The Man Who Didn't Get Hanged

 

Former vice president Mike Pence is making abortion a central plank in his presidential bid. “The cause of life is the calling of our lifetime,” he said Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Washington. Pence said he favored a national law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks into a pregnancy as a “minimum national standard.” He also said that Republicans should not relent until every state has restricted the right to abortion and that national law is in place.

--Dan Balz 

So instead of the MAGA noose, he's gonna hang himself on this issue. Can't say I wish him "Good Luck with that!" But in its other sense, "Good luck with that!" 

Are the Alito Five Capable of Regret?

 

Linda Greenhouse, long-time Supreme Court reporter and an expert on its history, titled an opinion piece, "Is There Any Twinge of Regret Among the Anti-Abortion Justices?" After a lengthy discussion of all the personalities among the Alito Five and the wealth of history and legal precedents and arguments contained in an avalanche of friend-of-the-court briefs filed in the matter of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org., Greenhouse concludes her essay bluntly:

So no, I don’t think the Dobbs justices are sorry. They did what they were put there to do, what they wanted to do, and they were quite explicit in washing their hands of the consequences.

The consequences? You may be oblivious to the mounting numbers of women in extremis, with potential fatalities resulting from gone-wrong pregnancies, untreated because doctors in anti-abortion states are now terrified of new rules:

A report titled “Care Post-Roe: Documenting cases of poor-quality care since the Dobbs decision,” published in mid-May by teams of experts from the University of California at San Francisco and the University of Texas at Austin, ... consists largely of excerpts from submissions by 50 health care providers, many of whom felt, as one wrote, that “our hands are tied” as they waited anxiously for their patients’ conditions to deteriorate to the point where the pregnancy could be terminated within the narrow exceptions permitted by the state laws. When doctors turned women away, their next encounter was sometimes in the emergency room or intensive care unit as the patient lay bleeding or even near death.

Unable to get an abortion in their own home states, many women are fleeing to neighboring states, and paying the fare (which ain't light). Chaos has added to the misery fourfold, which moved Greenhouse to consider whether Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Thomas, or Coney Barrett felt even a glimmer of regret for overturning what had been for 50 years a basic right of women.

"No."

On the way to that not surprising conclusion, Greenhouse gets into Court history about when regret over a decision leads to a reversal. She recounts the interesting reversal in 1942 of a previous decision in 1940 that allowed school systems to enforce rules for demonstrating patriotism, expelling students who didn't salute the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance. In 1942, the West Virginia Board of Education required public schools to include salutes to the flag by teachers and students as a mandatory part of school activities. The children in a family of Jehovah's Witnesses refused to perform the salute and were sent home from school for non-compliance. The case, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, ended up with the Supremes, who had previously, just three years before, ruled that school systems could penalize children for not saluting the flag, actually expel students. But in 1942, the Court reversed itself.

Three men on the Court had voted in 1940 to allow for the expulsion of non-saluting children, and the same three voted to change their minds in 1942, admitting openly that they had been wrong. They regretted the chaos and misery for Jehovah Witness families and tried to correct it. 

But these guys in 2023? Greenhouse concludes that regret isn't a part of their makeup. They're too busy enjoying their status as billionaire accessories, riding the boat but not steering it.

The Super-Christians Offer Testosterone Booster Shots

 

Nearer, my God, to Thee

Nearer to Thee

E'en though it be a cross

That raiseth me

--19th Century Christian hymn 

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition's annual conference yesterday in DeeCee, founder Ralph Reed announced that his 14-year-old religious pressure org was there "to give our candidates a little bit of a testosterone booster shot," because some Republican office-holders and wannabes were showing visible nerves about banning abortion. Don't be shocked or even amused by Reed's metaphor, because he was merely preaching the New Testament Gospel. The First Epistle of Peter the Apostle, supposedly written from Rome by St. Peter hisownself and addressed to new Christian converts suffering persecution, contained an intriguing suggestion to "gird up the loins of your mind," by which you're supposed to envision men in jock straps (so to speak) and thereby ready for battle. I heard that phrase "gird up your loins" (never with the rest of it: "of your mind") in many a sermon wherein we were harangued to keep the faith even unto death. Life is a battle against the forces of Satan, and you best be girded for it.

