Speaking of abortion, I have no patience with the pseudo-libertarian argument that its legality is a state issue.  Bullshit on that.  The implication there is that women are property and I think a similar theme is at work with domestic violence laws and enforcement.  I agree that so-called states rights is nothing but a smokescreen for wanting to deprive people who are not in the favored group of ALL rights.

If the feds are determined to not have authority to investigate attempted fucking murder, would they have any law enforcement power at all?

Domestic, I mean.  Exploding Pakistanis in the name and law of justice, we’ll never lose that.

#2

The court ruling would be about jurisdiction. They wouldn’t say feds can’t prosecute murder, they would say that the feds couldn’t prosecute murder because in this case because it only involved one state and the attempted murder didn’t actually take place through the mail so technically it is not a federal offense. The problem is that local governments in many areas are more prone to cultural biases regarding race, gender, etc so not having federal laws and oversight of state activity puts vulnerable populations in a state at greater risk.

@#3

I’d think that poisoning someone’s letters could be called “taking place through the mail”, although it is a borderline case. After all, the letters weren’t in the posession of the Postal Service when they were poisoned.

The appeal, though, isn’t actually about “can the feds act here?” It’s about “can I challenge the fed’s power to act here?”. The lower court said only the state could challenge the Fed Gov’s ability to act, and so she wasn’t able to challenge on 10th amendment grounds.

As I said above, I guess the Feds were within their jurisdiction because of the mail angle, so her 10th Amendment arguement wouldn’t work, but the lower court should’ve at least heard the arguement.

Ok comment #2 was pretty full of fail due mostly to lack of reading comprehension on my part. I just meant to point out that the defense’s argument is not that murder shouldn’t be against federal law, but that this particular murder is not under federal jurisdiction. The argument appears to be pretty dumb.

Regardless, this case shows why the federal VAWA laws are necessary. If this woman’s attempted murder had not involved the post, she would have had no recourse.

The Tenth Amendment and state’s rights are an ass. Anybody who argues from them is usually trying to maintain a bad status quo and/or policy, whether it be Jim Crow or failure to effectively protect abortion rights or prevent violence against women or minorities. Sometimes I wonder if it might have been better of Hamilton’s argument that the states should be remade into administrative districts prevailed.

I just meant to point out that the defense’s argument is not that murder shouldn’t be against federal law, but that this particular murder is not under federal jurisdiction.

The defense wanted the case under the purview of local authorities, who apparently saw it as just a slapfight between two silly girls, ‘cause you know chicks are always blowing things out of proportion with their gossip and hormones and brassieres and shit, amirite, fellas?

Seriously—attempted murder is still a crime even if your attempt was feeble and failed miserably.  I guess the cops were too busy laughing and making cat noises to do their jobs.

The mail argument is pretty much a slam-dunk. Doesn’t matter how local the things are you do to the mail, mail carriers or post office property, there’s plenty of case law for federal jurisdiction. It’s the chemical-warfare bit that’s the problem, and it is a problem. Should anyone using certain chemicals in nasty ways be subject to federal prosecution (which is a lot harder on defendants than local)? The law was pretty clearly intended to apply to things that might reasonably be called terrorism or warfare, not local feuds. And there’s a long history of laws originally written to address big conspiracies (PATRIOT Act, anyone?) against whatever small fry someone doesn’t like.

But then Amanda’s point is spot on: what do you do when local police essentially say “don’t bother us until you get killed”? There has to be some kind of federal jurisdiction that gets invoked when the local law fails.

And the Tenther challenge to extended federal jurisdiction is particularly pernicious, because it pretty much arrogates to the defense the right to decide when some crime merits federal notice. As long as the crime is local enough (you buy your fuel oil and fertilizer locally), or directed at people who can be dismissed as hysterical, or not actually successful (the underwear bomber’s lawyers would like this idea) then somehow federal jurisdiction is forbidden. Note, by the way, that the whole criminal side of the Civil Rights Act would go away under this theory because, well, no one could prove the violence was racially motivated, so no federal beef.

Of course, the gymnastics that a more-liberal court went through to gut the Violence Against Women Act doesn’t give you a good feeling about any of this…

So, is it a good sign of how far women have come in America when an American woman feels entitled to behave as badly toward a spouse/ex as many men (unfortunately) do?...

...spouse/ex/rival/competitor…

MikeEss,

Ah, but spouse/ex and rival/competetor are two very different categories.  In fact, I would say the fact that she felt it necessary to blame the rival and not the person who did the cheating to be very much indicative of how far we haven’t come.  Now, if she had gone after them BOTH that would be one thing.  But no, she (as far as I can tell) directed her ire only towards the person that - as this very case and post make clear - was more vulnerable via being deemed less worthy by society.

jennygadget, it just struck me as a great example of bullying, with a masculine vibe.

