Who Institutionalizes Sexism? Man with Two Daughters Edition

This makes me want to fucking gag.  I don’t even know what else to say about it, except that I am terrified by a father to whom it needs to be explained that the confirmation of an anti-woman Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is not politically expedient.   This is a snapshot of a removed, elitist, and – dare I say it?  I dare!  I dare! – ivory fucking tower of law approach to those who, with lifetime appointments, are the last defenders of our Constitution.

Such a detached, cold, rationalized, and deeply wrong assessment of the situation reminds me of some of the professors around here that have been out of practice and in their (FUCKING FABULOUS, BTW) offices for a while.  We spend so much time thinking about how far this precedent extends and where the potential analogies will lead, and that’s important, but some of the truly great theorists forget that at some point, you can’t keep babbling about How The Logical Outcome Is Always The End of Civilization* because out there in the system, some poor schmuck is waiting for a decision.  Those who make the system must not take for granted that they are above the system.  (See:  Spitzer, Eliot; Nixon, Richard)  I love academia.  I love professors, I love learning, I love going to class, I even love the 1200 page tome of international jurisdiction that’s open underneath my elbows right now.  But so help me God, I hope I never forget that the law impacts people’s lives – that in a county such as ours, we still grant the law the power to end people’s lives.  While that which is politically expedient must sometimes be the priority over ritual suicide by principle, there is also a time and a place for principle to come first, and the composition of the High Court is unequivocally within that time and place.

*We have this conversation once a week.   All things considered, I’m Little Mary Fucking Sunshine.

wingnut releases memoir! thousands cheer!

I’m reading an article right now about Justice Thomas.  Honestly, I don’t know if it’s white privilege, or my obsession with the Supreme Court, or simply that I’m a dyed-in-my-feminist-knickers liberal, but I almsot never think of him as an African-American.  I’m sure if I were African-American that’d change.  However, I always think of him as one of the four wingnuts on the Court.  So reading about him through a race-consciouus perspective is interesting.

these are a few of my favorite things

Sex toys and the federal judiciary ALL IN ONE STORY!  YES REALLY!!

Basically, Alabama has a state law prohibiting the sale of sex toys.  You can, as the author of this article points out, purchase fireworks and guns on the street, but keep that filthy Rabbit Habit out of this here state.  There’s not much I have to add to this article.  But I’m tickled.  (HAHA GEDDIT?)

pro-life, indeed

Shove it up your ass, Justice Kennedy.  And Justices Alito, and Scalia, and Thomas, and Roberts, and everyone who voted for that fucking Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, even though we didn’t expect better from most of you.

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/women/articles/2007/08/10/shots_assist_in_aborting_fetuses/