April 10

 Still dark so no idea of what the weather is like now. The weather channel is predicting a dry week with partly cloudy to sunny conditions with temperatures in the high 60s to mid 70s. I found some valerian shoots in that pot. This will be the third year for that plant so I should dig it out in the fall and replant some roots for next year. I have to check out how to do that.

I don't know how many were really surprised by the decision on mifepristone out of that Texas court last Friday. I expected it because the idiots carefully judge shopped to find another idiot in a robe who would go along with their notions. I didn't expect the Oregon case which I suspect was in the works, basically decided, but half off publishing until the Texas case was decided. The attack in Texas is part and parcel with the aim to "dismantle the administrative state." It basically attacked the process by which the FDA approved mifepristone not the drug itself. But taken to its illogical extreme, which today's Republican Party is so good at, what drug is safe from challenge? All it would take to invalidate any approval is a plaintiff who finds a sympathetic judge who is willing to throw out any scientific method and evidence to reach the desired decision.

The whole argument has gone off the rails. Not long ago some Republican politician, a governor I think, plaintively bleated at a news conference that he "wished" he didn't have to make that decision, he "wished" women "could make the decision." I wished a reporter had asked why women "couldn't" make that decision. Obviously, at base, he thought they "couldn't" because they might not make the decision he thought they should make. Somehow possessing ovaries and uterus renders women incapable of making good moral decision so they require male guardianship. Once upon a time that was part of our legal theory. It still is in places like Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan. From the arguments from Alito and Thomas on the Dobbs decision that they would like to turn our jurisprudence and society to back two centuries.

Robert Reich asks "Is the GOP becoming the American fascist party?" I always distrust equating U.S. tendency toward totalitarianism with modern such movements such as Naziism, Fascism, Soviet style socialism, Xi's China. Why? Because there has always been a strain of such intolerance  in this country. Our nationally mythology tells us that the Pilgrims came to the New World so they could enjoy freedom of religion. Let's define that "freedom" a bit more. Those Pilgrims were English expatriates who objected to the Anglican Church. As Calvinists they didn't see much difference between Anglicanism and Catholicism. But the settled in The Netherlands where they had complete freedom to exercise their faith. The Netherlands were, perhaps, the most tolerant society in Europe. So why uproot themselves for an uncertain future in a wilderness? Because they were afraid that the Dutch permissiveness would tempt their children away from the pure Calvinist faith. In Massachusetts they established a democratic theocracy which was incredibly intolerant. They expelled Roger Williams and his followers when Williams disagreed with the treatment of the local Indians. William set up his own colony in Rhode Island. Our histories cover the witch trials but neglect that more Quakers were hanged for over staying their non-welcome than witches. The tendency toward intolerance reappeared frequently through out our history.

Reich covers the Nashville soap opera but like so many concentrates on the race issue and neglects a couple of other troubling factors. First, the supermajority in the state legislature is threatening Nashville and Knoxville with serious economic sanctions if they reappoint the legislator expelled last week. We have two competing tyrannies involved: the tyranny of a minority which underpins the Republican supermajority and the tyranny of that supermajority which can steamroll any opposition. The founders feared both. Second, the threats of the Republican legislature are aimed at cities that are majority Democrat. Similar actions are happening in Mississippi where the Republican majority state officials are trying to undercut the Democrat majority of Jackson by establishing a separate justice system for that city. They are also trying to take control of a large chunk of money the Federal government approved to modernize the water system inn Jackson so some of it, maybe most of it, can be used for majority white areas. Texas Republican state officials are trying to take over the school district of Democrat Dallas.

News flash: the 132nd mass shooting THIS YEAR. Five  four dead, so far, with several injured in Louisville, KY. OOPS--another list says it is the 145th mass shooting.