I knew several bullies (boys) in school who were not the stereotypical aggressively masculine confrontational type, but were snide, secretive manipulators who would do stuff behind your back, and would hang on to grudges.  These were usually “rich kids”, whose parents had enough influence to ensure their offspring would never really be held accountable for anything they did.  (Bush Jr. types)

OTOH, I suppose this could also fit the mold of “mean girls” just taken up several notches…

Or, I might be completely off base…

MikEss at 9: The accused wasn’t behaving badly towards her spouse for cheating, she was behaving with apparently deadly force towards the friend/lover. As far as we know, the spouse wasn’t subject to any problems and the accused might have viewed him as a “victim” of her victim. This isn’t really a sign of progress.

Mike—the absolute meanest bullies in my high school were the rich boys who acted like “mean girls.”

In this case, it looks like the local police may have ignored the case because they dismissed the behavior as catty rather than attempted murder.

Also what Lee said.

I wonder if Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts are disappointed by the US Mail aspect.  Otherwise they might really be able to sink their fangs into a good 10th Amendment case.

Do some nice reichwing judicial activism while proclaiming themselves Strict Constitutional Originalists…

Cases like this point to a need for there to be another layer beyond just the local when it comes to fighting violence against women.  It’s so routinely accepted in some communities that you pretty much have to have federal legislation to help women out.

GREAT point.  That’s exactly why Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1993—in fact, with a lot of support from the states.  It’s absolutely outrageous that the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Morrison that Congress couldn’t directly regulate violence against women because, unlike loan sharking or personal marijuana growth, it does not affect interstate commerce and therefore isn’t covered by the Commerce Clause.  (I.e., women as a class have less impact on interstate commerce than weed.)  If the Court hadn’t made that decision, the feds wouldn’t have to use these other laws to get at abusers.

Here’s another example:

Latino immigrant killed by white men in rural Pennsylvania. Defendants are acquitted in a state trial amid widespread accusations of a police cover-up.

Feds bring new charges; defendants this time are convicted. What is the greater cost to society: Letting a crime like this go unpunished, or violating our constitutional prohibition on double jeopardy?

A strong argument can be made that letting things rest with the state acquittal is tacit permission for every other economically frightened, socially isolated white rural town to react violently to newcomer Latinos. But it’s still very ugly to try people twice for the same crime, even if you use different words the second time. They could have just brought the police up on charges (as is due to happen in Jan. 2011) for their misconduct, and sent the federal message that way.

I honestly don’t know what the right outcome is in a big-picture sense.

“A strong argument can be made that letting things rest with the state acquittal is tacit permission for every other economically frightened, socially isolated white rural town to react violently to newcomer Latinos.”

Dream-come-true for teabagging morons?...

I’ve actually heard it said (in the Long FAQ on Liberalism by the colorfully batshit Steve Kangas*) that the 10th Amendment is legally moot, since it doesn’t say anything that isn’t already part of the Constitution. That doesn’t seem to be the case, though…

*He seemed to be a good researcher on economic and legal matters, but had a weirdly conspiratorial view of the government establishment and ultimately killed himself in an office building owned by VRWC bankroller Richard Mellon Scaife.

violating our constitutional prohibition on double jeopardy

It rather clearly does not violation the constitutional prohibition of double jeopardy, as any court in the history of US constitutional law has interpreted the constitution—different sovereignties; different elements.

“States’ rights” only exists in the context of hurting women or other disliked groups.  That’s just what it’s for.

Although this case required a lot to happen before the victim was taken seriously, I can’t see a lack of seriousness toward crimes against women as the main culprit as to why this took so long to get to an arrest and prosecution.

In the scenario, someone calls the police to report that there are suspicious substances on her mail and that there’s a woman out to get her.  Now, as this was a pregnant woman, this could easily be attributed in a police officer’s mind as a crazy lady who’s off her rocker.  If it was a man saying that, the same thing could have been thought: this alleged “victim” is worthy of air-quotes and eye-rolls and the law enforcement equivalent of a pat on the head and a carry-on.  Unless the victim works for the government or is a famous person or something along those lines, it’s pretty likely that my first inclination would be to do a half-assed investigation and gather some samples but pretty much sit on them and hope the person gets the prescriptions refilled.

