319 Comments

I have cancelled my subscription to the Bulwark. No apology to the readership for Ms. Young's hypocritical sloppiness. I don't intend to keep paying for that.

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You are a good woman Mary and it is very nice conversing with you.

I cannot disagree with you, and can even expand on your ideals. The fetus is the root of all human life; children are a true miracle that once held, opens up a much bigger world to the person holding it. We are made to instantly love & protect our young whether we bore them or not. In many ways procreation is the single most important and beautiful act that we can experience.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that nearly all women will regret an abortion for the rest of their lives; some will wish they had not done it, most would reason it was a necessity at the time, but nearly all will forever grieve the life gone.

But when we are talking about rights and the law, and all of the lessons learned over centuries that our framers attempted to instill in our founding documents, none of that forms the basis of how we apply the law and attempt to protect the individual rights of all. We have built a system of government that attempts to make no judgements based on assumptions of a person's character, or how their actions are motivated, without evidence. We have created degrees in the law, over thousands of years to try and differentiate from the boy who steals bread to feed his mother and the man that executes a long-game theft for riches and power. Over and over, we try to make our institutions better than we are as humans, to remove the biases & emotions, and to enforce judgement based on the law instead of how we feel. And so, the woman who chooses to not be pregnant at this time deserves the same basic rights and due process, free from emotion & bias & assumptions. She could be a young wreckless woman that makes a game of seeing how much unprotected sex she can have without pregnancy or disease, just for her personal amusement. Or she could be a 16yo whose parents have taught her little and kept her from school sex ed class. Or she could be a rape victim. Or just afraid of the men in her life. Or a woman with a devastating disease or handicap that still cobbles together a life & marriage. Maybe they try for a long time to get pregnant and don't but years later, after she is on tons of dangerous-to-fetus medications to stave off the disease progression, she does get pregnant but the outlook for carrying isn't good.

So is a baby's right to life greater than the rights of the first woman I described to live her life as she sees fit? It seems like it should be. But what about the others? If history has taught us anything as a society, it is that there will always be new cases, ideas, circumstances, norms. And so the law tries to focus on preserving basic rights. In order to protect the rights of a woman with a 'good' reason to end pregnancy, the law must protect the rights of all women who want to end pregnancy. This is why some states put no restrictions at all on abortion.

So the priciples in our founding documents require us as a society to not infringe on a woman's right through the law. But our morals force is to look out for the thumb-sucking sonagram, and that's ok. Be an activist, volunteer, spread the joy of life in any way you know how. But attempting to force women through the law contradicts our founding ideals that prize personal rights without goverment curtailment above all others. These long term efforts by groups like the Federalist Society are anethema to personal rights so prized in our founding. They smack of the desire to feel power through controlling women, to loudly proclaim "our way is the right way' and therefore I shall be the boss of you. Citizens such as yourself who truly want to look out for the unborn should remember that even though the Dobbs decision seems good because less unborn will be aborted, it comes with costs to both women and society. A lot of costs.

I only mentioned the idea of birth & adoption at viability as another way to compare the rights of the fetus versus mother. These seems a way to even out the treatment of those rights; if it still seems too risky, and your mind just wants all the babies to be carried to term, it may be that you value the rights of the woman as much less than that of the baby's. Coincidentally, I think that is how ACB feels. It's OK for you, but not ok for her, at least not when she is judge. If the thoughts of the baby trump that of the mother, we are not doing our country/constitution/founding principles they way it was intended.

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Many here totally misunderstand Cathy's point ( and I am liberal , so don't go there)...none of us should take on face value any news item that seems thin, this is also something journalists are supposed to do, and people should do, very easy to think something that conforms with your priors and bias must be true

And she didn't say it didn't, she said she doubted it did because of the lack of information,

The absolute nastiness seems to break the rule here about being civil...

I don't like bubbles, and I would hate to see the Bulwark become one

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How about an apology for amplifying the badfaith attacks of badfaith Republicans and a promise never to do it again? Just adding a Note doesn't cut it

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Listened to a podcast with Axelrod and Jared Polis. CO Governor. I don't recall him being on Charlie's show before/yet. Would be great to have him on. A libertarian Democrat (IMO).

