Biden Staffer Suggests ‘Intolerant’ Views of Orthodox Catholics, Jews, Muslims Should Disqualify Them from Supreme Court

A staffer on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign on Monday suggested that Orthodox Catholics, Jews and Muslims should not be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court because of their “intolerant” beliefs.The comments came during a Twitter conversation between Biden campaign deputy data director Nikitha Rai and Brookings Institute senior fellow Shadi Hamid in which Rai attacked Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic beliefs. A search for Rai's Twitter account now yields a message saying, "This account doesn't exist."Hamid had responded to a tweet that said Barrett was a trustee at a Catholic school that opposed same-sex marriage as homosexual acts are "at odds with Scripture." Hamid replied, “Wait, why is this news? Isn’t this the standard position for any orthodox Catholic?” “Unfortunately yes,” Rai said. When Hamid pointed out that Orthodox Muslims and Jews generally hold the same view, Rai said, “True. I’d heavily prefer views like that not be elevated to SCOTUS, but unfortunately our current culture is relatively intolerant. It will be awhile before those types of beliefs are so taboo that they’re disqualifiers.”> Here’s a @JoeBiden staffer saying that orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Judaism should be made “taboo” and driven from the public sphere. Beneath all the talk of “interfaith” and “pluralism,” this is what they really believe. pic.twitter.com/PrN8S1qaLG> > -- Jeremy McLellan (@JeremyMcLellan) September 29, 2020The former vice president often touts his Catholic faith on the campaign trail, though critics note that some of Biden’s positions — such as his support for abortion and same-sex marriage — stand in opposition to Catholic teachings.Barrett’s faith has been widely scrutinized in the media as “extreme” and cult-like since the president announced he would nominate the 48-year-old Notre Dame professor to fill the vacancy on the Court left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Barrett, a former clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, has been attacked for her faith for years now, beginning with her 2017 confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee when Democrats questioned whether her Catholicism should disqualify her from being a judge.“Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that dogma and law are two different things, and I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said at the time.“The conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein added. “And that’s of concern.”

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White House Blocked C.D.C. Order to Keep Cruise Ships Docked

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FOX NEWS: Consistency in the time of day you work out may keep off the pounds, study finds

Consistency in the time of day you work out may keep off the pounds, study finds



The key to working out consistently and keeping off the pounds may be as simple as setting the same time of day for your workouts and sticking to the schedule, according to a recent study in the journal Obesity.

Doctor ‘snubbed for trying to tell Trumps to wear masks at debate'

Melania also took off mask once she sat down

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The family of one of the officers who killed Breonna Taylor started an online fundraiser so he can retire early and focus on his 'safety'

The family of Detective Myles Cosgrove is trying to raise $75,000 so that he can buy out the rest of his service time and retire early.

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Zimbabwe: Elephants die from 'bacterial disease'

More than 30 elephants were found lying on their stomachs, according to wildlife officials.

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Kuwait's emir Sheikh Sabah dies in US hospital at 91

Kuwait's emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, architect of the nation's modern foreign policy and mediator in some of the worst crises to grip the Gulf, died on Tuesday at the age of 91.

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New York battles COVID-19 hot spots as Washington wrangles over relief

New York City restaurants welcomed patrons back inside for the first time in months on Wednesday as authorities scrambled to contain COVID-19 outbreaks in some neighborhoods and negotiators in Washington wrangled over a coronavirus relief package. Coronavirus infection rates continued to climb in many of the nine ZIP codes in the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn where new clusters have emerged, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday. The city is deploying 400 police officers as well as other officials to improve compliance with social-distancing rules and a face-covering mandate in the affected neighborhoods.

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Trump's abrasive debate behavior may have worsened his relationship with female voters

During the debate, Trump spoke to Joe Biden and moderator Chris Wallace more than he spoke to the American people and that’s not going to cut it.

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Mitch McConnell ‘refusing to debate his election rival if there is a female moderator’

‘He continues to resist allowing women to host debates,’ said McConnell’s opponent in the Kentucky Senate race

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Breonna Taylor case grand juror: We weren’t given the option of indicting the two cops who shot her

Grand juror said AG Daniel Cameron misrepresented the deliberations. Cameron agreed to release grand jury recording

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People with irregular or unusually long menstrual cycles may have a higher risk of dying young

Menstruation hormone disruptions may be linked to risk of dying from cardiovascular illness, higher chance of other health problems, says a new study

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Top US infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci calls some of Fox News' primetime coverage of the coronavirus pandemic 'outlandish'

Fauci said that with some reporters, "anything that I would say they'll distort a bit," adding, "I'm not sure there's anything I can do about that."