Maybe it’s because I work with a lot of mentally-ill people, but that was my first thought as to what the reaction of the authorities would be.  It’s a bias, but I’m not sure how to avoid such thoughts when that’s pretty much par for the course when dealing with the mentally ill.

And I don’t know if I’m condemning the policework or excusing it by saying so, since the mentally ill make great victims for those who seek victims.  Still, that’s my take: the big problem was impressions of the mentally ill, not sexism.  That this person isn’t mentally ill, but thought someone was out to get her for a valid reason, is only proof of my contention that attitudes toward mental illness need to change.

“In this case, it looks like the local police may have ignored the case because they dismissed the behavior as catty rather than attempted murder.”

This.  I’m not trying to take away your feminist/feminist ally card - none of us are immune from the patriarchy’s indoctrination - but it does appear to me more like you were falling into the same trap that the local police were falling into:

violence directed by one woman at another + women wanting the same man = cat fight + mean girls

combined with

woman using poison = women being weak = women not being agressive/violent

when this was very much not a case of anything snide or manipulative, it was straight out violence.

Now, as this was a pregnant woman, this could easily be attributed in a police officer’s mind as a crazy lady who’s off her rocker.

And that’s supposed to not indicate a lack of seriousness towards crimes against women?  Like, that is your argument?

Are you serious?

The court ruling would be about jurisdiction. They wouldn’t say feds can’t prosecute murder, they would say that the feds couldn’t prosecute murder because in this case because it only involved one state and the attempted murder didn’t actually take place through the mail so technically it is not a federal offense.

What the hell, are they really trying to argue that the federal government can’t interfere with the attempted murder of one of its citizens?

What is the greater cost to society: Letting a crime like this go unpunished, or violating our constitutional prohibition on double jeopardy?

It could technically be argued that an unfair trial (to the defendant’s benefit) or other refusal to take the perpetrators to task for such crimes does not qualify as the first jeopardy. If it can be proved that they were never in any real danger of being convicted the first time, well . . . is it attempted murder if someone pulls the trigger on a gun that they (the shooter) knew was unloaded?

Sure, 3letter.  There’s simply no reason that a cop’s quick assurance that a pregnancy woman is “crazy” has anything to do with sexism.

Sometimes I wonder if it might have been better of Hamilton’s argument that the states should be remade into administrative districts prevailed.

Technically according to our constitution and judicial review they are.  The craziness that is “state’s rights” is a shell game to resist legislation for as long as one can.  Nobody seriously believes in it except when it protects their status and interests.  Numerous cases of abolition in antebellum US relied on this argument in reproach to small victories made and just after reconstruction when Hayes started to dismantle the reconstruction state legislatures. 

As for the concept of double jeopardy, no this case would have nothing to do with it since the first case would have faced judicial review and been rejected as a mistrial.  For it to be counted as jeopardy the original verdict would have to stand and a new trial filed under the same event.  If you’re really worried about double jeopardy you’re about 240 years too late, when the federal jurisdiction was activated the states could reject their own case and allow the feds to take over or vice-versa and have done so since the beginning of the nation. 

Tenth amendment cases have almost always fallen flat on their faces and while the SCOTUS may be reviewing it it is most likely to reinforce federal authority.  They’re not likely to cut their own legs out from under them on what is a procedural case that will have no bearing on their conservative ideology except to make women more of a property and less of a person, still not worth their power to forgo.

3letterjon, I have been involved in therapeutic and medical treatment for people who have serious mental illness, including paranoid schizophrenia, for over a decade. I also have colleagues who have mental illnesses that include episodes of psychosis. I wouldn’t eyeroll over a thing like that, even if I knew that the woman was in fact mentally ill. (Which, from what I’ve seen on this so far, she was not). To do so is lazy and discriminatory to people with mental illnesses. Just because a person has a mental illness doesn’t mean that person is not subject to attack and abuse, in fact it makes it more likely. The fact that police do this to people who are perceived to be mentally ill is one of the reasons why the rate of assault and abuse that people with mental illnesses experience is so high. All kinds of incredibly awful stuff gets done to people whom society has deemed terminally unreliable, because abusers know that eyerolling is going to ensue if they try to report it.

I worked with a young woman who had schizophrenia and kept reporting to the people who ran her apartment that she smelled a gas leak. She was known to have aural delusions, so they visited her apartment once or twice, sniffed around, said “I don’t smell anything” did that eyeroll thing you mention, and moved on.

Turns out there was a gas leak, and she just had a better sense of smell than them.

And of course we are familiar with the historical connection between dismissing the claims and concerns of women, especially poor women and women of color, and psychiatric diagnoses, yes?

