Further
A Travesty, Still: Leonard Peltier Denied "Last Chance" Parole
On a day to celebrate our purported liberty and equality before the law - in a time when that precept is daily profaned - we grieve yet another bitter wrong: Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier has again been denied parole after almost 50 years in prison for a killing he very likely didn't commit. Peltier's harrowing saga, a testament to the historic abuses endured by America's native people, was and remains pure "retribution," says his lawyer: "It serves no purpose toward any idea of justice. They got their pound of flesh."
This week's denial of freedom to America's longest serving political prisoner - an act he himself terms "a death sentence" - came after his first parole hearing in 15 years at the federal penitentiary in Coleman, Florida where Peltier is serving two consecutive life sentences for the 1975 killing of two FBI agents during a standoff on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. The refusal, like all that came before, serves as a brutal reminder that Peltier remains "a casualty of this country's cruel and lawless war against American Indians," argues Robert Gifford, a criminal defense attorney, former federal prosecutor and tribal court judge, and member of the Cherokee nation who calls Peltier "America's Mandela" and cites as proof decades of U.S. government betrayal, theft, repression and state-sanctioned violence of him and his people. "To understand the case is to know history."
Peltier, 79, one of 13 children, is of Dakota, Lakota and French descent, as well as an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. He was born on North Dakota's six-by-12-mile Turtle Mountain Reservation, all that remains of millions of acres the feds extracted from the Chippewa through executive order, coercion and fraud. Raised mostly by his grandparents, his happy childhood of hunting and fishing ended abruptly when, at 9, he was forcibly removed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and sent to a so-called Indian Boarding School hundreds of miles away to strip him of his Native culture. On the area's reservations, meanwhile, life through the 1960s became ever harsher: Children were often hungry, adults often became addicted, poverty and violence were endemic, unemployment often reached 70%, and adult life expectancy was 44 years.
In 1968, a group of activists founded the American Indian Movement (AIM), an indigenous civil rights organization in Minneapolis that worked to end police brutality and discrimination and support Native communities. It swiftly spread to the Dakotas, and by the early 1970s, an FBI and BIA threatened by their activism had undertaken a covert suppression campaign through surveillance, infiltration, legal intimidation and escalating violence by both them and local militia groups. "The only way to deal with the Indian problem in South Dakota," said one former prosecutor, "is to put a gun to AIM leaders’ heads and pull the trigger." In 1973, AIM grabbed headlines by occupying Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, leading to a 71-day stand-off with federal agents; AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means were prosecuted, but charges were dismissed due to prosecutorial misconduct.
By 1975, Peltier had joined AIM and gone to South Dakota, where tensions were high amidst rampant BIA abuses Natives called a "Reign of Terror." On June 26, 1975, armed FBI operatives descended on Pine Ridge reportedly to arrest a native on a warrant for the theft of cowboy boots; things quickly escalated, agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams radioed they'd come under fire, and when the dust settled both men had been shot dead, along with one Native. Though over 30 people took part in the gun battle, Peltier was identified as the only one with a gun that could have shot the fatal bullets; after he fled to Canada, he was extradited and charged with both murders. Two co-defendants were tried and acquitted on claims of self-defense. Peltier was tried separately in 1977; though there was no testimony or witness tying him to the crime, he was found guilty and given two life sentences.
It didn't take long for rights advocates to uncover egregious federal abuses in the trial: Prosecutors had coerced witnesses, withheld evidence, elicited fake affadavits, ignored racist comments from jurors, and above all hidden a ballistics report finding the bullets had not come from Peltier's gun. The offenses all reflected what former ND Rep. Ruth Buffalo calls "the government's single-minded mission to find a Native scapegoat for the deaths, no matter the cost." "It's telling (Natives) who represent everything we stand for, 'You will pay a price for your political activism,'" she says of a racism likewise aimed at other black or brown people, though those in power are "nowhere to be found when our men, women and children go missing and murdered...It's a testament to these longstanding systems that are working overtime to make sure the first people of these lands seek no justice."
‘What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?’: Descendants Read Frederick Douglass' Speech | NPRwww.youtube.com
Over the decades, advocates for Peltier's release have ranged from an International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee to Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama to dozens of members of the U.S. Congress. But a vengeful FBI continues to oppose the release of "an unremorseful murderer" - probably in part because Peltier continues to maintain his innocence - in the name of "justice for our fallen colleagues and their families." "Obviously, they deserve justice," notes Justin Mazzola of Amnesty International. But keeping Leonard in prison "is not justice, (it's) a human rights travesty." "The way they have treated Leonard is the way they have treated Indigenous people historically throughout this country," says Nick Tilsen, president of the Indigenous advocacy group NDN Collective. "That is why Indigenous people and oppressed people everywhere see a little bit of ourselves in Leonard Peltier."