I understand evangelicals. I was raised as one. I was raised understanding that worldly people needed saving, that hell is very real, and that God is watching me like a chicken hawk. Yes, evangelical, and therefore brave enough to gird up my loins and march over to our neighbor lady's house to "witness" to her about the saving grace of Jesus. She was known to us for disappearing into a whiskey bottle about every 6 months, and I thought in my budding Christian arrogance that I could save her. Or I ought to at least try. Didn't happen. I was a total washout as a litigator of other people's behavior.

I was not only evangelical but also Pentecostal, which put me in a stark minority among my Baptist school mates. Most of them weren't particularly religious in any overt sense, while I was, and couldn't partake (or wasn't supposed to) of certain pleasures of the mid-'60s, like dancing, like movies (especially the drive-in variety), like any music but hymns. My mama didn't even like me watching TV, which caused me to spend more time at my friends' houses.

As evangelical Pentecostals, we felt persecuted because we did energetic stuff in our services that other denominations didn't do, and we knew they made fun of us. If you feel persecuted, it's a salve for your hurt feelings to also and simultaneously feel superior to the rest of the world, at least in the arena you've chosen for yourself. Yes, evangelicals judge (and rather harshly) everyone else. 

But we differed from the Ralph Reed evangelicals in that we tended to withdraw from the world. We certainly never engaged in politics (except once to protest the activities at a dance hall directly across the street from our church building). The new evangelical project of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and other such groups is the opposite of separation from the sinful world but rather its intended conquering. The government is the target for conquest, and rest assured -- it's a crusade. Reed is all about the drawn sword and talks blithely and without a hint of irony about dosing Republican politicians with testosterone. "Takes a real man to get a girl pregnant, and to keep her that way!"

A Stuffed Shirt Visits UNC-Chapel Hill

 

Photo Ira Wilder, Daily Tar Heel

Mike Pence spoke at the UNC-Chapel Hill student union yesterday on the topic "Saving America From the Woke Left." He was certainly comfortably asleep during the four years he served as Trump's lickspittle, so that topic was very much on-brand.

Pence, who is notoriously wary of being one-on-one in a room with any woman, favors a national abortion ban -- an exceedingly popular position on college campuses like UNC -- and he owned it in Chapel Hill: “I couldn’t be more proud to have been a small part of the administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe vs. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs and give America a new beginning,” he said.

A new beginning? Like, beginning again in 1950?

A counter-protest to Pence's speech formed outside the student union.

Ira Wilder, Daily Tar Heel

The NCGOP's "Death Dive" on Abortion

Kidwell

In the first week of April, NC House Rep. Keith Kidwell (he of the mean eyes) filed House Bill 533, "An Act to Prohibit Abortion After Conception." No one much took that total ban bill seriously, as House Speaker Tim Moore has been promising and forecasting a less apocalyptic abortion law but certainly one that will shorten the time period allowed for legal abortion.

Republican legislators have been meeting about this and arguing in private for weeks and weeks, and so far nothing concrete has emerged. Tim Moore himself has said he would prefer a six-week cutoff, otherwise known as the time when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, but President Pro Tem Phil Berger of the Senate, the biggest cock on the block, has said he's in favor of the first trimester as the marker, about 12 weeks into a pregnancy. Whatever. It seems pretty clear that the Keith Kidwell total ban is not the one the Republicans are going to move in this General Assembly, though they are duty-bound to move something, to persecute women's bodily decisions a little or probably a lot further. Currently, the law in the state allows abortions during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Cotham

The very recent defection of Rep. Tricia Cotham might have changed the calculus of just how far they're willing to go -- or maybe not. Cotham has already said that she's willing to consider stricter rules on abortion, but so far no bills have appeared to compete with the Kidwell total ban. Why, it's almost as though the Republicans are frozen. Make that frozen with fear. I'm indebted to Sen. Graig Meyer for turning me onto The Editorial Board (John A. Stoehr), who published a really insightful thread on Twitter about the new politics of abortion (since the overturning of Roe) and the "Republican death dive." Sen. Meyer suggested that Stoehr's opinion "helps explain why #NCGA Republicans haven’t run an abortion restrictions bill yet …. They’re screwed."

Here's part of Stoehr's argument, contained in a long string of tweets that I've collapsed for easier reading:

The thing about antiabortion politics is there’s no going back. You can’t spend decades equating it to murder, then go soft on murder. The other thing about antiabortion politics is there’s no going forward.  Some Republicans are now seeing that the whole “abortion is murder” thing is a loser. This would appear to be a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But that suggests an exit. There is no exit. Republican legislators can’t help themselves. They’re caught in their own death drive....