(I’m not trying to jump in here as an able-bodied person and speak up on behalf of people who have mental illnesses, as I know you can speak for yourselves, just want to be a vigilant ally. Please correct me if I’m being presumptuous.)

I wouldn’t eyeroll over a thing like that, even if I knew that the woman was in fact mentally ill. (Which, from what I’ve seen on this so far, she was not). To do so is lazy and discriminatory to people with mental illnesses.

Not to mention, massively assholish. I mean, even if this woman were entirely hallucinating this thing up—she thinks her friend is trying to murder her! Who eyerolls at that? That is upsetting shit! Not to mention, even if no one were actually trying to murder her, she could still be in danger, especially if chemicals are showing up and it’s not clear why. Who eyerolls at a pregnant woman randomly encountering dangerous chemicals, no matter what the reason? There is no oh-it’s-not-a-concern possibility in that situation.

(Also, unrelated… murderous lady microbiologist I am fucking ashamed of you. You had better hang your fucking coat up for good, you complete disgrace to every woman who’s ever even glanced at a lab in her life.)

Admittedly, most police departments won’t have much in the way of ability to deal with poisons.  It’s just not that common and there are millions of them.  And the way we pay for departments, making the choice to investigate is very expensive.

It really says we should make testing facilities available and paid for at a higher level than local.  It’s a crime that victims and suspects have to pay for their own investigations.

@Dymphna

I despise the culture’s tendency to decide that everything that happens to someone who is mentally ill is a product of their mental illness (and I mean everything: I’ve been sick with viruses and had them written off as a symptom of mental illness, no need for further testing just a psychiatrist).  And, of course, there is a similar tendency to decide that everything that happens to someone who is female is a product of their femaleness.  Put the two together…ugh.  Basically, everything you said was spot-on.

I think it is worth pointing out though, that this woman probably wasn’t mentally ill and the police had no sensible reason to treat her as though she were.  (Police aren’t trained in that sort of thing, at most they are trained to recognize when someone who is trained in that sort of thing should be brought in.)  3letterjon’s “first inclination [..] to do a half-assed investigation and gather some samples but pretty much sit on them and hope the person gets the prescriptions refilled” is not an inclination that we as a society should be comfortable letting the police indulge, especially when there is no evidence whatsoever of prescriptions.

It is bad enough the bias we have against mental illness, we don’t need people with limited experience and training lumping more people into that category.

I’ve been sick with viruses and had them written off as a symptom of mental illness

Wow! What kind of dumbasses decided to patronizingly dismiss a woman who can create viruses with her mind?? Those douchebags are braver than I am! ;p

This is a a bit of a tangential issue - though it has to do with where state and federal law enforcement overlap - but apparantly Eric Holder’s DOJ is pre-emptively warning cannabis consumers in California that the results of the ballot initiative to legalize pot in the Golden State will have absolutely no impact on the Feds position on the matter. Even if the state of California decriminalizes marijuana use in two weeks, people in possession of pot can still be convicted for violating federal drug laws. This may be the one and only policy issue where I really do wish that the Feds would just let the states deal with it individually.

The Tenth Amendment and state’s rights are an ass. Anybody who argues from them is usually trying to maintain a bad status quo and/or policy, whether it be Jim Crow or failure to effectively protect abortion rights or prevent violence against women or minorities.

Uh, you guys do know that state’s rights are the reason that we have gay marriage in some states right now, right? (Well, heroic activists are WHY, but state’s rights are HOW.)

State’s rights (vs. one big federal regime) are like fire. You can use it to burn down an orphanage and kill gay kittens, or you can use it to stay alive during the cold winter. It’s a tool. What you do with the tool is what matters.

Federalism gives people the ability to create the kind of society around themselves that they want. Progressive initiatives and ideas have often, if not always, come from local communities and regions and percolated up/out. Reform doesn’t have to be top-down.

@Bagelsan #33

I know, right?  They should totally be treating me like I’m the next River Tam.

Xeranar at 28: Um, no. Hamilton wanted the relationship between the national government and the states to be like the relationship between France’s national government and the departments, clear subordination. The states were to be mere agencies of the national government rather than being able to take action that is theoretically contrary to another state’s policy or national policy like Prop18 in California or how same-sex marriage is legal in some states but not others. Under Hamilton’s system, everything would be uniform.

If I were the cops I would have blown her off, too, and not all of it would have been sexism. I mean, what’s the ratio of people who want attention throwing fake powder around to people actually being deliberately poisoned? I bet it’s pretty big. I might not have assumed she was crazy, but I probably would have encouraged her to take a couple of days off and relax. But I would be a sucky cop.