Strikingly, scores of legal experts, including former members of the prosecution team and the judge who sentenced him, are among those calling for Peltier's release and arguing his case "would not stand today." "With time and the benefit of hindsight, I have realized (his) prosecution and continued incarceration was and is unjust," wrote James Reynolds, a former U.S. attorney who supervised Peltier's post-trial appeal, as he joined a 2021 call for executive clemency from Joe Biden in the name of "mercy and justice." Conceding "we were not able to prove that Mr Peltier personally committed any offense," Reynolds condemned his imprisonment as "testament to a time and a system of justice that no longer has a place in our society...It is too late for Leonard to reclaim the life he might have had, but it is not too late to end a miscarriage of justice nearly fifty years in the making."
When Peltier lost his bid for freedom after his June 10 hearing - cruelly, the Parole Commission do not explain their decisions - supporters vowing to keep fighting called it "a sad day, but not unexpected" after so many betrayals, injustices, broken promises. Activist musician Stevie Van Zandt was scheduled to testify at the hearing but got cut for time; he'd posited a denial would be "the final terrible chapter in one of (the) most terrible chapters of American history." Peltier's attorney Kevin Sharp plans to appeal, but acknowledges, barring clemency, this was likely Peltier's "last chance" to be frees. His next parole hearing is set for 2039, when he'd be 94; he survived COVID but he has diabetes, high blood pressure, the effects of an earlier stroke, a potentially fatal aortic aneurysm in his abdomen and uses a walker. "Any additional incarceration is just retribution," says Sharp. "It's time to end this."
"My life is an extended agony," Peltier wrote in 1999's Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance. "My people’s struggle to survive inspires my own struggle to survive." Before June's parole ruling, the NDN Collective bought Leonard a house on Turtle Mountain Reservation in hopes he could return "to be with his family, to be with his people," to be with the grandchildren he's only seen in a prison waiting room. His younger sister Betty Ann Peltier Solano hoped "to spend our last years together." Three years ago, in his bid for clemency, he wrote Biden he hoped "to feel the sun on my skin." Last year on his 79th birthday, as supporters rallied outside the White House to again urge clemency, he wrote, "I hope to breathe free air before I die." "Hope is a hard thing to hold, but no one is strong enough to take it from me,” he wrote. "There is a lot of work left to do. I would like to get out and join you in doing it."
More Cow Bell, and Lock (At Least) Him Up Finally
We know it's not much given our SCOTUS-abetted plunge into Christo-fascist authoritarianism, but Steve Bannon, MAGA thug, "legend in his own mind" and loudmouth host of the War Room's "Home Shopping Network from Hell" has finally gone to prison, so there's that. Surrendering to feds while trying to claim political martyrdom, both he and shrieky sidekick MTG were virtually drowned out by happy hecklers, many of whom are hoping King Biden can now send him and his evil ilk away - maybe to Gitmo? - forever.
Convicted of contempt of Congress over two years ago for blowing off a Jan. 6 Committee subpoena seeking evidence in Trump's 2020 election interference, Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison but kept filing multiple appeals - and shooting off his rancid mouth - until last month, when he was finally ordered to report to Danbury, Connecticut's Federal Correctional Institute by July 1. The thrice-indicted former Trump consigliere also faced fraud charges in a "Build the Wall' scam with three other grifters that pulled in over $25 million; in his last corrupt hours, Trump pardoned Bannon on the federal charges, but because even King Stable Genius has no power over states' legal proceedings, Bannon must still go to trial on those in September. Lie down with dogs: Charged with pocketing many hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, two of Bannon's fellow crooks - one a perennial swindler - are now serving four and five year prison terms respectively.
Until Monday, the bellicose host of the four-hourWar Room podcast - like "a bus with a bomb strapped to it - if it slows down, it dies" - remained maddeningly free to spew incendiary trash on Real America's VoiceMAGA. A bulky, red-eyed, grey-haired, multi-black-shirted field marshal for MAGA wars records his vitriol in the basement of a fancy Capitol Hill town house piled with books on politics and conspiracies, topped with the 900-page Nazi handbookProject 2025. His rhetoric, writes Tim Murphy, is "what an AI would talk like if you trained it on Newt Gingrich and back issues of Soldier of Fortune," an overblown mishmash of grim pretension - "The pre-kinetic part of the Third World War is happening," the 2024 election means “victory or death”.- racist paranoia - everything is the fault of either Chinese Communists or George Soros - 19th-century imperialism - Iranians are "Persians," the West Bank is "Judea and Samaria" - and rabid bloodlust - Anthony Fauci should be beheaded.
