Evangelicals considered abortion a “Catholic issue” through most of the 1970s, and there is little in the history of evangelicalism to suggest that abortion would become a point of interest. Even James Dobson, who later became an implacable foe of abortion, acknowledged after the Roe decision that the Bible was silent on the matter and that it was plausible for an evangelical to hold that “a developing embryo or fetus was not regarded as a full human being”. [snip]

Indeed, in 1971 the Southern Baptist Convention had passed a resolution calling to legalize abortion. When the Roe decision was handed down, some evangelicals applauded the ruling as marking an appropriate distinction between personal morality and public policy. Although he later – 14 years later – claimed that opposition to abortion was the catalyst for his political activism, Jerry Falwell did not preach his first anti-abortion sermon until February 1978, more than five years after Roe.

Falwell, who had founded his own segregation academy in 1967, was eager to join forces with Weyrich and others to mount a defense against the IRS and its attempts to enforce the Brown v Board of Education decision of 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “In some states,” Falwell famously groused, “it’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.”

So how did evangelicals become interested in abortion? As nearly as I can tell from my conversation with Weyrich, during a conference call with Falwell and other evangelicals strategizing about how to retain their tax exemptions, someone suggested that they might have the makings of a political movement and wondered what other issues would work for them. Several suggestions followed, and then a voice on the line said, “How about abortion?”

Stitt ordered Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino, the newly appointed head of the Oklahoma National Guard, not to enforce the vaccine mandate. Mancino, who acknowledged it put him in an awkward situation, said that under state orders, his commander was the governor. But he also said that if the guard were called up under federal orders, called Title 10, he would enforce the vaccine requirement.

A defense official who briefed reporters on the issue said that members of a National Guard unit, even under state orders, called Title 32, are still required to meet federal mission requirements, including medical requirements such as vaccine mandates.

Guard members who refuse to get vaccinated risk losing their status in the National Guard and the federal pay that comes as part of training, drills and more.

Both Title 32 and Title 10 are paid for by the federal government, not the states.

Heidi Cuda @Heidi_Cuda
THIS JUST IN: The 2022 annual conservative CPAC conference will be held in Budapest, because of course. H/T
@ruthbenghiat

Budapest to host CPAC in 2022 - BBJ
Budapest will host the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a gathering of conservative activists and elected officials from the United States and beyond, in 2022, the Budapest-based...
https://bbj.hu/politics/foreign-affairs/world/budapest-to-host-cpac-in-2022

1:14 PM · Sep 24, 2021

Dr. Gilbert also shared some info on why HEK-293 testing is so ubiquitous.

This is often used in basic research, which helps to establish how diseases cause bad effects at the cellular level, such as on the cell receptors, ion channels or protein expression and folding. This knowledge allows researchers to look for or even create new medications to counteract these specific diseases more precisely, by targeting the cause and effects of diseases at the cellular and molecular level. More directly, HEK is used to test various medications and evaluate see their effects on the cells in-vitro.

This allows safety and efficacy testing to be done in the lab before medications are given to patients in clinical trials. Or HEK call lines may be used to study old medications that are already available and FDA approved. There may be new applications for these medications; knowledge of how these medications work at the cellular level will help in targeting diseases better. These medications may also have side effects or cause interactions on cells when combined with other medications. Studying this in the lab allows for side effects to be understood and mitigated. New medications in the same class can be developed that are safer or more effective. But all of these research possibilities require living cell lines and one of the most common ones chosen for such research is HEK.

Justin Jaws 44 (@House building) @44Jaworski
Replying to @therecount

That's the basic truth right there. We have our hands full getting our own house in order. And really, the best thing we can do for the rest of the world is improve the U.S., and the residual effects will do more positive than any of our military occupations will do.

1:56 PM · Sep 14, 2021

So intent was Pence on being Trump’s loyal second-in-command — and potential successor — that he asked confidants if there were ways he could accede to Trump’s demands and avoid certifying the results of the election on Jan. 6. In late December, the authors reveal, Pence called Dan Quayle, a former vice president and fellow Indiana Republican, for advice.

Quayle was adamant, according to the authors. “Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,” he said.

But Pence pressed him, the authors write, asking if there were any grounds to pause the certification because of ongoing legal challenges. Quayle was unmoved, and Pence ultimately agreed, according to the book.

A year ago, a woman who is a member of the Washoe Tribe told me that every time she sees the "s-word," she feels a full-body reaction. The word, "squaw," is a painful reminder that historic violence against Indigenous people continues to linger in our daily lives, she said, as I was reporting a story for the Tahoe Quarterly.