These Republicans can’t get more in line with where voters are, because most voters believe abortion should be legal with limits here and there. At the same time, they can’t soften their position for fear of being accused on being soft on murder. The problem isn’t doing a poor job of selling antiabortion politics. The problem is antiabortion politics. To see the problem clearly, consider a secondary theme of antiabortion politics undergirding the principal (abortion = murder). That theme is rooted in nostalgia – for the days when a man was a man, a woman was a woman, and an embryo was not sacrificed on the altar of modernity. These days never existed. Humans have experienced the full range of human sexuality and gender expression since the history of humans began. The antiabortionists believe they do exist, however, for a reason: in order to maximize the emotional trauma that comes with liberal democracy moving on from the old days. Because liberal democracy never stops moving on, neither does the antiabortionist’s trauma. The trauma is woven into their personalities. It must, given the bedrock belief in the existence of the old days. But, again, those days never existed. So the antiabortionists ensnare themselves in a vicious cycle. The more they long for the old days, the more trauma they feel. The more trauma they feel, the more they long for the old days. Victimhood is the base on which they build their group identity. They can’t help it. It’s their death drive....

The death drive is compulsive, though. The more they see themselves as victims of trauma that never happened, the more grotesque they are going to be, even in the face of growing resistance by a majority of Americans that hasn’t changed its mind about abortion in decades.The Republicans have entered a new phase. The death drive is killing off their power. They can’t help it, though. The problem of antiabortion politics isn’t messaging. It’s antiabortion politics. A majority doesn’t like it. The antiabortionists, however, will never admit it. They’re victims, after all.

Phil Berger realizes the danger of a deep dive on abortion in North Carolina. Tim Moore perhaps realizes it too, but he doesn't care, so giddy is he about his new main squeeze in the House. But whatever they do to punish women is going to energize opposition. It's going to galvanize those suburban districts where Democrats have a fighting chance, even under the extreme new gerrymandering that is also coming down the track from Berger/Moore.

Fear of the "death dive" might also influence what the US Supreme Court ultimately does with the appeal of that Amarillo judge's decision on mifepristone. Kavanaugh -- particularly that party-boy -- might think twice about the jurisprudence of denying scientific authorities for the sake of religious ideology.

Snitches Get Riches: The Texas Abortion Ban

 

In the old Bewitched TV series (who's calling who "old"?), Gladys Kravitz was the nosy next door neighbor to Samantha and her daily witchcraft. Gladys was always convinced -- correctly -- that something odd was going on, but she could never convince her husband Abner nor alert the greater world. Now in Texas, as of September 1, 2021, she'd have a shot at collecting $10,000 for ratting out a woman's health clinic.

The US Supreme Court actually -- actually? -- looked at, perused? studied for themselves? (I hope they read it) the new "Texas Heartbeat Act" and said it was fine with them -- the deputizing of any and all citizens to inform on -- sue -- any provider or abetter of an abortion, if the woman's fetus had a detectable heartbeat at the time of the procedure (hearts-a-beatin' happen about six weeks after impregnation). That last provision simply ignores Supreme Court precedence, wiping out the first-trimester constitutional guarantee in one sentence. The state government stays out of it, doesn't knock angrily on clinic doors -- which the law's authors claim makes the law constitutional -- but allows and empowers self-regarding vigilantes to enforce the ban through economic harassment of doctors and nurses (et al.). 

$10,000. That's the bounty, to be forfeited by defendants. In other words, Texas Senate Bill 8 sets up every avid pro-lifer with a new hobby. What about the woman who got the abortion? Oh, there's no penalty for her, except the embarrassment. Samatha gets away with it again. 

This law can turn anti-abortion extremists -- the ones who try and do kill doctors -- into a kind of secret police, a Stasi for Christ. There's already an "inform on your neighbor" website, ProLifeWhistleBlower.com, which will gladly collect your accusations anonymously: "Use the links below to report anyone who is violating the Texas Heartbeat Act by aiding or abetting a post-heartbeat abortion. And report any person or entity that aids or abets (or that intends to aid or abet) an illegal abortion in Texas .... We will not follow up with or contact you."