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Voters react to first 2020 presidential debate

The latest CBS News Battleground Tracker polls show how Americans are responding to the first presidential debate. CBS News Elections and Surveys Director Anthony Salvanto joined CBSN's Elaine Quijano on "Red and Blue" to discuss the results.

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Up to 50,000 airline workers could lose their job tonight if Congress doesn't approve more aid

“Hundreds of thousands of airline workers are facing financial ruin through no fault of our own. How will we take care of our families without a paycheck and health insurance?” said one airline worker.

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Trump needed the debate to change a race he's losing; instead, he doubled down

Trump has tried for a year to find an attack that would throw Biden off stride. So far, none have done the job. At the debate, he just repeated them.

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McConnell shields Judge Amy Coney Barrett from questions about election outcome as she meets with senators

The Senate majority leader refused to answer if Ms Barrett should recuse herself from election-focused cases

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She escaped N.Korea, but 'raped' by South's spies

She ran away from her home in North Korea six years ago to find a safe haven in the South.

But it was after meeting a South Korean spy, she says, that another nightmare began.

Lee, who we're only identifying by her last name to protect her identity, was raped by the man -- according to the defector and prosecutors.

"I was mad at myself, I should have defended or fought with a knife, but I was just unable to fight back when they did that to me."

She may not be alone.

More than 72% of North Koreans resettled in the South are women and at least a quarter of them encountered sexual violence in the South, but less than 10% sought help, the gender equality ministry found in a 2017 survey.

In Lee's case, the suspected abuser called himself Dr Seong. She says he was a mysterious man, and like a father figure to help her start a new life.

Seong paid her for info. She had previously worked at a military institute in the north.

He also helped her reconnect with her brother, who was detained by secret police in North Korea.

But eventually Seong and a colleague, identified by the name Kim, began to sexually abuse her.

She says it lasted a year and a half and she was pressed to get two abortions and suffered severe distress.

"After all, they were the first people that I trusted, respected and relied upon here in the South."

Military prosecutors this month indicted the two men, a lieutenant colonel and a master sergeant with charges of sexual assault and rape.

But both men have denied rape, according to the chief military prosecutor. They are said to say it was consensual.

Lee's lawyer, Jeon Su-mi, blames the system for enabling agents to take advantage of vulnerable defectors.

"The women can't say no, they have to obey and have to go out at midnight if they are requested to. The South Korean surveillance system on North Korean defectors has absolute power like God, even if they are just government employees here."

Defectors have complained recently that the government of President Moon Jae-in, who has made improving ties with North Korea a priority, is failing to provide refuge by ignoring rights, stifling political activity and deporting some escapees.

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Man charged in shooting of 2 Los Angeles County deputies

Prosecutors charged a 36-year-old man Wednesday with a brazen ambush of two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies earlier this month, an apparently unprovoked shooting as they sat in a squad car outside a rail station. The deputies suffered head wounds in the Sept. 12 attack and have since been released from the hospital. Sheriff Alex Villanueva said their recoveries will be a long process and include further reconstructive surgeries.

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Florida martial arts school billed taxpayers over $350,000 for ‘ghost’ kids, state says

Funded by public grants, the United Martial Arts Academy in Homestead offered an array of self-defense training, including the “Tiny Tigers” and “Little Dragon” courses for kids.

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Sonic boom heard in Paris and suburbs caused by fighter jet breaking sound barrier

A loud blast heard throughout Paris on Wednesday briefly caused panic as edgy residents feared a bombing five days after a terrorist attack outside the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The noise was caused by a sonic boom as a military jet broke the speed of sound, police said. Pierre Duclos, who was in a café around the corner from the site of the attack on Friday when the explosion-like noise was heard, said: “Everyone looked at each other and a few people got up and went outside. For a while, we thought another terrorist attack was coming and we were all shocked. Some people asked the café owner to close and lock the door. I was here on Friday and frankly I was really worried again today.

