Author: Crowhill Report

A few random thoughts.

• As a moral matter, it would be nicer to have a national decision on abortion. As a political / constitutional matter, there doesn’t seem to be any reasonable dispute that this should be decided at the state level.
• The U.S. is among the most radical in the world when it comes to abortion laws. We keep company with the Chinese and the North Koreans in our very permissive rules. In arguing its recent case, Mississippi said, “fully 75% of all nations do not permit abortion after 12 weeks’ gestation, except (in most instances) to save the life and to preserve the physical health of the mother.”
• There is a distinction between (1) a policy objective (e.g., ensuring women have access to abortion), and (2) the means you use to get there (e.g., creating a federal rule on something that ought to be decided by the states). While everybody takes a “whatever it takes” approach from time to time, Jonathan Haidt argues the political left is more likely to break rules to achieve a policy objective. My observation of the political scene generally agrees with that. Consequently, I’m not all that shocked that someone at the court leaked this alleged decision, and I think the odds are good it was a liberal who did it.
• My prediction: Chief Justice Roberts will find a way to cave to the liberals. I don’t know precisely how, but I’m fairly sure he’ll find a way.

This is funny. The Washington Post doth protest too much

You’ve probably heard about the recent SCOTUS case involving a high school football coach who would pray on the 50 yard line after each game. He didn’t invite anyone to join him, but some people did. He was fired. (William sent along this article about it, which he correctly calls “skewed.”)

Everybody is supposed to have freedom of religion, and freedom from religion. The freedom of religion perspective would say the coach has every right to pray and can’t be fired for that. The freedom from religion perspective would argue the coach was subtly coercing students to pray, since he would clearly be more sympathetic towards the people who joined him.

I see merit in both arguments, but the former is more immediate and the latter more speculative. We can’t curtail a clear right on the chance that it causes some harm.

Of course, no one will address the actual problem, which is government-run schools. So many of these first amendment problems would vanish if schools weren’t run by the government.

Some doofus has “married” a hologram.

‘Fictosexual’ man married hologram bride, but now struggles to bond with her

It’s amusing, and he can do whatever he likes (within some limits), but do the rest of us have to affirm this craziness? Or celebrate it?

The world is so strange today, you have to wonder when it will come to that — that you’ll be considered a horrible person if you don’t refer to Hatsune Miku (the hologram) as this guy’s wife.

Oh. And do you remember the slippery slope arguments about gay marriage?

He may restore Donald Trump and the Babylon Bee, and some might see that as a great win, but I think the problems with social media are far deeper than that.

Twitter is not “the public square,” and it makes me sad to hear people say that it is.

There is no debate happening on Twitter. It’s a failed enterprise from the get-go, and nothing Musk can do will fix it.

What do you think?