommodate anti-abortion sentiment while also not posing a direct threat to an individual's "private decisions." 

In an interview last week, Wilson didn’t describe himself as being “pro-choice” like abortion rights supporters typically do.

The Democrat said he personally opposes abortion except in cases where a pregnant person was a victim of rape or incest – or their health is at risk. But he also believes his personal beliefs shouldn’t be imposed on others, and that individuals need more flexibility to make their own decisions about ending a pregnancy. 

When asked about abortion, Wilson said he is “not interested in preventing folks from making decisions that are private,” and “I dare not question their doctor’s expertise.”

But after Dobbs, those private decisions are already threatened. State laws that are on the books now criminalize them.  Wilson is not promising to do anything about that. He's meekly defending a status quo that doesn't exist anymore.  During the third debate, Wilson was asked why he had begun the campaign with the words "Pro-life" displayed on his website but then taken that down. All he said was, "I am personally a decision maker for me and my family." We can barely even understand what that means for his family members, let alone what it might mean for the people of the state.

What a waste. The thing is, it is probably true that Democrats can make up some ground in GOP dominated states by running campaigns that speak up for abortion rights rather than just hint a candidate's "pro-choice proclivities." The "Dobbs strategy" does, in fact, seem viable.  Shawn Wilson isn't running on that, though. 

So what is it all about?

There isn't much to say about this that isn't already in the text of the dissent. So let's highlight a few things. (full opinion can be found here)

And no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation. Most obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy arose straight out of the right to purchase and use contraception. See Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972). In turn, those rights led, more recently, to rights of same-sex intimacy and marriage. See Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003); Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015). They are all part of the same constitutional fabric, protecting autonomous decisionmaking over the most personal of life decisions. The majority (or to be more accurate, most of it) is eager to tell us today that nothing it does “cast[s] doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Ante, at 66; cf. ante, at 3 (THOMAS, J., concurring) (advocating the overruling of Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell). But how could that be? The lone rationale for what the majority does today is that the right to elect an abortion is not “deeply rooted in history”: Not until Roe, the majority argues, did people think abortion fell within the Constitution’s guarantee of liberty. Ante, at 32. The same could be said, though, of most of the rights the majority claims it is not tampering with. The majority could write just as long an opinion showing, for example, that until the mid-20th century, “there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain [contraceptives].” Ante, at 15. So one of two things must be true. Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid19th century are insecure. Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other.

We start with Roe and Casey, and with their deep connections to a broad swath of this Court’s precedents. To hear the majority tell the tale, Roe and Casey are aberrations: They came from nowhere, went nowhere—and so are easy to excise from this Nation’s constitutional law. That is not true. After describing the decisions themselves, we explain how they are rooted in—and themselves led to—other rights giving individuals control over their bodies and their most personal and intimate associations. The majority does not wish to talk about these matters for obvious reasons; to do so would both ground Roe and Casey in this Court’s precedents and reveal the broad implications of today’s decision. But the facts will not so handily disappear. Roe and Casey were from the beginning, and are even more now, embedded in core constitutional concepts of individual freedom, and of the equal rights of citizens to decide on the shape of their lives. Those legal concepts, one might even say, have gone far toward defining what it means to be an American. For in this Nation, we do not believe that a government controlling all private choices is compatible with a free people. So we do not (as the majority insists today) place everything within “the reach of majorities and [government] officials.” West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 638 (1943). We believe in a Constitution that puts some issues off limits to majority rule. Even in the face of public opposition, we uphold the right of individuals—yes, including women—to make their own choices and chart their own futures. Or at least, we did once.

The majority would allow States to ban abortion from conception onward because it does not think forced childbirth at all implicates a woman’s rights to equality and freedom. Today’s Court, that is, does not think there is anything of constitutional significance attached to a woman’s control of her body and the path of her life. Roe and Casey thought that one-sided view misguided. In some sense, that is the difference in a nutshell between our precedents and the majority opinion. The constitutional regime we have lived in for the last 50 years recognized competing interests, and sought a balance between them. The constitutional regime we enter today erases the woman’s interest and recognizes only the State’s (or the Federal Government’s).

And one more thing to share just to drive home the point.

The criminalization of a woman’s right to choose is only the precursor to states removing other freedoms based in privacy. As one freedom is removed from the table, a myriad of others become jeopardized by future government overreach- to which, set by this dangerous precedent,

— del (@so_del_icious) June 24, 2022

Okay and one more in case we want to know what Democrats are doing about it.