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A creepy presidential debate ad shows a deepfake of Putin telling Americans they're ruining their own democracy

In an ad campaign from non-profit RepresentUs, deepfakes of Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin warn Americans that they're ruining their own democracy.

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'Women in military, bad idea': Mike Pence’s most controversial comments about women

Mr Pence has a long history of making eyebrow-raising comments about women

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What you need to know about Tuesday's presidential debate

Biden hopes to convince Americans that the country needs a new president before it can recover from this year’s calamities. Trump, meanwhile, will try to take the fight to his opponent and stage yet another political comeback.

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Fighting rages in Nagorno-Karabakh as Erdogan calls for Armenia to end 'occupation'

Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has told Armenia to end its "occupation" of the flashpoint region of Nagorno-Karabakh amid a second day of fighting that claimed 21 more lives. Armenian forces have been in fierce clashes with Azerbaijan's troops in the region since Sunday, in the most severe flare-up of violence there for decades. On Monday, Mr Erdogan said the time has come to end the long-running crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, which broke away from Azerbaijan, a Turkish ally, in the 1990s after a bloody separatist war. "The time has come for the crisis in the region that started with the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh to be put to an end," Mr Erdogan said. "Once Armenia immediately leaves the territory it is occupying, the region will return to peace and harmony." Meanwhile, the president of Armenia, Armen Sarkissian, claimed that Ankara had provided F-16 fighter jets to support its ally. There were competing claims about fighting on the ground from both sides as forces from the two ex-Soviet neighbours pounded each other with rockets and artillery in the fiercest explosion of the conflict in more than a quarter of a century. In Nagorno-Karabakh said residents had taken cover in bomb shelters and constant shelling could be heard. “We haven’t seen anything like this since the ceasefire to the war in the 1990s," said Olesya Vartanyan, senior analyst for the South Caucasus region at Crisis Group, told Reuters. "The fighting is taking place along all sections of the front line.” Armenian officials said that another 15 of their soldiers had died, on top of 16 killed when hostilities first broke on Sunday. They added that "fights of various intensity” were “raging on", and that four Azerbaijani helicopters and 36 Azerbaijani tanks and APCs had been destroyed. Azerbaijan said that only one helicopter had been downed and that Armenian air defence systems had been heavily bombed. Both sides also accused each other of sending mercenaries who had fought in Syria into the conflict. Armenia's ambassador to Russia claimed that Turkey had sent 4,000 Syrian fighters that it had previously sponsored to fight against Syria's president Bashar-al Assad. Meanwhile, an Azerbaijani military spokesman, Colonel Vagif Dargahli, said that "mercenaries of Armenian origin from Syria" had been killed during the fighting. Neither Turkey nor Azerbaijan have so far offered any evidence to support their claims about the hired guns, although Turkey is widely believed to have sent Syrian mercenaries to back its allies in the Turkish-supported government in Libya. The clashes have led to fears that the conflict - effectively "frozen" for nearly 30 years - could now return to the full-blown hostilities of the 1990s, when 30,000 lives were lost. Although Nagorno-Karabakh has been under effective Armenian control since then, the territory is still regarded internationally as part of Azerbaijan, which wants to reclaim it.

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Man dies after falling 100 feet from Oregon cliff while posing for photo in tree

Branch brake caused 43-year-old to plummet into ocean

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Veteran GOP strategist predicts Trump's debate performance will suffer thanks to tax bombshell

GOP political consultant Mike Murphy predicts President Trump will be distracted at tonight's debate as a result of reports on his taxes.

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Body camera footage shows Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale being tackled by police outside his Florida home

Candice Parscale called 911 on Sunday, saying her husband had loaded a firearm and threatened to hurt himself, according to a police report.

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Senate advances bill to fund government into December

A bill to fund the federal government cleared a key Senate procedural hurdle Tuesday as lawmakers sought to accomplish the bare minimum before they depart Washington to campaign — preventing a shutdown when the new fiscal year begins. A final vote on Wednesday would send the stopgap spending bill to President Donald Trump in time for his signature before the new budget year starts Thursday. The funding measure advanced while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made a last-ditch effort to strike an agreement on a separate COVID-19 rescue bill that has eluded them for weeks.

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Details of how the grand jury didn't indict any officers for Breonna Taylor's death are being made public after a juror broke ranks and attacked the Kentucky AG

The juror accused AG Daniel Cameron of misrepresenting proceedings, and said they were given no option to indict over Breonna Taylor's death.