All the people who are thinking the cops were “just doing their job” and “this lady must have come off crazy” and it has nothing to do with sexism, SHUT YOUR PIE HOLES.  I was sitting in my car in a mall parking lot finishing up a phone call during a pouring rain when suddenly someone was knocking on my window cussing me out, asking me when I’m going to “get out the motherfucking parking spot.”  I was terrified.  This woman is standing outside my window threatening me OVER A PARKING SPOT.  Then she proceeded to key my car with me sitting in it.  Then she proceeded to sit in her car and block me in the spot for a while.  Then the sweetest spot imaginable opened up and she just couldn’t resist, so she drove over to pull in, realized if she did I would get her license plate, turned around and backed in and proceeded to watch me.  I was still on the phone with my friend, literally freaking out.  I decided maybe I could get her license plate real quick on my way out after sitting there for ten minutes.  I pulled out of my spot and drove around to the exit, hoping to catch a glimpse.  She pulled out of her spot and proceeded to FOLLOW ME with her front bumper practically on mine.  I managed to flag down mall security, which, I know.  LOL

He tells us to pull into some spots, and this woman is still going nuts.  Yelling, screaming, literally bouncing around in the parking lot.  I was still on the phone with my friend and in my car and he could hear what she was saying she was so loud.  The mall security guy comes to get my side of it with her in tow, yelling and screaming the entire time.  He wanted me to get out of the car with her there.  I refused.  I told him as soon as she got in her car and settled down, I would be happy to get out of my car.  EYES WERE ROLLED.  I called the cops while waiting for this woman to simmer down.  The cops were all “So the fuck what.”  I drove to the police station to make a report, and the police there essentially told me to stand down, no big whoop. 

Imagine if this were two men.  Imagine if some dude keyed your car while you were sitting in it while yelling and screaming at you.  Imagine the reaction if a man called the police with this same story.  I doubt there would be eyerolling and “just forget about it.”  In this case, this woman was clearly not acting in a sane manner, yet I was told to “just calm down” and “get over it.”

You can bring in whatever tangential bullshit you want to.  The fact is it was too chicks involved, and one of them was probably on her period, amirite?

If it was a man saying he was being poisoned and the mail was missing and then reappeared and now it has some substance on it and that some person hates him and is out to get him and don’t you want to take any evidence?  Yeah, the first reaction is total belief that the situation involves a conspiracy to poison this person.  Sure.

I’m not saying the police reaction didn’t involve sexism, but the possible mental illness aspect sounds like a much bigger factor.  And both are likely to have gotten in the way of a necessary investigation.  That my comments—no matter how clumsily worded—got the reaction they did suggests to me that I struck a nerve that needed some striking.  Mental illness is a supplemental and not a replacement explanation to the larger point about women as victims not being taken seriously.  When I first heard the story, my thought wasn’t “Women don’t get justice” but “Police probably thought she was crazy”.  There’s plenty of room for sexism and a bias against the mentally ill together in the list of why this case had problems, and both need to be examined.  Not just one, and not just the other, but both.

That the bias against the mentally ill may have been misplaced in this case doesn’t make it any better or worse.  What matters is that this woman wasn’t treated as seriously as the evidence should have merited.  How to fix that?  I don’t know.  But it should be a priority.

I wonder how this thread would have developed were this a case concerning a state which had decriminalized possession of marijuana and federal prosecution of drug possession in that jurisdiction.

3letterjon, are you serious? Have you not considered that only women get pregnant, and that the perception of pregnant women as “off her rocker”, is as grievous a manifestation of gender discrimination as simply assuming it was a catfight? Really?

States right are hurful even in cases where they seem helpful.  The reason that gay marriage isn’t legal everywhere is precisely because states can make that choice individually.  It’s just a convenient way for federal polititians to avoid these issues because they can shrug their shoulders and leave it up to the states.  If the states didn’t have this power, then the federal government would be forced to deal with it for everyone instead of washing their hands of the whole thing.  Denying marriage equality to only 40-some states instead of all of them does not seem like a ringing endorsement for states’ rights to me.  It’s just a way for bigoted assholes at the federal level to play both sides of the issue.  They can just say, “Oh, I really do care about marriage equality but I can’t do anything about it so STFU and vote for me anyway”.

@Comment #43: catgirl on 10/19 at 08:11 AM

Denying marriage equality to only 40-some states instead of all of them does not seem like a ringing endorsement for states’ rights to me.  It’s just a way for bigoted assholes at the federal level to play both sides of the issue.  They can just say, “Oh, I really do care about marriage equality but I can’t do anything about it so STFU and vote for me anyway”.

