2024 Archives

So, what the heck is the Comstock Act and why are Republicans trying to revive it before the Supreme Court? Yesterday's Supreme Court session was a loud and persistent warning: America needs to pay attention. During oral arguments, the Comstock Act was invoked repeatedly by Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Erin Hawley, the wife of Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who was arguing before the Court that the abortion drug, Mifepristone, should be banned nationwide. Now that it's fairly clear the "sad doctors" argument before the Court yesterday was so pathetically weak they can't use it to ban Mifepristone, anti-abortion activists are talking about finding a case they can push up to the Court next year that will allow it to ban all abortions in the nation, and most birth control pills and devices as a bonus.

Putin's language of escalation highlights the danger that the GOP's embrace of Trump and Trump's ties to Putin have put the US and the entire democratic world in… On Saturday I published a "breaking news" op-ed here on Hartmann Report about the possible consequences of Putin using Friday's theater attack in a Moscow suburb the same way Hitler used the burning of the Reichstagsgebäude to end democracy and civil rights in Germany; Bush used 9/11 to attack Iraq and push the PATRIOT Act; Putin used a different theater attack in 2002 to destroy and seize Chechnya; LBJ used the phony Gulf of Tonkin incident to accelerate the Vietnam War; and Netanyahu is using the October 7 Hamas attack to stay in power and out of prison. In other words, might Putin be preparing to use the ISIS-K attack on the theater as an excuse to do something draconian? Would that mean he substantially escalates his war against democracy in Ukraine? Might that escalation lead to a confrontation with NATO? And where would that take the world?

Like Hitler, Netanyahu, and Bush all did, Putin just claimed that up is down, that the terrorist attack he knew was coming was an unprovoked surprise, and that it came from Ukraine, not ISIS-K... Normally, I'd push this article out on Monday morning, as I publish these free "Daily Takes" every weekday and I usually write Monday's piece over the weekend. But this situation is so critical and the stakes are so high that I didn't want to wait. I welcome your comments in the comments section below. Keep in mind, what I'm suggesting is merely my speculation at this moment. But we all need to keep a careful eye on events as they unfold: Putin using the theater attack to start WWIII is not without precedent. Friday, a group of ISIS extremists claimed credit for the attack on a Moscow theater that killed at least 133 people and left the building a smoldering ruin. But Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his public comments today, didn't mention ISIS-K: instead, he placed the blame on Ukraine. As The New York Times headline after Putin's remarks laid out: "In First Remarks on Attack, Putin Tries to Link Assailants to Ukraine." The article's lede says it all: "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia laid the groundwork on Saturday for blaming Ukraine for the Moscow concert hall attack. And in making his first remarks on the assault more than 19 hours after it began, he pledged to punish the perpetrators, 'whoever they may be, whoever may have sent them.'" We've seen this movie before, both here, in Israel, and Germany, and it never ends well.

The men who made the intentional decision to murder my father are long dead; the men and women who today are plotting to render much of our beautiful planet uninhabitable are very much with us… ... now comes the fossil fuel industry, with a whole new crop of psychopathic executives, marketers, and attorneys. Burning their products produces air pollution that causes asthma, cancer, heart disease, and strokes; according to Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Medicine, an estimated 350,000 Americans die prematurely every year because of this industry's products.