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As American, United, other airlines roll out passenger testing for COVID-19, here's what you need to know

Airlines offer testing for the coronavirus, a move that could boost consumer confidence in safe flying.

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Auschwitz director offers to serve time in place of 13-year-old Nigerian sentenced to 10 years for blasphemy

The director of the Auschwitz Memorial in Poland has offered to serve time for a Nigerian child who was convicted of blasphemy and ordered to spend ten years in prison by a Sharia court . In an open letter, Piotr Cywinski asked Nigeria’s President to intervene and pardon 13-year-old Omar Farouq for the conviction. “As the director of the Auschwitz memorial, which commemorates the victims and preserves the remains of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps, where children were imprisoned and murdered, I cannot remain indifferent to this disgraceful sentence for humanity,” he wrote. Omar Farouq was arrested earlier this year by religious police in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city, after he had a ‘blasphemous’ conversation with an older man. His conviction by a religious court has provoked condemnation by the United Nations and global human rights groups. Mr Cywinski told The Telegraph that he felt he had to act when he heard about Omar. “When I heard about this story last week, I remembered that [Nigeria’s] President Buhari visited Auschwitz in 2018. So I thought that maybe a voice coming from this difficult place would have some effect on him... I have kids that age. "There are some times we have to stop our own silence and try to do something. It’s not enough to just like something on Facebook or retweet it.” Mr Cywinski added that since he sent the letter last week, no one from the government had responded yet. Kola Alapinni, Omar’s lawyer, told The Telegraph that the adolescent has been held in a prison for adults and not been allowed to see any legal representation. If Omar had been older, Mr Alapinni says, he would have been sentenced to death. At a federal level, Nigeria is a secular state. But 12 of the country’s northern Muslim-dominated states have a Sharia system running in parallel to the secular courts. These courts can only try Muslims and regularly serve out medieval-style punishments. Mr Alapinni, a graduate of the University of Essex and a secularist campaigner, says he will keep fighting Omar’s corner. “Section 10 of the constitution says Nigeria is a secular state. We are not Iran; we are no Saudi Arabia; we are not the Vatican. We are a multi-religious state with freedom of thought, expression and religion enshrined in the constitution,” he says. “This should not be happening.”

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India’s confirmed coronavirus tally reaches 6 million cases

India’s confirmed coronavirus tally reached 6 million on Monday, keeping the country second to the United States in number of reported cases. The Health Ministry reported 82,170 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, driving the overall total to 6,074,703. New infections in India are currently being reported faster than anywhere else in the world.

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Biden can beat (and infuriate) Trump by being the adult on the presidential debate stage

Joe Biden’s campaign is based around being calm, rational and a healer. He shouldn't try to call more names or be more pugnacious than Donald Trump.

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California governor signs law requiring trans inmates to be housed by gender identity

The law requires inmates to be asked how they identify, then they must be housed accordingly. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law on Saturday that will require California prisons to house transgender inmates according to their gender identity. The law requires officers to privately ask inmates if they identify as transgender, nonbinary or intersex.

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How to watch the presidential debate live on Yahoo

Live on Yahoo: Here's how to watch the presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

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Nigeria's Boko Haram crisis: 'Bomb on donkey' used to ambush Borno governor

Militants from an Islamic State-linked group strapped the animal with explosives in Borno state.

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The Democrats’ Frivolous Three-Pronged Attack on Judge Barrett

