Pete Hegseth dropping deism and Unitarian Universalism from accepted religions in the military is honestly almost too fucking hilarious for me to be properly outraged about.

Corporations have spent decades attacking “frivolous lawsuits.” Now Uber is using federal racketeering law against plaintiffs' attorneys themselves. The goal is to shut down personal injury claims altogether newrepublic.com/article/211012/uber-rico-lawsuits-personal-injury-lawyers

Purcell is a "bedrock principle" of US election law until it hurts Republicans ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

"In recent years, corporations have worked to narrow access to the courts and shift power away from ordinary plaintiffs through mandatory arbitration, limits on contingency fees, procedural barriers, and aggressive public campaigns against plaintiffs’ attorneys." newrepublic.com/article/2110...

I challenge anyone to find me a sentence in a mainstream article on masculinity where "the idea of dominance" couldn't be replaced with "insecurity" and better illuminate the subject

Corporations have spent decades attacking “frivolous lawsuits.” Now Uber is using federal racketeering law against plaintiffs' attorneys themselves. The goal is to shut down personal injury claims altogether newrepublic.com/article/211012/uber-rico-lawsuits-personal-injury-lawyers

The Virginia Supreme Court made headlines last month for screwing over our democracy—but screwing over working people and defending entrenched power is nothing new for them. @elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social and I wrote about it for @ballsandstrikes.org. ballsandstrikes.org/guest-essay/...

“These cases suggest that successful resistance to authoritarian drift is rarely the product of a single mechanism. Elections matter, but they are not self-executing safeguards. Courts matter, but they cannot stand alone. Protest matters, but it must be sustained and institutionalized.”

“Collaboration between figures like Duda and major American conservative institutions underscores the far right’s deliberate efforts to share strategy and learn from authoritarian movements across the globe(. . .). Those committed to liberal democracy should do the same.”

the most surreal thing about this era of open yelling about masculinity is that, if you grew up anything like I did, you were exposed to several sets of standards of masculinity and would be hard pressed to identify which of them the Paxtons and Millers of the world are living up to

I'm sure there are scholars who've spent years of study and toil writing dissertations on the aesthetics of fascism and now there's a UFC fight at the White House that's basically gonna be Aesthetics of Fascism: The Musical.

"Rule 60...allows the court to set aside the judgment and reopen the case." Judges don't have to let this happen! ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

Something I think a lot about is how the legal profession is at the root of a lot of this mess. Legal education and professional standards definition/enforcement are in dire need of some soul-searching.

Veterans are among the groups disproportionately executed by the same government that trained them to kill and sent them to die. deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/new-dpi...

Sometimes I think the “I come onto social media to get out of my bubble” is a white boy phenomenon like free-climbing or wing-suiting where white men have so little actual adrenaline risks in their day to day lives that they need to artificially construct it

I wrote this after my 3d tour. I was still on active duty and though still very raw, I was trying to move on. I think I have. I deliberately took off the KIA bracelets to replace them with family travel mementos. I still remember, still weep. But have grown. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/cha...

If you're near Newtown, CT and love fresh tortillas, please give me an excuse to spend more time at the comal by checking out Las Gansas Tontas! Prepared from heirloom corn from local family farms, available every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning www.facebook.com/615898742487...

‼️ * repeats Steve for emphasis * JUDGES CAN REJECT TRUMP'S SHAM SETTLEMENTS

How many other small agencies are suffering these death-by-a-thousand-cuts scenarios? How many other lifesaving regulations have been put on ice or buried entirely? How many more workers’ lives are at risk because a Trump drone picked an agency name off a list? inthesetimes.com/article/trum...

Judges can reject Trump's sham settlements ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

The movement has spent decades building a structural advantage, and it has largely succeeded. Even solid conservatives like Justice Amy Coney Barrett can’t be trusted. Democrats cannot keep treating the judiciary as a sacred institution while Republicans treat it as a captured one. trib.al/s6DdJRd

Apparently even extremist judge Andrew Oldham "doesn't pass the laugh test" for a MAGA SCOTUS nomination. I don't want to hear from a single Dem candidate who doesn't make fixing the courts a top priority newrepublic.com/article/2102...