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Ironically, I was led to the article from Cathy Young by today's correction, and the amendment is simply not sufficient for an error of this magnitude. I don't think they should stop publishing articles from Cathy Young, but at an editorial level I'm very disappointed with the way this was handled. At a minimum an article featuring a full-throated apology and an explanation of what led to the decision to run this piece is in order. Regretfully canceling my subscription due to this reminder that the Bulwark is becoming more of a right-wing publication and not the publication that either avoided commenting on culture war issues like this or dealt with them more broadly. It's just gross that they felt the need to run the article before the dust had even settled around the matter.

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Jul 15, 2022·edited Jul 15, 2022

“Republicans Who Cannot Support Trumpism”

Many people, people like you've never seen, are saying there are about 847 Republicans who will not vote for Trump.

PS Bernie's still not going to vote for Biden. So there's that.

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Charlie, I think you smuggled a boatload of presumption into your piece about Biden. I think Biden is doing fine, but I also think he should not run for reelection and not because there is anything wrong with his performance. Surely there is a younger Democrat for the ticket. It is possible there are lots of people like me. Furthermore, I also think the country is on the wrong track. There is a a large segment of America who wants authoritarianism. So yes we are heading in the wrong direction. That same segment thinks America is on the wrong track just because Biden is a Democrat. I also agree that he cannot unite the country---again not because of him, but because the same segment pining for an authoritarian will NOT be brought together.

Some of the other percentages seem objectively wrong. For example, he has been in the midst of doing a great job with an international crisis in Ukraine.

If JVL is correct that Biden is the only Democrat of shouldering the burden of keeping the Dem coalition intact, then what's with his poll numbers especially among progressives? And what happens if he has a health emergency?

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I Love that he quoted James Madison. He's my fav. Trump never and still doesn't know what the Federalist papers are and why they were written. But! NEVER LET A GOOD PRE CONSTITUTION QUOTE GO TO WASTE.

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Polling that measures approval ratings and things like whether the country is on the right track often fail to ask "Why?" The answers to that question would tell a lot more.

For instance, I'm one of those that would respond that the country is going in the wrong direction. However, that doesn't mean I plan to vote for Republicans in November. In fact, I place most of the blame on Republicans and plan to vote D in every race.

I suspect there are many other readers here who would say the same.

Another example: If I were to say I don't approve of the job Biden is doing, it would be not because I blame him for inflation and high gas prices and the pandemic still being an issue but because he hasn't been forceful enough in addressing them or took too long to show any sign of being on it (like seemingly ignoring inflation for way too long and seeming to dismiss the impact it was having on people). It would also be because it frustrates me that he doesn't use his megaphone to really punch back at all the right-wing hate and misinformation. If he's trying to play rope-a-dope, it's not working.

So even though I have a very dark view of where this country is and where it's headed, I'm absolutely not voting for a single Republican.

Polls don't measure this, and I have my doubts whether this November "wave" is going to be as big as some think. While the Democrats very well may lose the House, it's also entirely possible that they could hold the Senate and even expand their majority. Think what that could mean if Thomas or Alito, or both (both are in their 70s and are now the oldest members on the court), go the way of Ginsburg before the 2024 election.

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Here's a better analysis from Lucian K. Truscott IV, also on Substack:

Open in browser

I would call this a new low, but...

There will be an even lower low any minute now

Lucian K. Truscott IV

Jul 14

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You knew it was going to happen, and now here it is: the right-wing noise machine swung into full-power mode after it was reported that a 10-year-old girl who was raped in Ohio had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. The story was first reported in the Indianapolis Star by Shari Rudavsky, who has been the paper’s lead health reporter for something like 18 years.

There was no reason to doubt the report. It was printed in a first-line municipal newspaper by a reporter well known in the city of Indianapolis. Even before the Supreme Court handed down its Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade and returning control of abortion laws to the states, it was predicted that an underage girl would someday be raped and be caused to go somewhere other than her home state to obtain an abortion because red states almost immediately began passing laws outlawing abortion the day the court issued its decision.

That was what happened in Ohio. Soon after the Dobbs decision was announced, Governor Mike DeWine ordered that a law would go into effect banning abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy. The law had been passed in 2019 and sat dormant until the Supreme Court decided Dobbs. By the time the little girl in Ohio discovered that the rape she had suffered had made her pregnant, she was three days past the deadline.

