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17 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

I should clarify.  When I say "hopefully this won't last long" - I mean that this law is going to cause such chaos that they'll have to repeal it or risk continual riots.  I really hope 'this law' won't last long.

 

What also scares me is the application of this law to empower a political party to use financial incentives plus legal forces, and to foster violent confrontations, using laws like this.  They are basically empowering 'crazed Q types' to create violent confrontations, and what specificially scares me is that they are making the possible political calculus that the benefit of having their followers violently confront people is worth more than the political loss of encoding such violent action in literal law.

It makes me think of "Redemption," the White Southern aristocracy's campaign of political violence and violent politics to force Black people back into de facto slavery after Reconstruction ended. But this time aimed at women, or at least women outside of a particular class and ideology: As mentioned, white women of a certain income and social standing will still be able to do as they please. There have always been different rules for aristocrats and commoners. What continues to baffle me is how so many "commoners" approve of this, too.

 

Dean Shomshak

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2 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

It makes me think of "Redemption," the White Southern aristocracy's campaign of political violence and violent politics to force Black people back into de facto slavery after Reconstruction ended. But this time aimed at women, or at least women outside of a particular class and ideology: As mentioned, white women of a certain income and social standing will still be able to do as they please. There have always been different rules for aristocrats and commoners. What continues to baffle me is how so many "commoners" approve of this, too.

 

 

https://www.newsandsentinel.com/news/local-news/2018/10/councilman-blasted-for-coat-hanger-comment/

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13 hours ago, unclevlad said:

IMO it's Biblical.  Life begins at the moment of conception.  Therefore abortion is by definition murder and a mortal sin, and the Morality Police have no qualms with "incidental consequences" like this, so long as their moral imperative is enforced.  Can also argue it's very Old Testament...really, was EVERYONE in Sodom and Gomorrah guilty?  One of the more terrifying aspects of hard-core ideologists, of any stripe, is they're not concerned with the side effects.

 

i-gave-them-the-beatitudes-and-all-they-

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On the NYTimes podcast/radio program The Daily today, analyst Adam Liptak pointed out that if the SCOTUS accepts that the Texas law has found a hack to the Constitution that makes a law immune to judicial review, well, the Left can use it too as a way to pass unconstitutional laws. He suggests the example of a blue state legislature passing an incredibly restrictive gun control law that places enforcement on lawsuits by citizens, with bounties for successful suits. I dare say a clever person could think of other laws that would violate Constitutional provisions, but use the same hack.

 

This is not a good place for American government to go. I cannot help but wonder if religious conservatives realize they could win the war over Roe v Wade but lose the Constitutional basis of law. Or if that isn't part of the goal as well.

 

Dean Shomshak

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19 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

This is not a good place for American government to go. I cannot help but wonder if religious conservatives realize they could win the war over Roe v Wade but lose the Constitutional basis of law. Or if that isn't part of the goal as well.

 

 

I think the calculation is just 'more liberals will die / go broke from these laws than conservatives'.  The same calculation in denying covid, in fostering violence through tools like the anti mask movement and the new abortion laws.

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13 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

On the NYTimes podcast/radio program The Daily today, analyst Adam Liptak pointed out that if the SCOTUS accepts that the Texas law has found a hack to the Constitution that makes a law immune to judicial review, well, the Left can use it too as a way to pass unconstitutional laws. He suggests the example of a blue state legislature passing an incredibly restrictive gun control law that places enforcement on lawsuits by citizens, with bounties for successful suits. I dare say a clever person could think of other laws that would violate Constitutional provisions, but use the same hack.

 

This is not a good place for American government to go. I cannot help but wonder if religious conservatives realize they could win the war over Roe v Wade but lose the Constitutional basis of law. Or if that isn't part of the goal as well.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

Which is why I'm more worried about that aspect of the law than the anti-abortion provisions.  Abortion is a major but *narrow* issue.  The procedure Texas is trying to enact seems to be unlimited in scope.  How about drunk driving?  Dash-mounted cams are pretty cheap, and with a potential $10K bounty?  You bet.  

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One thing I can way about this anti-abortion bill is that it's well-written. I could think of several things off the top of my head which would allow it to be overturned or limited but they'd preemptively stopped all of those possible leaks (like the existing legislation against frivolous lawsuits doesn't apply to this law and you can't change the venue to find a more friendly judge).

