Remembering Anita Hill

 Clarence Thomas' statement about the leak of the Roe v. Wade opinion and its supposed effect on respect for the Court seems nothing but a reflection of the current Republican playlist.  The party leadership is going to great lengths to talk about the leak rather than about the real issue of the deprivation of human rights in the upcoming repeal.  They are counting on getting what they want from a court majority which has abandoned even the appearance of impartiality.  

Steve Benen in an article on the MSNBC website provides some perspective on the current court's direction and Thomas' contribution to that disgraceful performance.

Joe's Opportunity

 Elie Mystal in The Nation makes a good case for the possibilities of vigorous executive action to fight back against the repeal of Roe v. Wade.  He points out that Biden has been a tepid supporter of reproductive rights during his long career.  Joe could turn out to be a one-termer like his predecessor, so using his executive powers to fight back now may be an opportunity to leave his mark on history and counter balance some of the criticisms being leveled against him for not effectively combatting the big batch of ills currently plaguing the country.  Key to the strategy advocated by Mystal is the fact that Democrats have long exaggerated the limitations imposed by the Hyde Amendment on Federal support for abortion services.

Then and Now

 I am reading a book about Franco's postwar Spain, Entre Visillos, by Carmen Martín Gaite.  The plot revolves around several families whose daughters face a future in which marriage and domestic subservience were seen as the only acceptable choices. Of course, there are always rebels and many of them came from the families of the rightist winners of Spain's civil war. Franco's dictatorship did last a very long time, but fascist rigidity and suppression of opposing ideas could not ultimately prevail given the liberal gains in much of the rest of  Europe, along with the encouragement supplied by courageous feminist writers like Martín Gaite and Carmen Laforet.  It seems worth bearing in mind now that such repressive, regressive regimes always do nurture the seeds of their own destruction.