The story didn’t set off any alarm bells until this Tuesday when the Wall Street Journal published an editorial essentially calling the story about the 10-year-old girl a lie. “There is no evidence the girl exists,” the editorial said. Despite first-hand reporting in the Indianapolis Star from an interview with the Indianapolis doctor who performed the abortion, the editorial called the story “a fanciful tale.”

Fox News jumped right on it. Tucker Carlson went on his show and said the story was “not true.” Another Fox News host claimed that abortion rights activists were lying about a “fake victim.” A jerk named Dave Yost, who somehow got himself elected attorney general of Ohio, went on another Fox show and called the story about the 10-year-old rape victim from his state – whose rapist he should have been pursuing and prosecuting – “a fabrication” and claimed there was no “evidence” to support the story.

There was a serious problem with the Ohio attorney general’s blithe assertion that the whole thing about the 10-year-old girl was made up. A 27-year-old Ohio man was arrested on Tuesday and charged with raping the girl. According to a report in the Columbus Dispatch, the rapist, one Carlos Fuentes, admitted to raping the girl at least two times. The Dispatch reported that a detective testified at the man’s arraignment yesterday that Columbus police had been aware of the rape since June 22 when her mother had called Child Protective Services. The detective went on to confirm that on June 30, the 10-year-old girl had a “medical abortion” in Indianapolis.

Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan got his two cents in with a Tuesday Tweet claiming that the Ohio attorney general’s office had “not found any evidence of a 10-year-old rape victim in the state.” He then took a swat at President Biden for referring to the story in a statement he made on Monday, implying that Biden had lied.

When the rapist was arrested, Jordan deleted the tweet without an apology to either the 10-year-old rape victim or Biden.

I am going to pause here for a moment because I just realized that I have typed the words “10-year-old girl” seven times. It becomes almost automatic in a story like this where you have to mention the subject of the story over and over.

She is 10-years-old and she was raped twice and before she is old enough to go to junior high school, she has had to have an abortion.

Think about it for a moment. Not only is she going to live with the fact of the rapes and the fact of the abortion for the rest of her life, these stories saying it was all a lie, that she was a “fake victim,” will be on the internet and on social media forever. Her children will be able to read the lies about her, and so will her grandchildren. And what they will read will be disgusting lies perpetrated by disgusting people without a thought in the world about the girl, or her life today, or what her life will someday become.

They are spreading disgusting lies to get votes, that’s what they’re doing, and they are willing to ruin a 10-year-old girl’s life to do it.

Today, another disgusting Republican jerk, the Attorney General of Indiana, decided they haven’t gone far enough in trashing the girl and he made the astonishing announcement that his office was opening an investigation of the doctor who performed the abortion on the 10-year-old rape victim.

You would think that the right wing would try to crawl under a rock when a story proved to be true about the nightmare scenario that was predicted to happen after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. But no. First, they call the girl who was raped a liar, then they shame her for traveling across state lines to abort the fetus produced by the rape, then they go after the doctor who performed a legal abortion on her so she would not have to give birth to her rapist’s baby.

It's a Republican trifecta: cruelty dipped in lies ladled on top of an abuse of power.

Watch this space. Republicans are going to do it again. And again. And again.

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I'm missing the apology here. Obviously, it should come mainly from Glenn Kessler, but the bandwagon jumpers all have their apologies to make for going along with it. How often does a story about a medical procedure with a NAMED source draw this kind of incredulity? And I would say this even if it were not the case that the reporter named, Shari Rudavsky, is a seasoned, experienced, highly respected senior reporter without a blemish on her record. (Also, she's my sister-in-law.)

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Further thought: If Trump declares as a candidate, De Santis should immediately declare as well to help keep other candidates like Younkin or Haley from seeking the nomination. Trump plus De Santis would be too high a hill to climb. And DeSantis can beat Trump.

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I think it is unlikely that Trump could win the Republican nomination unless the field is crowded. Remember that Trump only got about 1/3 of the Republican primary vote until he had the nomination sewed up. De Santis, Youngkin and Haley could all beat him if -- but only if -- they don't all throw their hats into the ring.

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An observation to divert for a moment. In the category of “I had to look that up”, Charlie, where do you come up with “Acadia” and “Condign”? I looked them up, I now know the definition(s) but, well, help someone who’s vocabulary is more challenged than I thought.

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Another example of not believing a female rape victim. It’s always horrible but even worse when a woman questions if “it really happened.”

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