Doing some commentary over the weekend about President Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, I was struck by not just the emptiness but the outright deceptiveness of the three main Democratic lines of attack against her. These are early days, so perhaps Barrett’s opposition will find something of substance that gains some traction. For now, the main salvos against her are frivolous:(1) President Trump has a litmus test for nominees, who must take predetermined positions that support his policy agenda; (2) Relatedly, Judge Barrett will “destroy” the Affordable Care Act, consideration of which comes up on the Supreme Court’s oral-argument docket the week after Election Day; and (3) Barrett, a devout Catholic, is on a crusade to overturn Roe v. Wade (1973).I will take these in order.*    *    *1\. Litmus TestThere is no evidence that President Trump has imposed a litmus test on judges whom he would nominate to the Supreme Court. That Democrats say there is a litmus test, tirelessly, on every media platform available to them, is not proof of anything other than a campaign to drive a fact-free political narrative into the public’s consciousness. Specifically, there is no evidence that Judge Barrett, in order to be nominated, had to agree to take the Trump administration’s position of staunch opposition to Obamacare and abortion. As I noted on the Corner earlier today, it is not unusual for Trump-appointed judges to rule against the administration.Nor is there any indication that Judge Barrett would be amenable to a litmus test. Consistent with her personal character, scholarship, and jurisprudence, as well as the example of her mentor, Justice Scalia, Barrett emphatically rejects the premise that it is the judge’s role to impose policy preferences — whether the judge’s or anyone else’s — on the nation. She has demonstrated that she believes the judge’s task is to decide issues that arise in litigation based on the applicable law as it was understood at the time of its adoption, guided by the law’s text and judicial precedent. If Barrett is confirmed, she will confine herself, as she has done on the Seventh Circuit, to resolving the cases that come before her in such a manner. That is a hard enough job to do faithfully without looking for dragons to slay.2\. Eradicating ObamacareThe notion that Judge Barrett, or for that matter the other Trump appointees to the Supreme Court, are on the warpath against the Affordable Care Act is laughable. The ACA issue is being contorted into a convenient political talking point in the stretch-run of a presidential campaign because President Trump, foolishly and reportedly against the advice of Attorney General Barr, has supported a weak legal challenge to the law. The case is California v. Texas, and the justices are scheduled to hear arguments about it on November 10.In my view, this is a rare case of conservative judicial activism, which itself is very unconservative. That is, Texas federal district judge Reed O’Connor, who is a fine judge, erred in this case by doing what conservatives properly fault liberal judges for doing: He imposed a policy preference, rather than deciding the case in accordance with the law and leaving policymaking to Congress.In 2017, with Republicans controlling the House and Senate and with President Trump’s support, Congress zeroed out the penalty for non-compliance with the Obamacare individual mandate. Notwithstanding scores of proposals to “repeal and replace” the ACA, Congress did not do so; lawmakers left the remainder of the complex legislative scheme in place.Even so, 18 attorneys general from red states, aping the destructive practice of their blue state counterparts, filed a lawsuit theorizing that Congress had implicitly done what it had actually declined to do, namely, repeal the ACA. Essentially, the red-state AGs (a) pointed out that the Supreme Court (thanks to the legerdemain of Chief Justice Roberts) had upheld the ACA as a tax in the 2012 case of National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius (NFIB); (b) asserted that this rationale for upholding the ACA is no longer valid because Congress’s 2017 zeroing out of the penalty (in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) means the mandate cannot be a tax, there being no tax without a penalty; and (c) therefore argued that, since the mandate was so central to the ACA, the entire ACA must fall. For standing purposes, the 18 states were joined by two individuals alleging concrete harm, and were supported by the Trump Justice Department (under then-attorney general Jeff Sessions).In late 2018, Judge O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, agreed with the Republican AGs that the mandate could no longer be construed as an exercise of Congress’s taxing power. Thus, he reasoned, since the tax construction was what saved the ACA from constitutional infirmity in NFIB, and since that construction is no longer justifiable after the 2017 legislation, the mandate is perforce unconstitutional. Moreover, because the mandate is inextricably tied to key components of Obamacare (including coverage of people with preexisting conditions), O’Connor deduced that it is not severable from the rest of the ACA, meaning the ACA is unconstitutional in toto.Subsequently, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed Judge O’Connor’s decision that the mandate is unconstitutional. But the appellate court did not uphold O’Connor’s inseverability finding, reasoning that the issue called for a more “granular” analysis. It therefore remanded the case to O’Connor for a more exacting inquiry. California — leading a coalition of 19 states plus the District of Columbia that support the ACA — pressed for an immediate Supreme Court review, arguing that the implications for public health care were too important to abide further doubt and delay. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.It takes more effort to provide that description of the litigation than to tackle the bottom line. To my mind, the only question about the Supreme Court’s resolution of California v. Texas is whether a single justice will vote to hold the whole of the ACA unconstitutional. I doubt it.Indeed, I am skeptical that a majority of the Court will even agree with Judge O’Connor and the Fifth Circuit that the mere zeroing out of a tax is the functional equivalent of repealing it, such that the mandate, technically, is no longer a tax. Regardless, though, the Court is not going to hold that the mandate is inseverable from the rest of Obamacare. You can take that to the bank.We can be confident that there are at least five, and probably six, solid votes for severability. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh emphatically endorsed the presumption in favor of severability just last term (here and here). Justice Alito agreed with them, as did the three liberal justices remaining on the Court after Justice Ginsburg’s death — Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan — who will surely vote to preserve as much of the ACA as possible. Furthermore, I suspect Justices Thomas and Gorsuch will side with this majority — and if they don’t, their position is apt to be even more deferential to Congress. They have each suggested that the Court get out of the business of analyzing severability and simply refuse to uphold any portions of a statute found to be invalid, leaving the rest up to lawmakers. In addition, they would be very stingy about who has standing to challenge statutes based on alleged harms.Contrary to the claim that there is a Trump litmus test that requires killing Obamacare, there is actually no reason to assume that the Trump appointees already on the Supreme Court (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) are going to vote to invalidate the ACA. The best bet on what a Justice Barrett would do is that she would either (a) agree to follow the presumption in favor of severability that the Court has recently reaffirmed; or (b) question whether the plaintiffs challenging the ACA have standing and whether the Court should do any severability analysis relating to parts of the ACA that are not properly before the Court.Of course, I could be wrong. Judge Barrett is very smart, and she could have an analysis that none of us Court-watchers have thought of. Still, there is no basis to believe that she is on a mission to eradicate the ACA. This is an unfounded political talking point.Politically speaking, President Trump shot himself in the foot by ordering the Justice Department to support the red-state lawsuit. It has little or no chance of prevailing, and it makes him vulnerable to the false charge that he favors eliminating coverage for pre-existing conditions at a time when COVID-19 and high unemployment have intensified voter concerns about access to health insurance. Naturally, since one of the Democrats’ main campaign themes is that Trump is bent on eliminating Obamacare, they are telling people that getting Judge Barrett on the Court is part of that plan.To the contrary, Barrett does not believe it is the federal judiciary’s role to make health-care policy. There is scant reason to presume that she would invalidate the ACA, and every reason to suspect she’d point out that doing so is up to Congress, which could have repealed it but opted not to.3\. Overruling Roe v. WadeNo Supreme Court appointment by a Republican president would be complete without the Left’s obligatory hysteria about the purportedly imminent demise of Roe v. Wade, that indefensible exercise in judicial lawlessness whose atrocious consequences include the deaths of millions of unborn children. Once again, it’s a political narrative with little foothold in the real world.As I pointed out when then-judge Kavanaugh was nominated, the Roe argument is ill-founded. For over a quarter-century, we have been under the sway not of Roe but of Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). Casey gutted Roe’s reasoning, but left the judicially manufactured right to abortion intact. It also dramatically altered the arc of abortion litigation by acknowledging the interest of states in protecting public health and unborn life. Consequently, the legal fights over abortion now tend to center on regulation — i.e., does a regulation of abortion that a state enacts further the state’s legitimate interests, and does it so interfere with the availability of abortion that the woman’s right of access to the procedure is rendered illusory? The core “right” posited by Roe is not threatened by such challenges.If a state were to try to ban abortion, that would immediately prompt a federal lawsuit challenging the law. The federal district court, being bound to apply Roe regardless of the judge’s own moral or legal views on the subject, would instantly invalidate the state provision (contrary to liberal caricature, conservative judges do not refuse to apply binding precedent, regardless of their personal feelings about it). If there were an appeal, the relevant federal appellate court would uphold Roe, and the Supreme Court would almost certainly decline to review the case. This is not a sure thing, but I suspect it is close to sure, much as I personally wish it were not.On the other hand, in the more likely event that a state enacted a regulation that made abortion access more difficult, there would quickly be a federal lawsuit challenging the provision under Casey, not Roe. The Supreme Court decided such a case this past term, prioritizing access to abortion over state public-health regulation. Even if one assumed that a Justice Barrett would look sympathetically on state regulation of abortion, as Justice Scalia did, that would not eradicate the Roe abortion right.Finally, let’s explore what the Left never mentions. Let’s assume, for argument’s sake and against all indicia to the contrary, the unlikely event that the Supreme Court went out of its way to overturn Roe, after nearly half a century and despite its recent emphasis on the supposed centrality of stare decisis (the doctrine of adhering to precedent). Doing so would not criminalize, much less end, abortion in the United States.As Justice Scalia repeatedly explained, “The States may, if they wish, permit abortion on demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so.” If Roe were overturned, the matter would be returned to the states, where it should have been in the first place — and would have been had the justices not presumptuously intervened in 1973, to the great detriment of the Court’s reputation as a non-political judicial institution and of the judicial-confirmation process.If Roe were overruled, some very left-leaning states, such as New York and California, would enact a regime of abortion-on-demand. Some very conservative states, such as Alabama and Mississippi, would enact significant limitations on abortion or perhaps even ban it outright. But access to abortion, while more limited in some places, would not cease to exist. Would the increased burden seem intolerable to pro-abortion activists? Of course it would. Just as for those of us on the other side, who believe that abortion is the taking of innocent human life, the continued availability of abortion would seem intolerable. That is how democracy in a federalist republic is supposed to work.*    *    *There is no Trump litmus test for Supreme Court appointees. The Court is not poised to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, with or without Judge Barrett. Roe survived 30 years of searing dissents by Justice Scalia; it will likely survive a Justice Amy Coney Barrett. And regrettably, abortion will survive no matter what happens.