It takes mental wipes with super-strong fibers to accept that five conservative justices on our Supreme Court read that language and thought it was constitutional. We are truly in a dark place, America.

But ... potential blue skies here! -- the Republican hardliners in Texas may have just scrambled the 2022 elections in a tasty way by inserting an issue that benefits Democrats. Texas-style gun fight over the privacy of women's health decisions is not a good look for you, Republicans. If other states follow the Texas model, or if the Supremes actually do overturn Roe with the Mississippi case they'll hear this fall, the fact is that Republican candidates in states other than Texas are already distancing themselves from the Texas crazies. Larry Elder, the talk-show conservative who wants to replace Gavin Newsom as governor of California, didn't want to talk about it: “This is not anything that’s on my priority list.” And that Republican dude running for governor of Virginia this year -- he's on the record as officially gun-shy about raising abortion as a campaign issue. The potential of the Bounty Act to galvanize suburban white women, and young white women, to vote against every Republican in sight -- why, I think that potential for serious backlash has got to be real.

The Republicans have been brazenly rebranding themselves ever since Donald Trump rose like a tumor to take over the party, and why wouldn't they show the depths of their extremism in this very way?

"Pro-Life" Seniors May Not Want to Line Up for Trump's COVID "Cure"

 

The ironies for self-described pro-life conservatives Trumpists just continue to pile up:

...the treatment for Covid-19 received by Mr. Trump — a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies he described as a “cure” in a celebratory video posted on Twitter — was developed using human cells derived from a fetus aborted decades ago." [New York Times]

The Trump administration suspended federal funding in 2019 for most new scientific research projects involving fetal tissue derived from abortions. But now Trump is promising aborted fetal tissue free to all "seniors" who catch the noval coronavirus. “To my favorite people in the world, the seniors,” he said in a video. “I’m a senior. I know you don’t know that. Nobody knows that. Maybe you don’t have to tell them. But I’m a senior.” (Not making this up. How could any fabulist make up such narcissistic blather?)

Acknowledging that he had been “very sick,” Trump praised the experimental treatments he was given for the virus and vowed to provide them to seniors. “I want you to get the same care that I got,” he said. “You’re going to get the same medicine. You’re going to get it free, no charge, and we’re going to get it to you soon.”

The GOP Wants More Women in Congress? "Bah Humbug," Says Leigh Brown

Leigh Brown, the Republican real estate magnate who got a lot of press (including on this blog) running in the recent NC-9 Republican primary, and ended up finishing a distant fourth to bathroom monitor Dan Bishop, has some stuff to say about how the national GOP sez it wants more women in Congress but how the machinery of the party did not support her -- after encouraging her to run in the first place.

Brown uses the term "ghosted" about the politicos who encouraged her to run and then disappeared when she actually ran. (The Urban Dictionary defines "ghosted" as that moment when someone you love and put your trust in just disappears):

“That's a little frustrating to have initial conversations and then follow up and be ghosted,” Brown said in an interview with POLITICO. “I put my real estate business on hold. I've dinged my own reputation in order to put myself forward as a public servant, and then you find out exactly how lonely it is to run for office.”

'Pears now that those Republicans who want more women in Congress are pinning their hopes on Joan Perry who is facing Greg Murphy in a run-off primary in NC-3 (the Walter Jones seat). Perry is a big anti-abortion pro forced breeding Republican pediatrician who had big-dollar support from the Susan B. Anthony List as well as Winning for Women Action Fund (WFW AF), a Super PAC focused on electing more conservative women to office.

With a woman like Joan Perry, who needs Virginia Foxx?

This Dude Opposes Abortion, Except for His Mistress

Rep. Tim Murphy

Tim Murphy, Republican of the 18th District of Pennsylvania, bragged on Facebook about how pro-life he is, especially with respect to the Republican bill now advancing to outlaw abortion after 20 weeks.

That Facebook post provoked his mistress ex-mistress to text him about hypocrisy, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette got hold of the text:

The mistress wrote, “And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options.”

Murphy's reply, via smart phone:

"I get what you say about my March for life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don't write any more. I will."

That's remarkable, the acknowledgement of his own calculated political mimicry: "I read them and winced."

This dude's not alone. How many Republican congress members have faked an enthusiasm for the most extreme right-to-life positions in order to fit in well with their base? Virginia Foxx, for one.