As protesters can be heard in the back chanting outside SCOTUS, House Democrats sing “God Bless America.” pic.twitter.com/MjW0cSZ6nY

— Farnoush Amiri (@FarnoushAmiri) June 24, 2022

What's it all about, then? Well, it's about denying basic healthcare to millions of women and putting their lives in danger. It's about denying Americans' fundamental right to privacy insofar as it is understood by anyone born after the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. But one thing it can't possibly be about is holding the middle managers our broken political system entrusts with defending any of this responsible. Why would anyone think that? I mean, aren't the Republicans really the problem?

to me it's like being in New Orleans during Katrina, and shit is flooding, and there's nowhere to go and no help coming, and yelling at the hurricane about it. The Republicans are the hurricane in this analogy for any democratic strategists reading this

— tinybaby (@tinybaby) June 24, 2022

Ok but what are you going to do?

No doubt the *impending ruling* whenever it becomes official, will set off a round of statements from political organizations and elected people everywhere. No doubt they will all (okay well the statements issued by the ostensible "good guys" anyway) express concern, promise to "keep fighting" in vague language, and direct their audience where to send money. 

What really need to hear, though, is what local office holders and power brokers intend to do with the power they currently have. It can't just be about self-promotion, if they really do care about this. (Or if they care about anything at all, which they very well may not.)  

Anyway, the point is there are things they can do.  These are just a few ideas.

We demand @mayorcantrell and @RunWithJason refuse to enforce any laws criminalizing abortion. We want an affirmative representation that laws criminalizing abortion will not be enforced. Tacit agreement with this position is not enough.

— New Orleans DSA 🏅 (@NewOrleansDSA) May 5, 2022

We call on all major hospital networks (@OchsnerHealth , @LCMCHealth , @TouroInfirmary ) enact a “No Snitching” policy, and refuse to report to authorities any patient experiencing a miscarriage or other signs of a self-managed abortion.

— New Orleans DSA 🏅 (@NewOrleansDSA) May 5, 2022

We call on all major hospital networks (@OchsnerHealth , @LCMCHealth , @TouroInfirmary ) enact a “No Snitching” policy, and refuse to report to authorities any patient experiencing a miscarriage or other signs of a self-managed abortion.

— New Orleans DSA 🏅 (@NewOrleansDSA) May 5, 2022

There's also a rally planned in Jackson Square Saturday at 5 pm. Go on down and yell at some Jazzfest tourists about it if that helps.  But when you see your mayors, bosses, legislators and councilmembers, don't just let them "empathize." Ask them what they are going to actually do about it.

One may be given to wonder what is the purpose

John Bel signed the abortion bill just like he said he would. Despite what you might here from some of his Democratic apologists, there's no reason to believe he absolutely had to sign the bill.  There are any number of arguments a Blue Dog "Pro-life Democrat" like John Bel could have made for vetoing this extreme and cruel piece of legislation. He signed it anyway because he really wanted to.

The specific purpose behind the bill was to be as maximally cruel to women as possible.  KCP came back and gave the legislators a chance to deny this. They didn't deny it.

The ultimate hypocrisy! #lalege won’t fund the healthcare for women forced to have a child after rape or incest. @TheDemocrats @LaDemos https://t.co/aUSTlgJVvt

— KarenCarterPeterson (@TeamKCP) May 30, 2019

Paying attention

This is a pretty good Grace column about the way the political ground has shifted under John Bel with regard to abortion. There's a problem, though, with the opening paragraph where it is implied that those criticizing the Govenror for preparing to sign an abortion ban now "weren't paying attention" to his views when they voted for him in 2015.

The wider world, and even some Louisianans who weren’t paying attention, seem to just be discovering a basic truth about Gov. John Bel Edwards. Yes, he’s a Democrat — a real, true-believing, progressively minded one. And yes, he opposes legal abortion.

I don't think that's what has been going on. It's perfectly acceptable for voters who have been "paying attention" to make choices based on the relative merits of the options available even if that choice isn't a total reflection of a each voter's priorities and values. In fact most voters who pay even a little bit of attention will find most office seekers are repugnant individuals anyway.  Elections are mostly about figuring out which candidates to vote against. Votes, like retweets, are not actually endorsements.

Grace's better observation is that the Governor's abortion position is no longer some matter of convenience for him. At least, morally speaking, it isn't. Because Republicans have loaded the courts with right wing freaks (like Brett Kavanaugh, obviously, but also, somewhat ironically, Wendy Vitter) John Bel's decision isn't just some matter of electoral triangulation. The Governor, as well as his scandalously disappointing liberal defenders, would have us believe there's nothing John Bel could do here even if he wanted to.  Not only is he following through on his own beliefs, they argue, he's also just pragmatically following the will of the voters.   