This is my take as well. The supposedly “pro-freedom” agenda of “states’ rights” is really just an argument for many small tyrannies bound together in loose federalism. The hypocrisy of “states rights” has stunk for centuries.

States can’t forbid federal action as they are subordinate to the Federal government in our system of government, Dana.

It would behoove you to read the Constitution in order to keep whatever credentials you may have left to claiming to be a patriotic, conservative American.

katydid, I’ve considered a lot of things.  But my main consideration is that a bias against the mentally ill was at play much more than sexism.  I’m not dismissing that both are likely causes, but the circumstances of this crime make it such that it’s likely the police would have had plenty of reasons to dismiss the allegations because of a prejudice against the mentally ill.

Yes, it’s been very apparent for some time that only women get pregnant.  Thanks for pointing that out.

And before you and everyone else go on attacking me for bringing this up, please point to where I said it’s a good thing that the police have a bias against the mentally ill.  To quote myself:

“Now, as this was a pregnant woman, this could easily be attributed in a police officer’s mind as a crazy lady who’s off her rocker.  If it was a man saying that, the same thing could have been thought: this alleged “victim” is worthy of air-quotes and eye-rolls and the law enforcement equivalent of a pat on the head and a carry-on.”

Notice that?  In the sentence after I mention the POLICE OFFICER’S POSSIBLE BIAS against a pregnant woman, what do I do?  I mention another source of ANOTHER POTENTIAL BIAS.  Wow!  It’s as if I can believe that more than one thing can lead to bad police work!  Blows my mind how I’m capable of that kind of rhetorical ju-jitsu.  I’d congratulate myself, but humility is one of my favorite attributes.

@8 - I recall a case a few years back now, probably 2002 or 2003, at the height of the hysteria, where a North Carolina prosecutor pursued ‘weapons of mass destruction’ charges against somebody who was running a meth lab, because meth labs can explode.  We definitely have a disturbingly creative law enforcement community, when it comes to inflicting extra punishment on people they don’t like.  That, in this particular instance, the creativity was necessitated by the shameful indifference of local law enforcement to this crime doesn’t excuse the larger trend.

Jon, you’re thick.  Stop trying to make one cause into two.  Hormones = crazy, and pregnancy = hormones.  Ergo, pregnant = crazy.  Sexism is the major player because it enables the ablism.  Saying no, no, it was because they thought she was crazy ignores the circumstances—woman, pregnant—that contribute to cops making an insta-diagnosis.  Get it?

If it was a man saying that, the same thing could have been thought

No, they motherfucking wouldn’t.  Why are you even on this blog?

Uh, you guys do know that state’s rights are the reason that we have gay marriage in some states right now, right? (Well, heroic activists are WHY, but state’s rights are HOW.)

Uh, you do know that the reason we have same-sex (not “gay” for fuck’s sake) marriage ONLY in some states is that the same people who usually whine about “state’s rights” fought tooth and nail for DOMA? Wasn’t it Orrin Hatch who said “states’ rights, but only when they’re right”?

Mythago, so you’re saying that same-sex marriage, percolating up and out from the states, was blocked from spreading further via Federal action? And that’s an argument against state-level organization because…?

Alkaloid,
Federal politicians use states rights as an excuse to avoid dealing with controversial issues.  Congress has little motivation to deal with marriage equality because they can pretend to care about equal rights while still pandering to bigots.  If this fight were fought at the federal level, of course there’s a chance that nothing would come of it.  But if some federal politicians actually made an effort to protect this right for all states, then at least there would be some chance that every state would have marriage equality.  Right now many federal politicians tell progressives that they care but they just don’t have the power to change anything, while still “compromising” with conservatives by not doing anything.  If they couldn’t hide behind the excuse of “sorry, my hands are tied”, then they would have to actually do something for their base or risk losing them.  It really acts only as a convenient excuse to do nothing.

Paul @ 8:
Does or does not the mail carrier put mail into this box?  If someone does in fact put dangerous chemicals/poisons into this box is there not a possibility these could be transfered to the postal carrier and any subsequent mail boxes (either left behind when the intended victem removes her mail or transfered to the carrier when new mail is added on top of the old if she had not yet removed her mail)? 

How is leaving a chemical/poison where it could impact the mail carrier and neighbors not an act of random violence with hazardous chemicals/poisons that could be considered a threat to both a postal employee and terrorism?