Close Budget-Reading Underway

Apparently, the new Republican state budget gives $50,000 each to two anti-abortion pregnancy centers in Winston-Salem and Yadkinville.

Just seen on Twitter: "State money to orgs that lie to women and were found to shame/try to convert non-Christians. Call the lawyers."

Nothing this bunch in Raleigh does any more surprises us. Outrages us, but doesn't surprise.

Uh-Oh. There's a Disturbance in the Farce*

*Hattip: EH & GN

Last Friday, Renee Ellmers fired back at her conservative critics in a blog post on her official U.S. House website. Ellmers has been in trouble with the cray-cray crowd over her opposition to the Ban All Abortions After 20 Weeks bill that was supposed to have been passed on Jan. 22, to coincide with the Washington March for Life. Ellmers' opposition seems to have killed the bill at the last minute, and conservatives are pissed. Like, extremely.

So Ellmers took them on: "I am appalled by the abhorrent and childish behaviors from some of the leaders of the outside groups." We suppose she was referring to Tami Fitzgerald, head of the NC Values Coalition, among other paint-strippers on the right like tea-blogger Brant Clifton, who has made biting Ellmers' ankles a personal project practically since she was first elected.

Near the end of her blog post, Ellmers returned to the Tami Fitzgeralds and the Brant Cliftons of this world: "It’s unimaginable to me why some outside parties would seek to target strong, pro-life conservative women and men who are serving in Congress."

Yeah. Go figure.

Renee Ellmers, Your Door Prize Is Almost Ready!

Jim Duncan

Hattip: Roll Call

PITTSBORO, N.C. -- Rep. Renee Ellmers, the North Carolina Republican who led the charge to pull the House GOP’s 20-week abortion ban bill this week, could have a bruising primary from the conservative wing of her party in 2016.

Jim Duncan, the chairman of the Chatham County Republican Party, is mulling a bid against Ellmers, according to multiple GOP sources in the Tar Heel State.

Duncan could not immediately be reached for comment. But GOP operatives say Duncan was looking at a primary challenge against Ellmers before this week. Operatives say Thursday’s events — in which a group of anti-abortion protesters in Washington, D.C., for the March for Life demonstrated outside her Longworth office — could push Duncan toward entering a primary race.

Ellmers already started the 2016 cycle with a couple cracks in her hold on the seat.

In 2014, local activists were angry over her support for giving undocumented immigrants earned legal work status, and she received a primary challenge. She defeated Frank Roche, a radio host whom Republicans called a weak and underfunded challenger, with 58 percent of the vote.

Republicans say Duncan, a retired businessman who ran a computer disaster recovery company, is a more serious candidate than Roche. Duncan has better ties to the conservative base in the district, both because of his role as chairman of the Chatham County Republican Party and as a co-founder of the Coalition for American Principles, a group that seeks to elect Republicans in the Raleigh-Durham area.

4th Circuit Court of Appeals: "Not So Fast There, North Carolina"

The otherwise very conservative 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond has ruled that the Republican majority in the North Carolina General Assembly cannot legislate anti-abortion license plates without also offering pro-choice license plates. The 4th Circuit panel ruled unanimously.

A lower U.S. district court had already ruled that the "Choose Life" license plates were an unconstitutional governmental promotion of a religious point of view.

Said the ACLU lawyer who argued the case, "As the court reiterated today, the government cannot create an avenue of expression for one side of a contentious political issue while denying an equal opportunity to citizens with the opposite view. North Carolina’s one-sided license plate scheme constituted blatant viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment."

Who's keeping the box score of how much crap passed by the NCGA has already been overturned by the courts?

Senator Chucklehead

NC Senator Dan Soucek professes himself "puzzled" that a federal judge would have a problem with what he, Soucek, and his fellow Republicans rammed through the General Assembly last year: NC license plates that take an anti-abortion position on possibly the most contentious political and religious issue of the last 40 years, without a similar opportunity for pro-choice citizens to similarly express their preferences.

Soucek sees no difference between these religious viewpoint plates and those that advocate NC State over, say, UNC Chapel Hill.

A legislator this smart clearly hasn't reached the nadir of his abilities.

The federal judge found "viewpoint discrimination" in the refusal of the General Assembly to allow for a different opinion. Did His Honor even question the provision in the law the gives the money raised from the "Choose Life" plates to anti-abortion religious orgs? Might he have a problem with the State becoming a cashier for a special religious interest?