Governor Edwards said he’s confident most of Louisiana’s voters feel the same.

“People of Louisiana are overwhelmingly pro-life, and this is conversation that we’ve been having here for many, many years,” he said. “It’s not any different.”

But this year, it is different.  The "fetal heartbeat' bill John Bel is preparing to sign is an extremist measure.  If the right wing courts were to allow it to be enforced, it will  have horrendous real life consequences for real life Louisiana women.  The most frequently cited poll of Louisiana voters is this 2016 LSU survey.  55% of respondents agreed that abortion should be illegal either in all (26%) or most (29%) cases.

That's a majority but it isn't an "overwhelming" majority. And within that majority, even, there are a sizeable number of persuadable respondents willing to consider circumstances under which abortion should be legal.  The circumstance we're faced with now is the threat that an extreme and dangerous law could be ratified and enforced precipitating a horrific and completely preventable public health crisis. It's reasonable, then, to expect our proud "moderate" of a Governor to veto such a law without incurring catastrophic political damage.  Some damage, maybe, but certainly a fight worth having. At least it is if the Governor is at all interested in protecting the health care and basic human right to personal autonomy of Louisianians who had little choice but to vote for him in 2015 anyway.  But why would we expect that he's been paying attention to them?

The law does not require you to carry John Bel to term

There are many many ways in which our current governor sucks. We list them here regularly.  Also we voted for him against David Vitter. Apparently there are people who are older than 13 who see some kind of contradiction in this. Voting for the least bad candidate on the ballot during a given election does not enlist you in that candidate's administration.  The least bad candidate is still going to do bad things. You aren't under any obligation to accept those things. 

Conversely, it's also fine to vote the least bad person again if he/she continues to be the least bad person on your ballot. This still doesn't enlist you in that person's campaign communications team so feel free to speak up when the least bad person does the bad things. The Governor's contact information is here, by the way.

Un-Borkable Wendy

Last week, New Orleans's world famous very woke racism expert Mitch Landrieu lent his approval to President Trump's nomination of Wendy Vitter to a federal judgeship. 

Landrieu's support came in the form of a letter sent March 1 to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee. The Democratic mayor wrote that he has "had the great pleasure to know and work with Wendy for many years" and added he "can personally attest to her strong moral character."

We have to wonder there if, by "strong moral character," Mitch was referring to Vitter's disturbingly extreme positions on abortion expressed at several public events. Here she is leading a panel where a pro-life activist claimed that abortion causes breast cancer and that birth control pills can cause you to be murdered. Here she is telling the Clarion Herald that Planned Parenthood "kills over 150,000 females a year."  Vitter came under criticism during her confirmation hearing for leaving this as well as speeches she gave at a Tea Party rally and at an anti-Planned Parenthood protest off of her disclosure form.

She also caused a stir for refusing to answer this question.

At her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, Wendy Vitter was plainly asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal: “Do you believe that Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided?” Her initial response raised an immediate red flag: “I don’t mean to be coy,” she began, before continuing: “I think I get into a difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions—which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with. Again, my personal, political, or religious views I would set aside. That is Supreme Court precedent. It is binding. If I were honored to be confirmed I would be bound by it and of course I would uphold it.” Asked again by a befuddled Blumenthal whether she supported the ruling, Vitter replied: “Again, I would respectfully not comment on what could be my bosses ruling—the Supreme Court—I would be bound by it, and if I start commenting on ‘I agree with this case’ or ‘don’t agree with this case’ I think we get into a slippery slope.”

What's going on here?  Could it be the former attorney for the Archdiocese of New Orleans has a certain affinity for the more or less de-facto segregated school system it operates?  Maybe.  But, according to the American Bar Association, that's really none of our business.

The American Bar Association's Model Code of Judicial Conduct advises that a candidate for judge "shall not, with respect to cases, controversies or issues that are likely to come before the court, make pledges, promises or commitments that are inconsistent with the impartial performance of the adjudicative duties of the office" and "should emphasize in any public statement the candidate's duty to uphold the law regardless of his or her personal views."

Vitter is following a script adhered to by (most especially by conservative) judicial nominees ever since the stuffing of President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork in 1987 over published opinions of his that leaned heavily toward the radical right. The key to getting confirmed now is to say nothing. In other words, the key to getting confirmed is to undermine the entire purpose of the confirmation process.