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Lost wallet used as bait to lure alleged meth dealer into an arrest, Florida cops say

The suspect showed up to the meeting spot with methamphetamine and $3,000 on his person.

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Amnesty International to halt India operations

The human rights watchdog tells the BBC that the move comes due to reprisal from the government.

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Fox News host floats bonkers conspiracy theory that Joe Biden will use listening devices at debate

“The Trump team asked to inspect the ears of each debater for electronic devices or transmitters,” Bill Hemmer says

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Why Trump voters just don't care about his taxes

The revelation, per Sunday's New York Times report, that President Trump paid little to no federal income tax in recent years will redirect the conversation at Tuesday night's general election debate. But will it redirect any meaningful number of votes?I suspect not, not even among the president's most reluctant supporters.In broad strokes, there are two reasons to vote for Trump in 2020: liking who he is or liking what (you think) he'll do. This is an artificial separation of two rationales that often overlap, but let's call them the personality voter and the transactional voter.The personality voter likes how crude and cunning Trump is. She proudly brands herself "a deplorable" in reference to Hillary Clinton's infamous 2016 remark. She thinks it's funny when Trump riles his enemies, who, not coincidentally, are her enemies, too. This strain of Trump support tends to have a strong populist flavor, where supporting Trump gives "a collective middle finger" to political and cultural elites this voter despises and whom she believes despise her in turn.For the personality voter, Trump's ability to avoid paying income taxes is untroubling. It's far from the first violation of establishment norms she has vicariously enjoyed through her candidate. If anything, she agrees, as he said at a 2016 debate with Clinton, that successful tax avoidance "makes [him] smart." The populist hypocrisy Trump's critics see here won't register.Personality isn't necessarily relevant for the transactional voter, our second type. In some cases, Trump's personality helps him deliver on his side of the transaction. If the thing a voter wants from Trump is to own the libs, for example, his personality is an asset. But if the thing desired involves a policy or program, Trump's personality might be immaterial or actually detrimental. Many purely transactional voters would willingly — maybe far more willingly — vote for any candidate who would do what they want Trump to do. Their vote isn't for Trump qua Trump but for Trump qua the candidate they think is most likely to provide what they want."I voted for the Supreme Court. I didn't want to vote for Trump," an archetypal transactional Trump voter named Jim George told The Washington Post in 2017. "With Trump, you just hold your nose."A transactional Trump voter in 2020 is already holding his nose too firmly to catch a whiff of these tax returns. If he's decided everything Trump has said and done over the past four years does not tip the scales against whatever good he believes will come from re-electing the president, the tax story won't do it, either. It definitely won't turn him into a Joe Biden voter, and I'm skeptical that it could even keep him home, because Trump's personal life is irrelevant to his provision of whatever benefit(s) is anticipated.The transactional voter is already under contract. He's had ample time to inspect Trump, and he didn't find anything that made him want to back out of the deal.There is one scenario in which that arrangement might fall through, and that's if Trump's personal financial circumstances rendered him unable to hold up his end of the imagined bargain. But how would that happen? Or rather, how would the transactional voter become convinced it had happened were he satisfied with Trump's performance to date?The Times reported Trump has hundreds of millions of dollars in debt for which he is personally liable coming due over the next four years, possibly including around $100 million owed to the IRS should the agency decide a large tax rebate was improperly obtained. These are staggering numbers for us little people to contemplate, but if he holds onto the presidency, Trump is expected simply to obtain extensions on his loans and use his office however he can to mitigate his personal financial catastrophe. It would be an enormous debacle, very possibly leading to another impeachment or special counsel investigation and distracting the president from whatever his part of the transaction is supposed to be.Well, so what? Trump's first four years have had an enormous debacle every week, and an impeachment and special counsel investigation, too. Trump accomplished relatively little of his policy promises, certainly none of the headlines. The wall is not built; the swamp is not drained; not a single one of the "endless wars" is ended; the American steel industry did not come roaring back to life. Trump's most significant fulfilled promise — nominating conservative justices to the Supreme Court — was the one over which he arguably had the least influence: He could not know whether or when there would be a vacancy, and he was undoubtedly responsible for few, if any, of the names on his shortlist.If this level of distraction and failure is acceptable to the transactional voter, a second-term Trump fighting foreclosure and the IRS is too.More stories from theweek.com 'Sully' Sullenberger savages Trump's 'lethal lies and incompetence' in new Lincoln Project ad Disney will lay off 28,000 theme park employees after months of coronavirus furloughs Trump reportedly made tens of millions in the Great Recession by partnering with multilevel marketing companies