Aptly for a movement run by grifters, the War Room is also, Murphy notes, "a frenzied on-air marketplace, where people, agendas and products (are) relentlessly pitched." Mike Lindell sold socks with his pillows. Mercenary ghoul Erik Prince sold phones for those paranoid about surveillance: "10,000 just arrived!" Thanks to commie Chinese plots, Bannon posits "there’s something seriously, seriously wrong (with) the supply chain'" on medicine and drugs, so he stocks up on antibiotics, supplements, also coffee. "The reason I'm on fire is Warpath coffee," he told his faithful "posse," along with "SacredHumanHealth.com for the grass-feed beef liver, the greatest concentration of nutrients known to man." The Nietzschean will to power drives assertions like, "Your confidence has created a reality and that confidence, that optimism, that subjective reality, you’ve made an objective reality." Dude. Plugged supply chains or no, maybe chill on the speed?
The day's biggest Irony Alert: Inmate Number 05635-509, an unrepentant blowhard who just won't shut up, who brags nothing can shut him up though he's going to prison because he was too scared to talk under oath and will now have only fellow inmates to spout his white nationalist gibberish to, who's been making the rounds to mainstream media he supposedly despises to proclaim, "I'm proud of going to prison, I have (no) regrets, I've served my country/dedicated my life to this, I'm a political prisoner, I'm at war with the ruling class" - this scumbag theatrically arrived at his glorious destination Monday eager to make more martyred declarations only to be promptly, unceremoniously, ingloriously drowned out by gleeful, smirking non-believers led by "ruckus royalty Anarchy Princess" whooping, shouting, clanging cowbells, banging noisemakers, and disrespectfully chanting "Lock Him Up!" so loud nobody could hear his lofty oratory. Dude. Bummer.
In his hour of need, Bannon was accompanied by loyal fan-girl Marjorie Taylor Greene - "I see Stevie brought his pony with him - give her an apple and (she'll) follow you anywhere" - who was met with the Jasmine-Crockett-inspired sign, “Bleach-Blonde, Bad-Built Butch Body.” The ever-outraged MTG has called Bannon’s conviction "a disgrace to our country and an affront to the principles of justice it was founded upon," though it's unclear why she thinks prosecuting someone for violating the law is an affront to our principles of justice. It's also unclear what her alleged constituents think of the fact she's evidently never in their state, or why - see racket made by aforementioned cowbells - she was nonsensically screeching, "Where are the Democrats?! Where are they?!" While Bannon does his time, both Greene and frenemy Lauren 'Groping-while-Vaping' Boebert will reportedly be among War Room guest hosts, so let the good idiot times roll on.
Relishing the unfolding spectacle of the new movie, "MAGA: One Incarceration At A Time," observers entertained themselves by making up new titles: "The Turd Man Of Alcatraz, The Man In The Un-Ironed Mask, Cruel Hand Fluke." Many had questions: "Is he LOCK HIM UPPED yet? Will that greasy sack of meat sweat learn to make toilet wine before the DTs get him? Do they get to shave his hair to prevent lice? If you remove the lice and cockroaches, is there anything left? Will they let him wear three jumpsuits?" Given Bannon's boast the "MAGA army" won’t "stop until final victory," some wondered if they'd swooped in yet to rescue him. Rumors swirled: "MEAL Team Six tried, but they were kicked out of their Denny's meeting place." A common sentiment amidst the furor: "Shut up and go to prison already. I don’t want to see him go to prison. I don’t want to see him at all." Also, "It’s nice to know he’ll be there for a bit, though."
In his final interviews, Bannon was defiant. He said it's "impossible” for Biden to win the election, so there's "no way" he or his "army" would accept his re-election. What he expects from the next few months: "A Trump victory." Fans shouldn't write him letters he won't read, because he's "going to be working" - on his prison job and "total and complete victory." Ranged against the cowbells, he grew largely, mercifully indecipherable. But at one point you can just hear him smugly name the last brave soul to face a prison sentence on a Congressional contempt charge: Ring Lardner Jr., the 1940s leftist screenwriter and member of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten who did almost a year at Danbury before going on to an illustrious career that included the anti-war M*A*S*H. Asked by HUAC if he was a member of the Communist Party, Lardner famously replied, "I could answer it, but if I did, I would hate myself in the morning." Shame on Bannon, if he had any, for the comparison. Amidst his hubris, a bit of self-hate would be a start.