The notion that these judges are there "to uphold the law regardless of personal views" is an unexamined absurdity that devalues our commitment to democracy. The law is political. This is the sole source of its legitimacy.  Our laws are written and executed by elected representatives. They should be interpreted and arbitrated by individuals with accountability to the people as well. This is why Louisiana is among the states that elect most of their judges.  The federal appointment process is less pure. But the advise and consent role of the Senate is supposed to provide at least some assurance that the judiciary is subject to the will of the citizenry and not the other way around.  Nominees who refuse to talk about issues on which they are likely to rule are displaying contempt for the Senate's oversight role.

Sidestepping the question by pretending the courts exist in cloistered isolation from politics is plainly bullshit. Every judicial appointment is a political matter.  Mitch McConnell understands this. He's made it his highest priority to embed as many right wing judges as he can manage to stuff in there before he or Trump or both are removed from power.

But here you have an opportunity, particularly if you get highly intelligent, relatively young people into lifetime positions, you can have a long-term impact on the country. So that’s what we’re in the process of doing, and if you believe as most of us do, that we’d like to see America right of center, this is the most consequential year since I’ve been year, and I’ve been here a long time. Supreme Court, deregulation, 12 circuit court judges, comprehensive tax reform. So if you’re a right-of-center person, 2017 was an incredibly successful year, and in my view the linchpin of it, the thing that will last the longest, is the courts.

Wendy Vitter's nomination is part of McConnell's explicitly stated strategy to orient the federal judiciary along right wing ideological lines for a generation. Her disingenuous "Bork-proof" strategy of speaking no evil should be apparent enough to everyone.  It doesn't seem to bother Mitch Landrieu, though. No wonder he's become such a hot property among Democrats lately. They do enjoy getting whipped by McConnell. Might as well keep that going.

Judge Vitter left a few things out

President Trump has nominated Wendy Vitter to a federal judgeship.  She has the backing of both Louisiana Senators and is highly likely to be confirmed. Nevertheless Vice points out something that might have been a stumbling block for her if Democrats played this game by the same rules as Republicans. A number of President Obama's judicial nominees were stalled or denied outright for exactly this sort of thing.

Wendy Vitter, who was nominated in January to serve as a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, left at least three speeches, one interview, a letter to the editor, and a campaign ad off the questionnaire she submitted to the committee (not all were related to abortion).

Nominees to the federal bench are required to tell the committee about every speech and interview they’ve ever given, and about every article they’ve written, so senators can evaluate whether they’re fit to serve as judges.

Again, were this a Democratic nominee, this might actually cause a problem. But since Democrats are more interested in norms and "civility" than they are in leveraging the process to any substantive political advantage, they aren't likely to jam up a judicial candidate just because she left a few things off of her application.  Not even a candidate as odious as Vitter. 

According to a YouTube video posted in November 2013, Vitter led a panel entitled “Abortion Hurts Women's Health” at a Right to Life Louisiana event. One of the panel’s speakers was the anti-abortion activist Angela Lanfranchi, who told attendees that abortion increases women’s risk for breast cancer — despite the fact that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found no causal link between abortion and a woman’s risk for breast cancer.

In the video, Lanfranchi also encouraged panel attendees to take at look at her brochure entitled “The Pill Kills.” That brochure claims women on the contraceptive pill are more likely to die a violent death, because they are more likely to cheat on their male partners, to face fertility problems, to have unhealthy children, and to have poor relationships with their partners. The brochure concludes, “It is not unreasonable to suspect that such effects could also influence rates of intimate partner violence.”

After Lanfranchi spoke, however, Vitter told attendees to pick up one of her brochures.

 Anyway, unless something very improbable comes of this, congratulations to Judge Vitter.

Evil incompetent vs Evil competent

One thing to understand about the flurry of executive orders coming out of the White House this week. They're basically a stream of political tweets. They're scary and loud and they give the impression that the boss is going to work.  But they also might not actually do anything.

President Donald Trump’s team made little effort to consult with federal agency lawyers or lawmakers as they churned out executive actions this week, stoking fears the White House is creating the appearance of real momentum with flawed orders that might be unworkable, unenforceable or even illegal.

All of which is beside the point. For now, the primary purpose is to just keep pushing #content into the timeline. The emphasis is on action. As long as it looks like something new is happening, there's no time to go back and determine whether or not anything is actually happening.  These are less policy papers than they are political posts. Which is why they are written entirely by Trump's political advisers. 

