After a grueling nine months as Speaker of the US House of Representatives, attempting to herd the mangy strays of the GOP caucus, on September 3, 2023, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) lost the job he had coveted all his adult life, as a motion to vacate passed by 216-210, booting him from the Speakership. Eight MAGA Republican radicals joined Democrats to remove McCarthy from his lofty perch, the first time ever that a sitting Speaker has been fired.
On 6 April 2023, the lower chamber of the Tennessee State House took an unprecedented step – voting on the expulsion of three members who had violated floor protocols by joining an anti-gun demonstration during a lag in official proceedings. State representatives Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson briefly took a bullhorn to the well of the House to express solidarity and support for hundreds of students and others who had come to protest lax gun laws in the Volunteer State, in the wake of a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville the week before, that had left six dead, including three nine-year-olds.
It’s ironic that Britain’s longest-reigning monarch should be succeeded by its shortest-serving Prime Minister, but that’s just what happened when Liz Truss stepped down from office after only 45 days in power. The fact that they both had the same first name is just icing on the cosmic cake in this bizarre juxtaposition. Truss stepped into the breach in the Conservative Party when embattled PM Boris Johnson resigned in the wake of scandal on July 7, but it took two months to wrap up those loose ends before she was officially appointed by Queen Elizabeth II on September 6. Now, just six weeks later, she’s gone.
If anyone had told me two decades ago that I would be admiring, let alone praising, someone with the last name of “Cheney”, I’d have said they were nuts. But that’s just the sort of uncomfortable position many progressives find themselves in these days, when contemplating the recent performance of Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of the former Vice President, vis-a-vis the actions of Donald Trump and the bastardization of the GOP.
It didn’t quite make it to fifty, but for almost half a century legal abortion has been the law of the land here in the US. No more.
On June 24, 2022, the gavel fell on Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision guaranteeing reproductive rights, overturned 5-4 by the current US Supreme Court. The test case which led to Roe’s reversal was Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which sought to prevent a Mississippi state law virtually eliminating abortion after 15 weeks from conception. That law was upheld 6-3, but Chief Justice John Roberts joined the progressive minority on the Court when Roe itself became the target of his conservative colleagues.
Imagine it: more than 24 hours cooped up inside a cramped metal box, with subfreezing temperatures just a thin glass wall away. No food, water, medicine or bathroom. Power, heat and connectivity only as long as the fuel and cellphone power hold out. Children, pets, seniors, special needs individuals – no one is spared. That was the situation confronting hundreds of motorists caught in a massive traffic snarl on Interstate 95, the primary north/south artery up the East Coast, on Monday, January 3rd.