The word has no ties to the language of the Washoe Tribe, whose ancestral land encompasses Lake Tahoe and the surrounding region; their word for women is damumóˑʔmoʔ. But it traveled across the country with settlers more than 150 years ago and was used to assert power over Indigenous people. Today, the slur is still displayed prominently in Washoe ancestral land. [snip]

For decades, the Washoe Tribe has been asking the ski resort to change its name. And now, they are welcoming the announcement of Palisades Tahoe. But more than the new name itself, the tribe has expressed gratitude that the slur will be removed from their ancestral land.

Tribal Chairman Serrell Smokey, in a statement, calls the name change a “positive step forward.”

“The Washoe people have lived in the area for thousands of years,” said Smokey. “We have great reverence for our ancestors, history and lands. We are very pleased with this decision; today is a day that many have worked towards for decades.”

Darrel Cruz, historic preservation officer for the Washoe Tribe, gives credit for the decision to change the name of the ski resort to Ron Cohen, the former chief operating officer of the ski resort.

Anyway, as the delay rolled on, I was musing about the nominee's bizarre insistence that she could express no opinion on anything at all regarding our national elections. On Tuesday, she refused to say definitively that the president*—any president—cannot unilaterally delay an national election. Neither would she say definitively that she feels that the president* should commit to leave office peaceably if he loses in November. And, in a by-play on Wednesday with Senator Amy Klobuchar, she declined to commit to the defense of absentee ballots, but not before having a glitch in her memory every bit as spectacular as the audio glitch that later silenced the committee entirely.

KLOBUCHAR: I want to turn to something we talked about yesterday... You worked on the recount in Florida that was related to the Bush v. Gore case, including on an absentee ballot issue on behalf of the Republican side of that case, is that right?

BARRETT: I did work on Bush v. Gore on behalf of the Republican side. To be fully honest, I can't remember exactly what piece of the case it was.

Oh, come on, Your Honor.

That was the greatest and bloodiest politico-legal brawl since the 1800 presidential election. Working on the Republican side of it was a terrific career move for ambitious conservative lawyers. (How terrific? Two of Barrett's prospective bench mates on the Supreme Court—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh—were both members of the Bush legal team.) Are we seriously to believe that Barrett doesn't remember what work she did during that historical moment? Apparently, Klobuchar knows what it was.

The FDA labeling for the Plan B emergency contraceptive says Plan B may work by preventing implantation of the fertilized egg. This has created controversy over its use. Research, however, shows that Plan B does not work this way. Instead, it works by preventing ovulation and fertilization of the egg.

Once you have signed a consent to have a medical abortion, you will be given three pills (200 mg each) of the abortion pill to be taken by mouth while you are at the doctor's office.2 The hormonal action of mifepristone works against progesterone, a pregnancy hormone, to make the fertilized egg unable to remain attached to the lining of the uterus. This step induces a medical abortion about 64 percent to 85 percent of the time.

This spring marks the fiftieth anniversary of the case that went forward instead: Griswold v. Connecticut. (“We became the footnote to the footnote,” Trubek told me.) In Griswold, decided in June, 1965, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that Connecticut’s ban on contraception was unconstitutional, not on the ground of a woman’s right to determine the timing and the number of her pregnancies but on the ground of a married couple’s right to privacy. “We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights,” Justice William O. Douglas wrote in the majority opinion. “Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.” [snip]

Banning contraception at a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans used it was, of course, ridiculous. (Justice Potter Stewart, who dissented in Griswold, called the Connecticut statute “an uncommonly silly law.”) The law was little enforced. Condoms were openly sold in drugstores, and people of means could get other forms of contraception out of state. (Estelle Griswold once asked whether the police intended to “put a gynecological table at the Greenwich toll station” and examine every woman who crossed the state line.) The ban was a real hardship, though, for the poor, and especially for poor women in relationships with men who refused to use condoms. And if the law was ridiculous it was also intransigent. For decades, Planned Parenthood had tried to get it overturned in the Connecticut legislature, to no avail. So the question was: What legal argument could be used to challenge its constitutionality?

The Constitution never mentions sex, marriage, or reproduction. This is because the political order that the Constitution established was a fraternity of free men who, believing themselves to have been created equal, consented to be governed. Women did not and could not give their consent: they were neither free nor equal. Rule over women lay entirely outside a Lockean social contract in a relationship not of liberty and equality but of confinement and subjugation. As Mary Astell wondered, in 1706, “If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?” [snip]

There is a lesson in the past fifty years of litigation. When the fight for equal rights for women narrowed to a fight for reproductive rights, defended on the ground of privacy, it weakened. But when the fight for gay rights became a fight for same-sex marriage, asserted on the ground of equality, it got stronger and stronger.