People familiar with Trump’s planning say he wanted daily events to show supporters he would follow through on the items of his campaign agenda. “He was determined to show people that he’s getting to work from Day One,” one person familiar with his planning said. This person said he wanted to take charge and show his supporters that former President Barack Obama’s tenure was decisively over.

But the process is playing out chaotically both inside the White House and throughout the federal government.

Inside the West Wing, it is almost impossible for some aides to know what is in the executive orders, staffers say. They have been written by Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior White House adviser for policy, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, according to people familiar with the matter. Ideas for some of the Trump executive orders came from transition officials and so-called “landing teams,” sources say, who weren’t working in the White House.

This isn't to say the orders are harmless. All of them do at least some damage. Some of them do a tremendous amount. Consider the abortion "gag order" for example.

In the past, the global gag rule meant that foreign NGOs must disavow any involvement with abortion in order to receive U.S. family planning funding. Trump’s version of the global gag rule expands the policy to all global health funding. According to Ehlers, the new rule means that rather than impacting $600 million in U.S. foreign aid, the global gag rule will affect $9.5 billion. Organizations working on AIDS, malaria, or maternal and child health will have to make sure that none of their programs involves so much as an abortion referral. Geeta Rao Gupta, a senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation who previously served as deputy executive director of UNICEF, gives the example of HIV/AIDS clinics that get U.S. funding to provide antiretrovirals: “If they’re giving advice to women on what to do if they’re pregnant and HIV positive, giving them all the options that exist, they cannot now receive money from the U.S.”

Many others, though, are likely to suffer from difficulty or impossibility of implementation. At least right away. The policies they really want to do and fund will come through the congress. This is not an encouraging thought.

Trump: "This Congress is going to be the busiest Congress in decades — maybe ever."

— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) January 26, 2017

For the time being, though, try and remember that there's a difference between competent and incompetent malevolence.  The incompetence of the Nagin administration in New Orleans was often its saving grace for example.  We've already noted Trump has certain characteristics in common with Nagin. His governing style is likely to follow a similar pattern... for worse and sometimes also for better.

Trolled by Stacy

In a not very entertaining  dry and somber segment we had to cut from last week's Hunkerdowncast, we noted the strange irony present in the city's approval of these controversial Anti-abortion ads along the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line at the same time it was in the process of removing Confederate monuments from  the streets on the grounds that they constituted a "public nuisance."

We were completely sincere in this observation and argued that the banners are every bit as inappropriate as the monuments are and that they should all come down. So we were surprised to find the next day that councilwoman Stacy Head had drawn a similar read on the situation as we had.  Although, as Jarvis DeBerry says here, I think Stacy's argument is somewhat more tongue-in-cheek that ours was.

It seems more likely that Head's primary goal is to call out Mitch Landrieu, the mayor who leaped at every opportunity to embarrass and talk down to her at a Dec. 17 City Council meeting. The mayor successfully urged the council to take down monuments celebrating Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, Jefferson Davis and the White League. Head asked Landrieu where this action would lead us. How will the city determine what else is so offensive that it warrants removal? "Is there only one group whose feelings matter?"

It's good thing we cut that out of the show. Otherwise I wouldn't know for certain whether she was trolling Mitch or us.

Bandit signs

Aren't we in the process of removing Confederate monuments from display on the grounds that they are "public nuisances"? So what gives with this?

St. Charles Avenue is festooned with a variety of banners flapping from the city-owned lampposts along the 70-block-long neutral ground.

But the colorful flags promoting Loyola University’s latest fund drive, the services at Touro Infirmary, the anniversaries of local businesses and numerous other events and commemorations have been joined recently by banners with a more pointed message: 5-foot-tall images of a fetus and anti-abortion statements.

The campaign, sponsored by the Louisiana Right to Life Federation and New Orleans Right to Life, has raised questions about the propriety of using city property for political messaging.

Movie time

Bobby Jindal is a really really weird dude. 

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will try to counter a pro-Planned Parenthood rally scheduled to take place outside his mansion on Thursday by running a loop of the secretly recorded videos that they plan to protest.

Jindal announced Thursday that he is setting up an outdoor movie screen and speakers outside the governor’s mansion to show the controversial videos, which he said too many of Planned Parenthood’s supporters have refused to watch.

That's just creepy.  Woody Jenkins used to hand out little plastic fetuses to people at the State Capitol. This is even stranger.

Jindal is blasting graphic propaganda videos from inside the executive mansion at citizens protesting on the grounds.  Despite frequent jokes to the contrary, Louisiana is presumed to actually be part of a first world republic.