 

And that's including being overturned by the US Supreme Court. 

 

The legislation is written to that the various provisions are expressly severable from each other. 

 

So if the Supreme Court objects to the law based on one, two, three, or eight provisions, those individual provisions would be repealed but the rest of the law would remain in place.

 

 

The only hole I've thought of that the legislation didn't plug is the one where the Trump election lawyers are getting into trouble for filing lawsuits which have evidence or no basis and the lawyers knew that going in. So the lawyers could lose their license to practice law by filing ridiculous lawsuits using this law.

 

For example, there's no dedicated abortion clinics in Texas. All that exist are multipurpose women's health clinics. 

 

So if the only evidence a bounty hunter has is that a woman walked into a health clinic and the lawyer filed a lawsuit with that as his only "evidence", a hostile judge could rake him over the coals for that. And honestly, should rake him over the coals for that.

 

 

Also federal HIPPA rules still apply so the patient's medical records are confidential. So a lawyer would have to request to subpoena the medical records, the patient would be notified and have a chance to refuse, then a judge would have to decide whether there's enough justification to let a third party look at someone's private medical records (beyond a sheer fishing trip through someone else's private medical information.) And the Texas law has no method of altering that. 

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36 minutes ago, archer said:

One thing I can way about this anti-abortion bill is that it's well-written. I could think of several things off the top of my head which would allow it to be overturned or limited but they'd preemptively stopped all of those possible leaks (like the existing legislation against frivolous lawsuits don't apply to this law and you can't change the venue to find a more friendly judge).

 

And that's including being overturned by the US Supreme Court. 

 

 

It's legalized warfare against other classes, starting with women. 😕

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13 hours ago, archer said:

The only hole I've thought of that the legislation didn't plug is the one where the Trump election lawyers are getting into trouble for filing lawsuits which have evidence or no basis and the lawyers knew that going in. So the lawyers could lose their license to practice law by filing ridiculous lawsuits using this law.

 

Is a lawyer required to bring a lawsuit forward, or can a cottage industry of self-represented litigants making their living as abortion law bounty hunters develop? How many cases, especially of that nature, would be settled by paying a claim to the individual initiating the lawsuit?  "Well, you can spend your resources to fight the claim, or pay me $1,000 now to make me go away, knowing that, if you lose, I get at least $10,000, plus my legal bills."  5 settled claims a  month on that basis is a $60,000 annual living. I suspect the Courts will take some action if they start to see huge numbers of such cases taking resources away from their other responsibilities.

 

I'm still waiting for a law to ban abstention.  "Those poor kids didn't even get a chance!"

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46 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Is a lawyer required to bring a lawsuit forward, or can a cottage industry of self-represented litigants making their living as abortion law bounty hunters develop? How many cases, especially of that nature, would be settled by paying a claim to the individual initiating the lawsuit?  "Well, you can spend your resources to fight the claim, or pay me $1,000 now to make me go away, knowing that, if you lose, I get at least $10,000, plus my legal bills."  5 settled claims a  month on that basis is a $60,000 annual living. I suspect the Courts will take some action if they start to see huge numbers of such cases taking resources away from their other responsibilities.

 

I'm still waiting for a law to ban abstention.  "Those poor kids didn't even get a chance!"

 

There's a clause in the law that requires the clinic to be closed if a case is successful, so the chance for repeat collections is probably low. 

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4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I'm still waiting for a law to ban abstention.  "Those poor kids didn't even get a chance!"

 

It'll be teachers/schools next.

 

My interpretation is that this is a way to legalize warfare against other classes.  The whole intent of this is to make a proxy war through the legal system.

 

edit:  I should add, I don't want to add to any FUD/alarmist behavior.  I'm just very worried this is going to explode.

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4 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

It'll be teachers/schools next.

 

My interpretation is that this is a way to legalize warfare against other classes.  The whole intent of this is to make a proxy war through the legal system.

Undoubtedly. Vigilante lawsuits against "Critical Race Theory" as a way to prevent teachers from teaching any history or law that might challenge White Supremacy. Or block evolution from biology classes while mandating "Creation Science."

 

Yep, it's the New Redemption, only carried out by lawsuits instead of lynchings. But -- as with the laws criminalizing even the tiniest error in restering as a voter -- the aim is still to terrify a targeted populace into compliance and so protect the privilege of a particular class.