Emmett,

Yes, the fact that she was a lady probably contributed to any crazy lady thoughts.  And it’s not making one issue into two, since if it was all about the sexism then the PREGNANT lady would have been protected even more than a run-of-the-mill, non-pregnant one.  The fact remains that this was a crime that was a weird one.  It’s not every day that the police encounter someone saying that they’re being poisoned by the administration of substances to various surfaces around their home and it’s actually true.  Sorry to bring that up, but it’s the kind of thing that’s going to come into play when the police respond to a call.

As for why I’m here on this blog, I enjoy reading it.  If Amanda wants to defend her turf against me, that’s her every right.  But if you want to play Joe Miller Security Detail, do it on your own blog.

“Federal politicians use states rights as an excuse to avoid dealing with controversial issues.  Congress has little motivation to deal with marriage equality because they can pretend to care about equal rights while still pandering to bigots.”

Yes!  This seems to be a trend regarding a whole host of civil rights and other “controversial” issues (such as marijuana decriminalization in California and elsewhere).

Lets face it, something like mixed-race marriages would likely still be illegal in some states if it hadn’t been for a Supreme Court ruling.  The Civil Rights Acts of the ‘60s would never have been passed at the federal level without a ball-busting political bully like LBJ in office.  Many things we take for granted would exist only in a patchwork across different states if it wasn’t for strong federal action (legislative or judicial).

But it takes so much to get them to act.  And given how the federal government has been packed with more and more Reichwing drones over the last 40-years, who are eager to eviscerate a century’s worth of progressive reforms, it is often dangerous to seek federal remedies (DOMA, anyone?).

We’re in a period when many states are far more progressive than the currently constituted federal government.  So while we have Arizona trying to make being Hispanic a crime, we also have Massachusetts making same-sex marriage legal.  It’s a real ugly problem…

It’s little ways like this where you really start to see the ugliness behind the wingnut obsession with “states rights” and the 10th amendment.

Everything old really is new again, I guess.

@3letterjon

since if it was all about the sexism then the PREGNANT lady would have been protected even more than a run-of-the-mill, non-pregnant one.

Are you fucking kidding us with this?  It’s like you’ve never even read a post on this or any other feminist blog about the anti-choice movement. (And, I suspect, that you know fuck all about the way pregnancy and pregnant women are viewed by society both now and in the past.)

#57,

I’m not kidding.  If she was pregnant and sexism was the only factor involved, then it would follow that the woman would be more protected, not less.  So I figured other factors were involved.  I’m not dismissing or ignoring the societal view of pregnancy as a time when women are crazed to suggest that a bias against mental illness may have been a stronger factor than just sexism.  I’m just saying it was a factor and would be even for a man who reported such events happening around his house.  You and others disagree, but I’d like to hear from some law enforcement types before I’m willing to dismiss the possibility.

If she was pregnant and sexism was the only factor involved

Who actually made the claim that sexism was the only factor involved?

then it would follow that the woman would be more protected, not less

I have no idea how you came to this conclusion.  The most sexist people also tend to be the most hateful towards pregnant women.  Most conservatives are hugely misogynist and yet they are the last to support any type of government program that will provide help for pregnant women, while at the same time trying to restrict a woman’s opportunites to not be pregnant (either through birth control or abortion).  Also, violence against women is far more common for pregnant women than women who aren’t pregnant, and you can’t claim that wife-beaters aren’t sexist.  And of course sexist people are far more likely to buy into the hysterical pregnant lady stereotype than people who aren’t sexist.  It doesn’t follow at all that misogynists would treat pregnant women better than other women.

catgirl,

If there’s a fetus in there, some sexist assholes see that as a reason to go into Protective Mode regardless of the physical woman stuff surrounding that particular uterus.  That’s what I was referring to.  Yeah, there’s a lot of contradictory stuff about conservative men and the various “protection” they want to bestow upon women whether those women want it or not, but there’s still the fact that this pregnant woman was complaining about poison and wasn’t taken seriously.  There are many possible reasons for that, and I just think one is more of a factor than the one others suggest, while belatedly acknowledging (though all the while believing) that the two are very much related.

I guess the people who made the claim that sexism was the only factor involved would be those who say that a bias against mental illness would have nothing to do with—and in fact is a distraction from the real cause of—police inaction in this case.  Scroll up to see the names.

If there’s a fetus in there, some sexist assholes see that as a reason to go into Protective Mode regardless of the physical woman stuff surrounding that particular uterus.