America Jumps the Shark
Hoo boy. For those of you packing for Costa Rica, a few words, mostly not ours, after this week's much-hyped, twisted-as-fuck debacle of an Old White Men Thunderdome. Yes, Biden was awful: tired, mumbling, fumbling. Mr. 34-Count Aspiring Fascist was worse: He lied, babbled, deflected, lied again. Most dispiriting, the media persists in covering this life-or-death tale of the fate of our democracy in terms of "performance." Thus, tragically, maddeningly, does the shady host of friggin' Celebrity Apprentice win again.
The run-up to Thursday's misadventure was frantic, toxic, ludicrous. Talking Points' Josh Marshall - hat tip for the Thunderdome - noted that, unlike the formulaic blandness of most past debates, the presence of a shark-and-showerhead-obsessed sociopath with a "pro-wrestling mentality" made this event wildly unpredictable, which is "Donald Trump’s happy place." Given the two men's ages, histories and proclivities, the expectations were idiotically skewered. Level-headed types noted that if Biden flubbed a word or name or paused too long, pundits would play it on a loop all day and say Biden's too old; if the Person-Woman-Man-Shark-Narcissist guy showed up wearing a diaper with a pacifier in his mouth, talked gibberish the whole time and took a dump on stage, they'd praise his change in tone, admire how manly he looked in the diaper, and celebrate his newly presidential persona.The Daily Show actually played some of it: Biden had to avoid any senior moment, stay engaged, stay awake and "remain upright"; Trump just had to "portray normalness."
For weeks, GOP flunkies have labored to lower expectations for a famously unhinged candidate forever whining about being a victim of someone - Marxists, communists, women, windmills, fake news, mean judges ad nauseum. With the radical leftists of CNN moderating, said squirrely MAGA Mike Johnson, "We know it's not a fair fight." He's "not just going up against Biden but the CIA," ranted Fox' Jesse Waters, "who's lurking in the shadows and trying to kneecap him like the last two times." "I have so much faith in him," gushed Klan Mom "close adviser" MTG of def the guy to "take this global cable (sic) of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, "but he's walking into an arena filled with people who want to MURDER him!" - all for being what thug and sexual abuser Corey Lewandowski calls, "the villain, the straight white man." Many predicted he'd back out, using a variety of excuses: bone spurs, covfefe, "Only suckers and losers debate," "Many people are saying a debate is unnecessary because I'm winning so much," "I've never met that man - Obama - and he isn't even my type."
Still, he kept blustering. He derided Biden's reported prepping for the debate by "standing up for 90 minutes," while "I've been preparing for it my whole life," in between criminal activities. He gave rambling interviews of "pristine word salad" - "We lose hundreds of, think of it, hundreds of thousands of people dying at our border, coming through our border every year, because of our border" - leading to the query, "WHAT IN THE DEMENTIA IS THIS?" when "millions of people confuse whatever the hell it is with POTUS material." Meanwhile, CNN preposterously argued meek Jake Tapper and Dana Bush would "use all tools at their disposal (to) ensure a civilized discussion" except for the small matter of foregoing real-time fact-checking for a pathological liar, malignant narcissist and cognitive wizard who literally doesnothing but lie, babble, wander, or make up facts that suit his lunatic fancy of the moment. Given the event's tired format, lame parameters and horse-race-and-circus-likecoverage, "The choice the debate presented was, 'Hell no' vs. 'Oh no.'"
Alas, we got both. Biden, it's widely agreed, "didn't deliver." He looked and sounded old - "too old" - rasped, paused, faltered, mixed up words, stared into space or at least appeared to on an unhelpful split screen, and fumbled what should have been fierce defenses of his substantial achievements against, after all, a feckless, incoherent, convicted madman. Virtually everything he said was a lie: Democrats execute babies after they’re born, everyone wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, "we had a great border" and no terrorist attacks, the deficit is at its highest ever, Biden will quadruple your taxes, migrants/ border/ crime/ bad guys. Mixed in were deranged non-sequiturs: Asked how he'd combat opioid addiction, he veered to say his administration "bought the best dog.” He boasted about winning at golf - "You have to be quite smart and (be) able to hit the ball a long way - I can do it" - claimed Biden's strengths - he did so much like tax cuts that saw the deficit soar but they paid for themselves! - and, irony alert, accused him of his failings: "This man is a criminal." Say what?