 

Dean Shomshak

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16 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

 

There's a whole thing from Beau of the Fifth a few months or so ago about how, if there was a civil war, it would mean the 'protected classes' would be the ones especially abused and targeted, resulting in incredible suffering from black people in red states.  Though this was his way to try and get people on the left to de-escalate tensions during the Floyd protests.

 

This law seems like a legalized form of that abuse.

 

10 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Yep, it's the New Redemption, only carried out by lawsuits instead of lynchings. But -- as with the laws criminalizing even the tiniest error in restering as a voter -- the aim is still to terrify a targeted populace into compliance and so protect the privilege of a particular class.

 

 

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On 9/4/2021 at 9:30 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Is a lawyer required to bring a lawsuit forward, or can a cottage industry of self-represented litigants making their living as abortion law bounty hunters develop? How many cases, especially of that nature, would be settled by paying a claim to the individual initiating the lawsuit?  "Well, you can spend your resources to fight the claim, or pay me $1,000 now to make me go away, knowing that, if you lose, I get at least $10,000, plus my legal bills."  5 settled claims a  month on that basis is a $60,000 annual living. I suspect the Courts will take some action if they start to see huge numbers of such cases taking resources away from their other responsibilities.

 

 

At a minimum, the litigant will have to file for a subpoena to get the patient's medical records and plead the necessity for that in front of a judge against a lawyer for the patient (and/or medical facility) before the bounty lawsuit could get started.

 

I don't see that going well if the litigant isn't a lawyer himself, even in front of a very friendly judge.

 

If the judge grants it, the defendant would immediately appeal and the judge's decision would pretty automatically get overturned on appeal because the litigant will have screwed up either in the original case or will screw something up in the appeals process because he doesn't know what he's doing.

 

Getting his decisions overturned is not the kind of negative publicity a judge is looking for.

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On 9/4/2021 at 10:19 AM, Ternaugh said:

 

There's a clause in the law that requires the clinic to be closed if a case is successful, so the chance for repeat collections is probably low. 

 

Eventually some major hospital will get hit by one of these lawsuits.

 

Texas Medical Center in Houston, for example, is the largest hospital in the world, sees 10 million patients per year, and has 106,000 employees.

 

So you're going to get a judge decide to shut it down because some doctor fudged the line on whether or not a single procedure was okay?

 

San Antonio’s Methodist Hospital?

Baptist Medical Center in San Antonio?

Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas?

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39 minutes ago, archer said:

 

Eventually some major hospital will get hit by one of these lawsuits.

 

Texas Medical Center in Houston, for example, is the largest hospital in the world, sees 10 million patients per year, and has 106,000 employees.

 

So you're going to get a judge decide to shut it down because some doctor fudged the line on whether or not a single procedure was okay?

 

San Antonio’s Methodist Hospital?

Baptist Medical Center in San Antonio?

Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas?

 

I'm guessing that the hospitals have enough political pull to deflect a shutdown order.

 

In the "sauce for the goose" camp, I'm seeing people suggest that blue states should use this law as a template for gun control legislation. What could possibly go wrong with that?

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14 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

 

 

In the "sauce for the goose" camp, I'm seeing people suggest that blue states should use this law as a template for gun control legislation. What could possibly go wrong with that?

 

In the realm of what could possibly go wrong with that:

 

"So you're going to try to grab my guns? Good luck prying them with your cold, dead hands...."

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36 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

In the "sauce for the goose" camp, I'm seeing people suggest that blue states should use this law as a template for gun control legislation. What could possibly go wrong with that?

 

"Suggest" is a little too strong a term for what I've seen.  "Observe" is closer.  "Suggest" feels like "let's do this";  "observe" is "hey, something like that could be used for OUR platform."

And that's the core problem.  This can balloon.  Lessee...

 

--gun control

--drunk driving

--using your cell phone while driving

--prostitution/soliciting

--we've had watering restrictions...not sure if we have them right now but they'll spread, so violations of the rules here.  Ours was even/odd days of the week, not between 10 am and 6 pm.

--Denver had fire bans...not even in a home fireplace...when an inversion layer formed in the winter, or was likely to form.  Inversion layers trap smoke big time, so wood burning is a significant problem.  

--How about violations of mask mandates?

 

If this tactic gains traction and is deemed legal, ya gotta figure that any of these measures might get passed in some places.  Yes, it becomes a vigilante society.

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