Anyway, if he's going to do this, he might as well go the whole nine and show them his campaign video.

DONT FROGET TO VOET K pic.twitter.com/tsSzQQVl3d

— not Bobby Jindal (@notBobbyJindal) August 18, 2015

Revenge of the nerd

The awkward stage. We all go through it.  Bobby Jindal did once too. His was probably a lot like yours... although maybe not exactly.

Jindal captained the Equations team, which required quick thinking.

And he dressed like Alex P. Keaton, the conservative high schooler played by Michael J. Fox in the ’80s sitcom “Family Ties.”

“He had a bow tie with dollar bills on it,” said Elaine Parsons, who is now a history professor at Duquesne University. “When the movie ‘Wall Street’ came out, he’d go around saying, ‘Greed is good!’ People would roll their eyes at him.”

For years, Jindal bought bags of candy that he would keep in his backpack and sell individual pieces to sugar-craving students.

Some classmates view it now as a sign of a would-be political operator.

“But I always thought of it as more entrepreneurial,” said Johnson, who is now a professor of political communication at LSU.

Selling Jolly Ranchers on the sly seems like it's really more of a Skippy thing but OK.  Anyway, there's nothing wrong with being a smart kid, or a geeky kid. But it kind of looks like Bobby was a bit of a weird kid among weird kids.

Maybe that doesn't matter. Usually it wouldn't. But still there's this nagging notion that maybe Jindal's awkward phase grew with him into a kind of sociopathy. Consider this story today where we learned of a fresh examination of College Bobby's old exorcism essay.

Most Louisianians have probably heard the story about Gov. Bobby Jindal witnessing an exorcism in college a bunch of times.

The story made the rounds when Jindal first ran for governor; it was trotted out again when Jindal's widely mocked 2009 State of the Union response was delivered; and now that he's running for president it's creeping its way back into the national consciousness.

But now a pair of producers want to give the curious account of casting demons out of Jindal's college friend Susan new life: They want to turn it into a rock opera. Apparently the story -- written by Jindal himself and published in a Catholic magazine more than 20 years ago -- is so dramatic, and told so evocatively by Jindal, a couple of guys just couldn't resist setting it to song.

Cute. Really, it's funny. They're not actually going to put this into production, though. At least I hope they don't. Some jokes work better as conceptual art than in practice and this is undoubtedly one such joke. Interesting that they've got a Kickstarter going.. ostensibly to fund this project.. but who knows where that money goes.  Still, the would be producers have some insights to share about the exorcism that many of us probably haven't pondered over in a while.  Such as this. 

"It's a love story more than anything. It's more about a story about a young man's inability to love," Chiari said. "An ability to love or inability to love another person can play a role in how we look at the world."

The exorcism itself, with vivid descriptions by Jindal that included the "guttural sounds" coming from his friend Susan and "taunting the evil spirit" within her, has always been more of the focus for political writers. But the essay also contains accounts of a lovestruck Susan and her frustration with the emotionless Jindal, as well as Jindal's own admission that "I was beginning to doubt that I had the capacity for feeling."

We've all had opportunities to parse the story of Bobby and Susan over the years. There have been theories about repressed sexuality, failure of empathy, and so on.  But mostly this is a story about confused young people told to us through the point of view of a person who either didn't fully understand the social interaction he was participating in or, more likely, someone who purposefully misinterpreted that episode in the retelling.

Over our years with him we've come to understand that there's very little Bobby Jindal tells us that isn't politically calculated and/or probably false.  He actually has a preternatural talent for this when spouting abstract political absurdities about "no-go zones" or the metric system or whether or not it's a good idea to fire the Supreme Court. Not many people can tell such utterly stupid lies with as straight a face. At the same time, and probably not coincidentally, few people come off as obviously phony when trying to project or talk about anything involving personal emotion. Worse than that, sometimes he comes off as just plain weird.

In the exorcism story Bobby was writing about what he says is a critical moment in his religious development. For some reason, those moments tend to come to him through awkward failures with women. on Thursday Bobby was in New Orleans (no, for real this time) to speak to the National Right to Life Convention. During his remarks there Bobby told us about how his beginnings in anti-abortion movement Catholicism were inspired at an early age.

Jindal opened his remarks with an anecdote about his gradual conversion to Catholicism and how, at 15 years old, he began to think about anti-abortion advocacy. "I was a teenage high school boy, and [God] used a teenage high school girl to get my attention," he said. He asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, and she said she wanted to be a United States Supreme Court Justice because she wanted to "save innocent human lives right here in America."