"This was not a debate," wrote Heather Cox Richardson, but an exercise in gaslighting known as the Gish gallop, a rhetorical technique natural to huckster Trump whereby someone throws out a flood of lies and bullshit that can overwhelm an opponent, especially a stutterer, when there's no fact-checking mechanism in place. Biden, she notes, needed to prove to the 70% of voters who think he's too old that he isn't, that he has the mental acuity to do the job. That he did, sometimes listing facts, numbers, accomplishments so fast it was hard to catch it all. But because our politics have become a showboat of shallow, grandstanding, performative crap, of theater over truth, a craven media againfell for the Trump narrative of strutting dominance, accompanied by a deluge of lies and criminal feints they barely mentioned, over a quiet, raspy guy who sometimes mumbled. Biden can do the job, many argue; he just doesn't always look or sound like he can - sorrowful evidence, writes Richardson, that "stage performance has trumped substance in (our) political coverage."
And so the pundits and networks jumped in, "pawing at the carcass of a debate debacle" and rushing to suggest Biden isn't up to the task, not of actually being president but "being (able to) make a clear and compelling case against the most flawed politician in history" - and a traitorous fascist who shouldn't be up there in the first place. "American media is fucked," said one sage of panicked calls for Biden to drop out. Who called on Trump to drop out when he was convicted of 34 felonies? Or found liable for rape? Or covered up stealing classified documents, declined to say he'd accept election results, threatened judges, dined and wined Nazis, befriended insurrectionists, spewed gibberish, lied about....everything? "Don't day trade politics - it's a sucker's game," says former GOP operative Stuart Stevens. "A guy from Queens out on bail bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade, said in public he didn’t have sex with a porn star, defended tax cuts for billionaires, defended Jan. 6 and called America the worst country in the world. That guy isn’t going to win this race.”
After the lousy night, Dems tried to rally. Gavin Newsome stressed the disparity between the two men of "daylight and darkness." John Fetterman, elected after his own disastrous debate, told everyone to, "Chill the fuck out." Political analyst Monique Pressley looked beyond "a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath": "The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully." And Biden, weirdly, seemed to revert to his often-feisty self, who mid-debate snarled Trump "has the morals of an alley cat," once it was over. "Where was this guy?" it was asked when he told a post-debate crowd, "He's just a liar - I've never heard so much malarkey" and repeated the native-to-John-Wayne movie line about "lyin' dog-face pony soldiers." The next day he was back to concede, "I know I'm not a young man, to state the obvious...But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong...I know how to get things done...When you get knocked down, you get back up." In a woefully relative universe, let it be enough.
Update: "Do not obey autocracy in advance." Also: Biden: 1, Carnival Barker: 0.
Suffer the Little Children: I Was Hungry, and You Refused Me Free Lunch and Ignored My Fainting
In a perfect, brutal metaphor of how much these sanctimonious, shit-ass Christian fraudsters care about the kids they're always frenziedly "protecting" - from unholy drag queens, migrants, sexy books - Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry was so puffed-up about signing into law his vile bill demanding public school students get the Ten Commandments jammed down their throats he didn't notice a green-ish girl standing behind him wobble, pass out and hit the unceremonious floor. Finally, a horrified sign from God.
Some noted Landry's ceremony of signing HB71 - God praised, Biblical figures invoked, angelic children propped behind - looked like a scene from the 1800s, apt given that's where he, fellow Louisianan Mike 'Thugs For God' Johnson and other authoritarian wingnuts seek to return us to. "Christian nationalism is on the march across the country," argues one critic, part of a veer to the right ranging from vitriol toward singer Dolly Parton, long beloved on all sides of the partisan divide - "Dolly Parton is Switzerland" - for "false gospel" with her support of LGBTQ issues to Project 2025, the 887-page blueprint by the Heritage Foundation, aided by Moms for Liberty, Tea Party Patriots, the NRA et al, by which Trump hopes to turn flawed democracy into fascist Christian theocracy. "Non-Christians living among us (are) not entitled to political equality, nor (should they) deny the people of God their right to order civil institutions to God," writes Stephen Wolfe in his 2022 The Case for Christian Nationalism. "The Christian’s posture toward the earth ought to be that it is ours, not theirs, for we are co-heirs in Christ" - albeit often vicious ones.