On the same day that Soucek displays his remarkable puzzlement, the Fayetteville Observer published an editorial that might enlighten him. Might, but won't.

Not a Good Night for Republicans

With Kevin Hill's run-off win for the Wake County School Board last night, the brief but highly inflammatory regime of the Republican re-segregationists is over.

Voters in Ohio slammed shut the door on Republican anti-unionism. Republican Governor John Kasich's butt happened to be in the door at the time. Haven't checked elsewhere in the Buckeye State, but in Cincinnatti voters ousted four incumbent Republicans from Cincinnati City Council, choosing instead seven Democrats, a majority of African-Americans, and the first openly gay candidate.

Defying all expectations, Mississippi turned out last night to be resoundingly godless on the issue of abortion, rejecting the notorious "personhood" amendment to the state's constitution. (A pro-amendment preacher was heard to say, "Satan wins!") The anti-abortion crowd is undeterred, however, vowing that they will introduce new legislation that will establish that an egg is a chicken, an acorn is an oak, and a silk worm is a komono. (And incidentally, Mississippi, I apologize for all the assumptions I was making about you yesterday. A woman at last night's celebration for victorious Boone Town Council candidates Andy Ball, Lynne Mason, and Allen Scherlen, said to me -- long before Mississippi's results were known -- that the women in Mississippi weren't as stupid as their husbands thought they were.)

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx whomped his Republican opponent badly, and Democrats swept the four city council at-large seats. Just saw a tweet from Marcus Brandon that Democrats "cleaned house" in Greensboro, though Ed Cone takes a decidedly more measured tone about the outcome.

Over in Kentucky, where we have a lot of friends, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear handily defeated his Republican opponent, while Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway cruised to re-election over an anti-health reform opponent. Democrats also won state-wide races for treasurer, secretary of state, and state auditor.

Attempted voter suppression in Maine didn't fare well. Maine Republicans had eliminated the state’s longstanding practice of same-day voter registration on election day, but the voters said "whoa!" and defeated the law at the polls.

Just a sampling of yesterday's action, grabbed on the fly. Haven't yet found a sour apple in this particular barrel.

Icing on the cake: We have another Republican presidential bitch-slapping in store for tonight!

The New Dark Ages

From the Shelby Star, on prospects that the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly will want to make their major prejudices both known and felt as quickly as possible:

Rep. Justin Burr, R-Stanly, a [no gay marriage--yuck!] amendment supporter, said many Republican voters want action on social issues after seeing Democrats push through laws last year such as anti-school bullying law designed in part to protect gay and lesbian students and a school sex education law that teaches more about contraception.

By all means, fellows, let's unleash the bullies while keeping sexually active teenagers as much in the reproductive dark as possible!

ASU and an Ex-President

Faculty members at Appalachian State University, and some astute students too, were asking questions last week that are both pertinent and ... no surprise here ... unanswered by the ASU administration. As we have learned over many months now, the current leaders of that institution are not in the habit of stooping to answer questions from mere mortals.

1. The visit of ex-President Bill Clinton to the ASU campus last week went unacknowledged on the ASU website and unannounced on the general-alert e-mail system.

2. A large and offensive photographic display, featuring billboard-size blowups of aborted fetuses, attempting to equate abortion with genocide was announced (and some say promoted) through the ASU e-mail server to all subscribers.

3. When some asked administration officials about this puzzling disparity, the only official response we've seen said it would be inappropriate for the university to use the e-mail system to "promote a political candidate." Apparently, an announcement that an ex-President of the United States would be visiting campus would constitute promotion of a political candidate, while promotion of an anti-abortion display would not be a political statement. Well, okay then.

4. What do you call an institution that couldn't find its ass with both hands and a head-start?

5. Graduating editor of The Appalachian newspaper, Clair Baxter, perhaps feeling finally beyond the range of institutional recrimination, was courageous enough to ask some highly pertinent questions and, wisely, did not tarry for answers:

A club can sponsor a potentially offensive “Genocide Awareness” group to come fill the center of campus with billboards of unborn children while our faculty members are being asked to remove books and posters from their office walls for fear they may offend one student somewhere down the road.

Is there a double standard here?

Do we believe in free speech or not?

I think as a university we need to do some self-reflection.