"I just wanted to talk to a pretty girl — where did this come from?" he said. "God used that experience to plant a seed. We could've used her on the court just a couple weeks ago."

Let's assume this is a true story and not just some thing Bobby made up in order to sound like a hu-man on stage. It's probably not rock opera or anything but here's a short one-act play about this episode in Young Bobby's life.

SETTING: A classroom at BATON ROUGE MAGNET HIGH.  It is the first week of school and BOBBY JINDAL is finding his desk.  He is wearing bright green pants and a pink shirt. He doesn't have his bow tie on but his Trapper Keeper has a picture of Tina Yothers on it. At the desk next to him is a TEENAGE GIRL just settling in.

BOBBY: Hi I'm Bobby. I like to be called Bobby. Greed is good.. heh heh.

GIRL: Um hello.

BOBBY: Hey do you like Jolly Ranchers? I usually sell them for fifty cents each but I can get you one for a quarter because you seem really special.

GIRL: No thanks. I'm not....

BOBBY: So are you going to be in the Latin Club this year? I'm pretty much the king over there. They say it's really good to have impressive activities on your college application. I'm shooting for the Ivies. How about you?

GIRL: (nervously) Well I...

BOBBY:  Hey how about math club? I'm up for captain of the Equations team. That's going to be huge on my application to Brown. I could be a doctor, you know. Or better. Heck I could be President. It's really just a matter of what I settle for. What do you want to be when you grow up?

GIRL: I'm gonna..

BOBBY: You really should have one of these Jolly Ranchers.  You sure you don't want..

GIRL: I'm going to be a Supreme Court Justice! Excuse me I have to um... (gets up and heads to the restroom)

BOBBY unwraps a small grape candy and pops it into his mouth. Thinks about his future. 

And this is the story of how Bobby Jindal, the awkward kid, grows up to be an empathy-poor, megalomaniac who interprets his rejected advances as a message from God to him that someday he would lead governments and use his position to make sure women's health choices were appropriately difficult or at least shameful for them.  Some kids' awkward phases are more consequential than others, I guess.

Nnnevemind

Proclamation found to be in error. Unproclamation issued.

A city proclamation welcoming the anti-abortion group Operation Save America to the city and recognizing its "outstanding service to the City of New Orleans" was issued in error, according to an email this afternoon by a spokesman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Gambit goes on to note that the city pretty much just issues these welcome proclamations to any visiting group who fills out the web form and meets certain standards. 

Getting welcomed to town is reserved for groups and conventions, but anyone can apply for a ceremonial proclamation, as long as the reason fits in one of the city’s six categories: organizational honors; church anniversaries and pastoral anniversaries; retirements; heroic deeds; a 100th birthday; or “outstanding community service by an individual, group, or organization.”

They couldn't find out anything about how these applications are reviewed and vetted but it's good to keep in mind that this task probably falls to some peon civil servant barely scraping out a subsistence wage.

The mayor is pushing a civil service reform package in the hope that they can someday easily fire whoever the poor underpaid sap is.  But thankfully that hasn't happened yet or today might have been even worse.

Thanks, Pro-Life thugs!

Love, Mitch Landrieu

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu issued an official welcome this week to Operation Save America, an anti-abortion organization that interrupted an Uptown church’s prayer service with its protests on Sunday and had plans to parade the alleged remains of a fetus around Jackson Square in the French Quarter.


The certificate, which is dated July 20, extends Mayor Landrieu’s official recognition to Flip Benham of Operation Save America for “outstanding service to the city of New Orleans,” according to an image of the certificate being shared by the group on members’ Facebook pages. Supporters of the group were enthusiastic about Landrieu’s welcome, with one noting that “This is a first!”

Benham, director of Operation Save America, was found guilty of stalking in North Carolina in 2011 for distributing “Wanted” posters featuring the name and photo of a Charlotte abortion doctor, and sentenced to 18 months probation. A local organizer for the group, Pastor Dale Sochia of King Jesus Ministries in Boutte, told the New Orleans Advocate that they would be holding a funeral procession in Jackson Square on Tuesday featuring an open casket containing a “a real aborted baby.”

 Meanwhile, the mysterious "Tips For Jesus" is in town.  Reports about the tipper (or more likely group of tippers) for Jesus vary but it is speculated that there is probably a genuine religious bent to their guerrilla publicity campaign.   Maybe they're here with Operation Save America.  In which case, they would be demonstrably more thankful for the service than the Mayor.

