"Splitting 5 to 4, the Supreme Court... refused to block a Texas abortion law that critics say is forcing the closing of one-third of all clinics in the state."

Lyle Denniston explains the issues and the votes:

The majority said that the challengers had not met the requirement for setting aside a federal appeals court’s order permitting the law to take effect on October 31.


The majority specifically included Justices Antonin Scalia, who wrote separately in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Clarence Thomas.  But Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy presumably voted with those three, because it would have taken five votes to act definitively on the plea by doctors and clinics when there were four Justices who wanted to block the law....

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for the four dissenters, including Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor.

Here's the opinion PDF.

Scalia, writing for the majority, says that the Court can only vacate the stay if the Court of Appeals clearly erred in staying the district court's injunction. The Court of Appeals had to consider whether the party seeking the stay is likely to succeed on the merits, whether that party will be irreparably injured without the stay, whether others would be injured by a stay, and the public interest. In Scalia's view, you can't find clear error in the way the Court of Appeals analyzed those factors.

Breyer looks at the practical reality here. Either Texas must wait to start enforcing its new law (which might be constitutional), or doctors are going to have to close down clinics right away to meet the new requirement (which might be unconstitutional). Whatever proper ends Texas might have in its requirement that doctors have hospital admitting privileges, the harm in waiting a while for that to apply is much less than all of the change to the status quo.

Keep in mind that deterring women from having abortions is not a proper end under the case law. If that's what the law is really doing, counts toward finding an "undue burden," which is what would make the law unconstitutional.  The law needs to be justified as an improvement in health care, and so the injury that Scalia and Breyer are talking about is only the loss of improved care pending the litigation. On the other side of injury equation, there are all those clinics that must close, restricting access to abortion.

"The Cities Creating The Most Middle-Class Jobs."

The top 4 are in Texas.

"Texas is not America... It’s in America, but it’s not America."

"National polls don’t mean anything. Democrats haven’t won a statewide office in Texas since 1994. There are no Peter Kings in Texas."

Quote from Matt Mackowiak whom the NYT identifies as "a Republican political consultant in Austin and the former spokesman for... Kay Bailey Hutchison," in an article titled "Texans Stick With Cruz Despite Defeat in Washington."

Matt Mackowiak is most likely...
	A Republican political consultant, but not a Republican.
	A Republican who understands the limits of being a Texan Republican outside of Texas.
	A political consultant who wants to be consulted by liberal media & uses "Republican" as a gimmick.
	A Republican that you can find in Austin, which is in Texas, but it’s not Texas.
pollcode.com free polls

Joe Biden is emailing me, "Do you understand this?"

He addresses me — "Ann" — and informs me that "One senator is running the show in the Republican Party right now."

He's not my senator. And he's not your senator.

I guess Joe checked before emailing that I'm not from Texas. Regular readers of this blog know that if life begins at conception, I am from Texas, but that wouldn't make Ted Cruz my Senator.

Joe continues:

But for some reason I can't understand, the Republican Party is letting Ted Cruz lead their charge against Obamacare....

They're letting him? Seems to me the Party tried to rein him in but couldn't. Why try to "understand" things that aren't true? Why is the moon made of green cheese?

... a law that they're still fighting tooth and nail despite the fact that every branch of the federal government has approved it, and despite the fact that we're seeing real signs that it's starting to work.

If the GOP really is trying to stop it, it could be that they believe it will work and that people will like it, and they don't want the people to find out the GOP was wrong. But it might be that the GOP thinks it won't work and people won't like it, and they want to ensure that the people know who's to blame and who tried to save them from this calamity.

But if the GOP really isn't trying too hard to stop it, and it's just Ted and a few others going rogue, then we've got something different to understand.

Now, Ted Cruz isn't a bad guy....

So I do understand that the project of demonizing Ted Cruz flopped.

When, according to Chief Justice Roberts, are you required to wear cowboy boots to a Supreme Court oral argument?

When you are representing the state of Texas.

ADDED: What this post is really about....

My aversion to discussing the strenuous blabbing everywhere out there about the "government shutdown."

The aphorism in the abortion clinic: "Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."

Here's CNN's article "Texas filibuster on abortion bill rivets online" — about state senator Wendy Davis's effort to stop a bill that would ban abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy and the tweeting it inspired, including President Obama's "Something special is happening in Austin tonight."

There's also a video, and I'm inspired to write about an aphorism you can see at 1:57: a shot of a room in a clinic — presumably a room where abortions are performed. The label on the door reads "Audre," and on the wall, in large capital letters, there's a quote and the name "Audre Lorde." The quote reads "Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."

Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer (1934-1992) who is a source of some popular feminist aphorisms, notably "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." The one painted on the wall shown in the video suggests an argument about abortion that resonates with abortion rights doctrine, that the woman finds her own meaning. The Supreme Court's cases depict the woman engaging in a philosophical/theological/scientific inquiry into the significance of the entity she may choose either to nurture within or to extricate. The Lorde quote seems like a feminist paraphrase, where the mental process runs along a path of feelings.

The woman entering the room is invited into an awareness of her feelings. Feelings are the most genuine way to your decision. Perhaps the woman entering the room thinks: I don't feel this is anything like a baby or that I am murdering anyone. Or: I hear my future child begging for life. The quote — to my eye — calls you to experience your conscience, and it doesn't let you off the hook. The painted letters seem to be the only decoration in the room. It's the place to focus your eyes throughout the procedure.

I wonder what women's names appear on the other doors. Do the names take the place of room numbers and are the rooms referred to by name in an effort to give warmth to the place? You're a name not a number.

I wonder what are the other aphorisms in the other rooms. Are they all so neutral and open-ended as to the woman's right to choose?

"Religious freedom does not mean freedom from religion."

"People of faith too often feel they can't express their faith publicly. And if they dare display it, they find themselves under attack from individuals and organizations that have nothing to do with them or their communities for that matter," said Rick Perry, signing the "Merry Christmas" bill.

One might wonder why such a law is necessary. Republican state Rep. Dwayne Bohac, who introduced the bill, explained how he had become upset upon hearing from his 8-year-old son that the Christmas tree at his public school was referred to as "a holiday tree."

Bohac said he brought his concerns to the school district office, where he was told words like "Christmas" weren't used at the school because officials were afraid of being sued.

As if, now, no one's going to get sued. Or is that the point? If the school officials avoid saying "Merry Christmas" and having Christmas trees because they are litigation averse, there's never a lawsuit. I think Perry et al. would love to have a lawsuit about this, even if they think they will lose it. There's political gain in any legal outcome.

And yet, even with this law, those officials might still avoid saying "Merry Christmas" and having Christmas trees because of timidity about lawsuits. It's not as if the new statute requires Christmas trees and Christmas greetings.

Perhaps all that ever happens is this political theater with Rick Perry celebrating Christmas in June. Perhaps that was the point.

ADDED: Perry's phrase "organizations that have nothing to do with them or their communities" is sending out the bat-signal to Madison's Freedom From Religion Foundation. 

"I came back here after the slaughter and I feel that the Lord has anointed me and appointed me to be the leader."

"I don't claim to be a prophet. I'm a teacher of righteousness, that's the only thing I claim.... The United States has to fall in order for the One World Order to be set up... Especially if there's war in the Middle East, that's when they're going to see Branch Davidians start scrambling to find out what the truth is, and where they need to be."

NPR reports on the remnants of Branch Davidians this morning. Why them? Why now? There was just a big explosion in Waco, and perhaps that naturally makes us think back to the assault on the Branch Davidians 20 years ago. I hope it's just that and not some burning need to make listeners refocus on the dangerous white male Christians of America instead of the darker-skinned Muslim Chechans accused of the bombings in Boston.

"A massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in central Texas... more than 160 people wounded and killed an estimated 5 to 15 people..."

"... officials said, likely including firefighters who had been battling the blaze at the factory that triggered the explosion."

Images of the gargantuan fireball that devastated the tiny town of West, 20 miles north of Waco, were particularly jarring, coming just two days after a bombing that killed three people and injured scores of others at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

A different kind of explosion in a different part of the country.

Happening in Texas and involving fertilizer, it makes me think of the 1947 Texas City disaster, which killed "at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department." (I grew up hearing about this disaster, because my parents had lived in the city at the time.)

A single-malt whiskey from Waco, Texas beats all the Scottish competition blind-judged by British experts.

Single-malt whiskey distilling is now a big deal in the United States... despite the impediment of "a federal law, enacted in 1938, requiring that they be at least partly aged in previously unused oak barrels."

Unfortunately, malted barley is delicate and prone to lose its flavor in new oak, which is why Scottish distillers prefer barrels that once held sherry, port or bourbon.

To compensate, American distillers often start with a more robust, flavorful mash than a typical Scotch, which can better stand up to new oak, flavor that continues to shine through after the whiskey is bottled.

They also rely on America’s higher temperatures, and bigger temperature swings, to speed the aging process. “A hot day in Scotland is 75 degrees,” said Mr. Tate, of [contest winner] Balcones. “Seventy-five degrees isn’t even a hot day in January here.”

As a result, even Balcones, despite its peat and smoky notes, is unlikely to be confused with an Islay Scotch. “A lot of what we do is riffing on old traditions in new ways,” Mr. Tate said....

That's America! Full of innovation and ingenuity... and stupid, overreaching federal regulation.