Because GOP hatemongers, adulterers and other charlatans love the performative piety of plastering Commandments everywhere - cue John Prine's "But your flag decal won't get you/ Into Heaven any more" - dick-groping "gutter trash" Lauren Boebert praised her "great friend" Gov. Landry's bill to prison-bound-for-lying-and-cheating Steve Bannon on his podcast. "We need morals back in our nation, back in our schools," gushed Boebert. "If there’s anything we are going to present (to our) children, it should be the word of God....the one truth that is never going (to) leave them. It’s not some woke fad of the day." Another fan of God's word is Donald 34-Count, who told evangelicals at a Faith & Freedom confab he endorsed the Commandments (with gold-plated ones any day now!): "Has anybody read this incredible stuff? It’s just incredible.” He also said he "stood up to the communists, Marxists and fascists to deyfend religious liberty," and offered to take off his shirt to show them "a beautiful, beautiful person" with "wounds all over me. I’ve taken a lot of wounds, I can tell you. More than I suspect any president ever," though Abe Lincoln and JFK would like a word.
A smarmy Landry celebrated foisting his Christofascism in "large, easily readable font" on 680,000 students in 1,300 schools in his state - now the country's first to mandate classroom displays the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional over 40 years ago - in a staged ceremony attended by smiling supporters. Landry was proudly hyping the bill when a wan girl to his left began to teeter and then slid to the floor. As do-unto-others bent to her, the oblivious, it's-all-about-the-children governor ignored the tumult, prattled away - "If you want to respect the rule of law, you've got to start from the original lawgiver, Moses," but actually it was God - and showily signed his name. His Moses/God gaffe was one of the day's several lies. A key pillar of the law is the assertion the Ten Commandments were a “prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries," a claim based on an alleged quote by James Madison evidently made up by Rush Limbaugh. Madison did, however, say, “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
When Landry first announced the bill, he told a crowd - see smarmy - "I can’t wait to be sued." Many promptly made his day. The state and national ACLU, along with several freedom-from-enforced-religion groups, swiftly filed a lawsuit charging the law "violates the separation of church and state and is blatantly unconstitutional." "The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice," said the ACLU. Rights advocates added, "Our public schools are not Sunday schools, and students of all faiths, or no faith, should feel welcome in them." Nine Louisiana families have also now filed a federal lawsuit charging the law "substantially interferes with and burdens” their First Amendment right to raise their kids as they wish. The families are Jewish, Christian and non-religious; two include clergy. The bill, said Presbyterian Rev. Jeff Sims, "doesn’t just interfere with my and my children’s religious freedom - it tramples on it.” It also "sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments (do) not belong in their own school community."
On its own, critics argue, the law is bad enough. But much like the meritless 15-week abortion ban used as a wedge to ultimately take down Roe v. Wade, Landry's bill represents not just a victory for evangelicals who want to push their repressive view of Christianity on the country but part of a coordinated effort by the right to reverse decades of legal precedent and begin an epic legal battle they've long wanted - a battle that could end up before a Supreme Court now packed as never before with right-wing Christians sympathetic to their anti-democratic cause. In what's been deemed "a laughably obvious attempt" to mask its true theocratic purpose, the law also suggests the display of patriotic documents - the Mayflower Compact, Northwest Ordinance, Declaration of Independence - chosen to appeal to the two hard-right justices, No-Abortion Alito and More-Guns Thomas, who've used blatantly cherry-picked, wildly flawed "faux-historical nonsense" to justify rulings "in thrall to the idea that the nation should never advance past the late 1700s, and that the Constitution should be entombed in amber."
In truth, advocates argue Landry's unholy gambit is part of a nationwide effort by right-wingers to violate a principle "core to this country’s founding, that everyone should be free to live as themselves" - and, presumably, not be used as an unknowing political pawn in a propaganda campaign of others' making, especially if it entails hitting the dirt as the cameras rolled. After she passed out at the signing at a Lafayette Catholic school, the 10-year-old girl was carried out by a state senator and brought to the school nurse. She's now fine, reports her clueless mother, after her "unforgettable experience." Also, the unseeing Landry and his wife visited and gave her an official governor's pen and a stuffed alligator, so there's that. "Such empathy and compassion," wrote one commenter. "Fucking asshole." Others suggested the scene should have been a Veep credits sequence, or the girl was overcome by all the hot air emanating from the governor, or she passed out from disbelief anyone in this country would sign that law. Said one patriot, "We are all the fainting child, unfortunately."
“One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.” - Thomas Paine