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'Utter devastation': Three dead as multiple wildfires in California explode in size

"This was pretty devastating," one official said. "Just literally hundreds and hundreds of homes devastated with nothing standing."

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Justice Ginsburg buried at Arlington in private ceremony

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was buried Tuesday in a private ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, laid to rest beside her husband and near some of her former colleagues on the court. Washington last week honored the 87-year-old Ginsburg, who died Sept. 18, with two days where the public could view her casket at the top of the Supreme Court's steps and pay their respects. On Friday, the women's rights trailblazer and second woman to join the high court lay in state at the U.S. Capitol, the first woman to do so.

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Opinion: Trump's reality distortion machine is in overdrive for his debate with Biden

The Trump team, like the president himself, is working aggressively to make voters disbelieve what they see and hear from Joe Biden at the first debate.

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Complex interplay among cells guides them to where they need to go

Many cells in our bodies are on the move and somehow seem to "know" where to go. But how do they learn the location of their destination? This question is key to understanding phenomena such as the renewal of cells in our body, the migration of cancer cells, and especially how wounds heal.

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Three Florida police officers fall ill after 'potential poisoning' on night out

Investigators await test results to show whether group was drugged

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Heating in vaping device as cause for lung injury, study shows

Early results of an experimental vaping study have shown significant lung injury from e-cigarette devices with nickel-chromium alloy heating elements.

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Pandemic sets off future wave of worsening mental health issues

Long after a COVID-19 vaccination is developed and years after the coronavirus death toll is tallied, the impact on mental health will linger, continuing to inflict damage if not addressed, according to new research.

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Strong activation of anti-bacterial T cells linked to severe COVID-19

A type of anti-bacterial T cells, so-called MAIT cells, are strongly activated in people with moderate to severe COVID-19 disease, according to a new study.

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Study links rising stress, depression in U.S. to pandemic-related losses, media consumption

Experiencing multiple stressors triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic -- such as unemployment -- and COVID-19-related media consumption are directly linked to rising acute stress and depressive symptoms across the United States, according to a new study.

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FOX NEWS: Coronavirus death toll hits 1M worldwide

Coronavirus death toll hits 1M worldwide



The coronavirus was first deemed a global pandemic in March.

FOX NEWS: New coronavirus test to reduce wait times

New coronavirus test to reduce wait times



President Trump touts new testing progress as schools monitor COVID-19 cases; Jonathan Serrie reports.

Trump without providing evidence says reports he paid little tax and has dire finances are ‘totally fake’

President alleged to have lost millions over two decades as TV star

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Positive COVID-19 test rates top 25% in some U.S. Midwest states

The positivity rate has risen to 26% in South Dakota, up from 17% the previous week, according to the analysis using testing data from The COVID Tracking Project. The World Health Organization considers rates above 5% concerning because it suggests there are more cases in the community that have not yet been uncovered. Several states such as New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine have positive test rates of less than 1%.

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