Extraordinarily overconfident in its own abilities and ill-equipped to deal with the legal system as it actually functions?

I suspect people use dependa precisely because even people who use the term recognize that the full word is so heinous as to go beyond the acceptable transgressive kidding-on-the-square misogyny of military culture

"It erases the relentless, often invisible work of childcare and domestic management—the scheduling, the cleaning, the emotional labor, the unpaid nights and weekends—and it treats that erasure as proof that such work is natural, even easy, for women." www.liberalcurrents.com/tradwives-de...

The Purcell Principle means it always too late for courts to fix something racist and never too late for states to do something racist

"The latest front in America’s culture wars has arrived with a familiar script: according to right wing media, the left is once again coming for your children. The culprit this time? Connecticut Democrats who want to know how many children in the state are homeschooled."

Wow Connecticut is really dominating New England politics

"The homeschooling debate does not have to be a zero-sum conflict between parents and the state. What is lost in the endless outrage cycle of parents versus government is the rights of children themselves and where responsibility lies for protecting them."

A reminder: the map that Alabama is sprinting to put back in place is a map struck down by a 3-judge federal court not only for a VRA violation, but also because it reflected _intentional_ discrimination. That is, the map Alabama is trying to reinstate is unconstitutional, even beyond Callais.

Don't get any ideas, Connecticut!

As a progressive homeschooling parent, the "parental rights" framing drives me nuts. I don't homeschool my kids because it is my right against the government. It's a way to help them learn about themselves and grow in a cooperative community. Safeguards do not impede that goal at all

As @skennedy2504.myatproto.social says today www.liberalcurrents.com/parental-rig...

Judges can stop obviously corrupt settlements if they choose to

Really enjoyed giving this lay sermon on imagining new worlds at UU Danbury yesterday. Absolutely love this community www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMfI...

NPLA is doing awesome work. Absolutely love this news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and...

Wrote a piece for @slate.com on how our theories of partisan polarization gave the SCOTUS majority more intellectual cover to kill the VRA slate.com/news-and-pol...

By gutting the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court is killing the Second Reconstruction. The first Reconstruction shows how Congress should respond. Me and Daphna Renan in the NYT on the tools we have to save democracy from a hostile Court.

Really thought this would be obvious after Dobbs and got shut down by the whole CT delegation. Even @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social is on board now, how about you @blumenthal.senate.gov @chrismurphyct.bsky.social? ctmirror.org/2022/07/07/r...

It was only a matter of time until it made it into a Ho opinion ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

This piece by @drstaceypatton.bsky.social should be required reading for every person in the #NotAllMen crowd.

The prevailing sentiment among Republican lawmakers across the country is that even the tiniest limitations on their power are inherently unfair and illegal

To expand on this a little: one thing that playing fast and loose with the facts lets you do as a judge is lie about the legal principles you're using to decide cases

everyone with real American manliness and a basic knowledge of military history knows that serious war efforts have never been derailed by such trifling matters as "communicable diseases"

“At the beginning of April, the conservative-dominated North Carolina Supreme Court put the final nail in the coffin of equitable education funding in the state.” www.liberalcurrents.com/equal-on-pap...

“A Supreme Court that does not share a common factual world with the people it governs is not merely conservative. It is untethered from democratic reality.”

Evidence for the claim that "people immediately declared it to be an authoritarian plot" is a single paragraph mentioning Trump's laundry list of potential "conquests." My actual article is just a history of the draft, but I shouldn't expect the Free Press to let reading get in the way of a hot take

Not that I think the Roberts Court is ever acting in good faith, but if they're serious about history and tradition, it's time for the draft to go slate.com/news-and-pol...