USA – Memo to Chuck Schumer: Stop Dithering and Start Fighting. Now.

Memo to Chuck Schumer: Stop Dithering and Start Fighting. Now.

Jul 9, 2018
Jodi Jacobson

I have some questions for Chuck Schumer.

Senator Schumer: You seem to be treating the nomination of a second Supreme Court justice by Donald Trump as business as usual. But it is not. Nothing is usual. Nothing is normal. What don’t you understand about this?

What don’t you get about the fact that Trump is under federal investigation and possibly facing criminal charges? Or that he has actually suggested he can pardon himself?

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2018/07/09/memo-chuck-schumer-stop-dithering-start-fighting-now/

Why, unlike some people, Canadians don’t lose their minds over Supreme Court appointments

Why, unlike some people, Canadians don’t lose their minds over Supreme Court appointments
Canada's top court is way less politicized than in the United States, and it's not just because our Constitution is only 36 years old

Tristin Hopper
Updated: July 9, 2018

The United States is currently mired in political chaos following the announcement that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy will be retiring. It’s a bizarre spectacle from Canada, where new Supreme Court appointments are barely noticed. While U.S. Supreme Court justices are household names, most Canadians cannot name a single sitting member of their highest court (and Beverley McLachlin doesn’t count anymore; she just retired). So what gives? The National Post called up some very smart law experts to figure out why Canada’s Supreme Court isn’t the partisan hockey puck it is down south.

Abortion isn’t a major wedge issue here.

Continued: https://windsorstar.com/news/canada/why-unlike-some-people-canadians-dont-lose-their-minds-over-supreme-court-appointments/wcm/44c54d8d-2008-4a9e-ba09-98a66fbaedaf

USA: For reproductive rights campaigners 2017 felt like the calm before the storm

For reproductive rights campaigners 2017 felt like the calm before the storm
The Trump administration has chipped away at women’s access to contraception and other health services but an all-out assault may just be a question of time

Molly Redden
Sat 30 Dec ‘17

The year 2017 was supposed to be when reproductive health battles simmering in the states boiled over into national policy.

Not only did Republicans retain control of Congress in last year’s election, Donald Trump stocked his administration with people opposed to not only abortion but everything from sex education to insurance coverage for contraception.

But while the administration did make moves that will limit access to abortion and reproductive care, Trump’s first year in office was not the all-out assault public health advocates feared.

Continued at source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/30/for-reproductive-rights-campaigners-2017-felt-like-the-calm-before-the-storm

U.S.: Telling the story behind Roe v Wade: ‘The play illuminates choice’

As Roe, a stage production centered on the landmark abortion case of the 1970s, hits Washington DC, playwright Lisa Loomer discusses its prescience

David Smith in Washington (The Guardian)

Monday 9 January 2017 16.13 GMT

In a normal election year, without the dozens of distractions, it would have been a jaw-dropping moment. “Do you want to see the court overturn Roe v Wade?” Donald Trump was asked during the final presidential debate. His initial answer meandered but then became blunt: “That’ll happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the [supreme] court.”

He went on to accuse his opponent, Hillary Clinton, of advocating that babies be ripped out of their mother’s wombs just before birth, a bogus claim she dismissed as “scare rhetoric”. But come election day, he won and she lost.

Now Trump is bound for the White House and a stage play about Roe v Wade, the 1973 case at the supreme court that firmly established a woman’s right to abortion, is arriving in Washington DC, with remarkable prescience. The first night curtain will go up just 40 hours before the bellicose billionaire is sworn in as US president.

[continued at link]
Source: The Guardian

09.01.2017