There have been a lot of terrible people being terrible in the legislature this session

Hard to say any individual has been more terrible than Katrina Jackson.

Jackson, a Democrat from Monroe, described the measure as “one of the pieces of legislation that will be most impactful to this state regarding the pro-life movement.”

Abortion-rights groups say doctors who provide the procedure have difficulty getting hospital privileges, not because of their credentials, but because hospitals are leery of the attention those privileges could draw.

Proponents say the measure will ensure women have access to proper care if they have complications from an abortion, describing possible medical problems like hemorrhages, cervical injuries and infections.

Opponents say the restrictions are medically unnecessary and designed to limit abortion access. They say the legislation will shut down all abortion clinics south of Shreveport, creating the need for a five-hour drive each way for women who live in the southeastern end of the state.

Meanwhile, the legislature managed to pull off one last abortion for the road.

A Louisiana House committee Wednesday voted to specifically kill the lawsuit filed by a New Orleans-area levee board.

The House Committee on Natural Resources amended Senate Bill 469 to say that the Louisiana Legislature wants this measure to apply retroactively and that lawmakers oppose the lawsuits filed last year by Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority — East against 97 oil and gas companies claiming environmental damage to the marshes.

The worst person

State Rep. Katrina Jackson

An anti-abortion bill that could potentially result in the closure of many of the state's abortion clinics passed the La. Senate Wednesday. Rep. Katrina Jackson’s (D-Monroe) HB 388, the “Unsafe Abortion Act,” passed the Senate 34-3.

Please see Lamar here and here. 

So Katrina Jackson seems nice

Yesterday, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed a bill designed to mimic (and in some ways be worse than) Texas anti-abortion legislation passed last year under a firestorm of controversy and protest.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Kathy Kliebert and several anti-abortion advocates have said the proposal is about protecting women's health. But abortion rights advocates said the legislation has little to do with keeping women safe and that it's only purpose is to further restrict access to abortion.

Sponsored by Rep. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, the legislation would require physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility where the procedures take place. It also imposes the same restrictions -- such as a requirement for a 24-hour waiting period -- on abortion-inducing medication as surgical abortions.

Early last month, Lamar challenged Rep. Jackson on some of the more egregious aspects of her bill.  She was kind of a jerk about it.

Also the gerrymander

Here's a fun little cartoon that looks at the flood of ant-abortion laws coming out of state legislatures over the past few years despite overwhelming support for reproductive rights among a majority of the public.  

What the cartoon doesn't say, though, is that the reason this surge is allowed to occur despite its appeal to an extreme niche of the electorate is because 1) state legislative districts have been badly gerrymandered to protect extremist candidates and 2) extreme crusading like this helps these candidates raise money.

In other words, it's the same situation that allowed the shutdown to happen.  And, the way things are currently structured, its engineers (again, much like the Tea Partiers responsible for the shutdown) face no negative repercussions to speak of. 

So that was quite a day

First there was this.

Let's be clear about what has just happened. Five unelected, life-tenured men this morning declared that overt racial discrimination in the nation's voting practices is over and no longer needs all of the special federal protections it once did. They did so, without a trace of irony, by striking down as unconstitutionally outdated a key provision of a federal law that this past election cycle alone protected the franchise for tens of millions of minority citizens.

And then tonight, hundreds of thousands of people watched a YouTube feed (because all of cable news was busy running repeats of its talking heads shows) of the Texas Legislature. There Republicans decided to shut down a 10 hour filibuster of a draconian crack down on women's right to reproductive health care by arguing that comparing it to other draconian crack downs on women's right to reproductive health care isn't "germane" to the topic.

After that, it got wacky.  I'm fading right now and I'm sure you'll read about this somewhere by tomorrow anyway.  Basically the last ten minutes of the session involved legislators struggling like a hurried football team to get a vote off before the clock ran out at midnight as they were being disrupted by deafening crowd noise. Nothing could be more Texas than that, when you think about it.

As I type this nobody knows what happened.  The Senate hasn't even officially adjourned. I'm sure they'll get around to that sooner or later. And then the whole thing will be argued in some court somewhere. I'm sure this will come up at some point.  The legislative website originally recorded the vote on the abortion bill as taking place on June 26... which would mean after the deadline.



But then this was altered to read June 25.

Suffice to say the clock has been turned back in more ways than one today.  From the looks of things there are still plenty of protesters left at the capitol in Austin.  (Of course nothing on cable news about that still.) But I'm too tired to stay up and watch them get arrested so I'm turning in.

Can't wait to see what happens with DOMA tomorrow.