Double F today.
Last week, the rage baiting 5th circuit appeals court. Yes, the same one that has been used as a basis for a Supreme Court judgement superhighway. You know, forum shopping. Also known as court shopping where the right judgement can be bought by choosing the right judge and getting on their calendar.
According to Merriam Webster, forum shopping is the “practice of choosing the court in which an action from among those courts that could properly exercise jurisdiction based on a determination of which court is likely to provide the most favorable outcome”.
The favorable outcome is, of course, a case to be adjudicated by the wildly biased and conservatively weighted Supreme Court. Then the Supreme Court can issue a for or against ruling, depending on the circumstances, that will warp this country to the will of the people who were court shopping.
We know their game. We have seen it in the relentless battering of some people against things THEY personally don’t like and don’t agree with. After all, why should people be allowed to love who they love. And marry them. I am looking at you people who want to overturn Obergefell. Or the shrill voices who pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed against Roe v. Wade for fifty years until they got the result they wanted.
Remember?
Yeah, so those same judge (forum) shoppers are also against books that they don’t like. We’ve seen it in the book bans. No matter that they don’t have to read the books, the book banners want no one to have to right to read whatever the reader wants. They bleat save the children when it really isn’t about the children, never has been. But that’s a rant for another time.
Book banning at schools has reached a fever pitch over the last forever. Well, at least, that’s what it feels like. They are a slow erosion of America’s rights. And I think contribute to the dumbing down that we’ve been experiencing in society.
Yeah, yeah, Kate, we know. But did you know the newest gambit?
Last week the 5th Circuit Appeals Court effectively said that books in schools were the purview of the government and not subject for 1st Amendment rights.
The government is arguing that the books are the property of the government and therefore are immune from 1st Amendment rights arguments.
The government is arguing that the books are the property of the government and therefore are immune from 1st Amendment rights arguments.
That is not a typo. I just find it so outrageous that I had to type it twice.
The Fifth Circuit Appeals court has fired a missile against a citizen’s right to receive and have information. In fact, Judge Kyle Duncan wrote those very words in the judgement, “that the First Amendment of the US Constitution does not grant a right to receive information.”
Are they reading the same U.S. Constitution that I am? Or is it the thought that we can have free exchange of information uninfected by harmful rhetoric and without bias that they object to?
I am chilled by the idea that words are not freely expressed in a written format are not, in fact, free. And that I, as an American citizen born in this country, does not have the right to information that they might object to.
Do they know how words work? Or are they just a shill for their corporate overlords who want the book banners to control what is written and read by EVERYONE and is trusting in the slow drip of poison getting them their way.
After all, it worked against Roe.
This is screaming capitals DANGEROUS!
Trust me, I’m a woman and I’ve seen this before. I’ve watched my right to own my body be dismantled. Even though we could see the train wreck coming and tried warning against it. For literal years.
Listen to Uncle Steven (King) on the subject, kids. “What I tell kids is, Don’t get mad, get even. Don’t spend time waving signs or carrying petitions around the neighborhood. Instead, run, don’t walk, to the nearest non-school library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned.”
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 