Some might, but most won’t.  Homicide is a leading cause of death among pregnant women, and it’s mostly sexist assholes that are killing them.  It might seem logical that sexist assholes should protect pregnant women if only to protect and embryo or fetus, but reality doesn’t play out that way, largely because sexist assholes aren’t logical and don’t actually care that much about fetuses.  The police would treat this pregnant woman badly for the same reason that many misogynists would rather see a pregnant woman die (and take the fetus with her) than allow an abortion.

I guess the people who made the claim that sexism was the only factor involved would be those who say that a bias against mental illness would have nothing to do with—and in fact is a distraction from the real cause of—police inaction in this case.

Once again, who actually said that mental illness stigma had nothing to do with it?  Also, since when are sexism and mental illness stigma mutually exclusive?

catgirl’s basically made the points I wanted to make.  You really cannot look at the violence statistics and conclude pregnant women have any sort of advantage against sexism.  The “protection” you insinuate is lip service.  The reality, as catgirl explained, is the opposite.  Obviously I cannot “police” you off this blog.  But again I question why you are here, since presumably you read all the posts that elaborate on the hows and whys of woman-hating, and still you come out with arguments that explain away sexism with all the usual patriarchal tropes.

Also Atheist, AF.

wrt state vs federal rights and gay marriage: At first, states’ rights’ will benefit gay people in progressive states, but there will come a point when well over half of Americans will support same-sex marriage, and it will be legal in the blue states, but gay people trapped in Mississippi and other backwater places will be SOL.

Emmett,

FWIW, 3letterjon has made good points on other threads.  Personally, I don’t want to see him leave this blog completely.  He seems to have missed some points on this thread, but he is by no means a troll or completely uninformed.

People gender each other unconsciously.  Before they ever got her story, the cops were aware she was a woman.  The train of logic goes woman -> crazy, not crazy -> woman, b/c “woman” is the class that’s immediately apparent and the class into which the cops put her before they even knew what her complaint was.  I can’t believe this needs spelled out.

I believe you, catgirl.  I seem to recall a blow up on a sex thread that’s probably the source of my bias.  Jon, I’m sorry if I seem to irrationally dislike you.  But you are wrong here.  No one’s said sexism is the only cause, at least not that I could find on the thread.  Sexism predisposes society to dismiss women as crazy and sexism informs the ablism here.

The fact that certain issues like family law, which includes who can marry who, falls under state jurisdiction; not only gives Congress a dodge when dealing with civil rights issues but makes it nearly impossible for federal politicians to deal with the issues if they wanted to. Since Congress has no ability to write family law or marriage law except in areas that somehow relate to the areas of legislation reserved for Congress than Congress can’t pass legislation creating same-sex marriage. This mean that expanding civil liberties involves either doing it state by state in state legislatures or through the Courts.

  Going through the Courts is an imperfect solution. Th judicial process takes longer to resolve since cases have to go through a complex web of state and federal courts before reaching the Supreme Court. There is no guranteed outcome. Legislation is actually a shorter process. Also judges aren’t legislators and when they do things like strike down segregation or give same-sex couples the right to marry, the relevant legislatures must pass law to define how these things happen usually. If civil rights issues can be advanced through legislation from the start than everything can be taken care of at once. Plus, laws generally generate less backlash than judicial rulings. The legislative accomplishments of the Civil Rights era have had more finality than the judicial accomplishments.
 
    This doesn’t mean the Courts shouldn’t be used but only that the legislature is superior.

What seems to be missing in 3letterjon’s description (and in the replies) is that there was a $#@$$%@#$ REALLY OBVIOUS motive. This wasn’t just “something weird is happening with my mail”, it was “I had unprotected sex with my former best friend’s husband, I’m pregnant, and she’s really pissed off at me, and something weird is happening to my mail.”

If a guy came to the cops saying “I got my best friend’s wife pregnant, and he found out about it, and now he’s trying to kill me,” they’d have a pretty good idea of how the investigation should go. After they got done with the high fives.

helen w.h. @53: Sure it’s assault and maybe attempted murder on the postal worker as well as interference with the mails. But the federal law on chemical warfare was written to implement an international treaty barring use of chemical weapons by states and state-like entities. Although its letter might apply to someone trying to poison their neighbor, it’s a stretch. And we don’t always want that kind of stretch, because federal prosecutors are not nice people and have lots of money to gin up cases. (My immediate thought is of some poor bdsm group getting charged under the implementing legislation of the international convention against torture, but I’m sure anyone can come up with federal laws that could be stretched way out of shape.)

“If there’s a fetus in there, some sexist assholes see that as a reason to go into Protective Mode regardless of the physical woman stuff surrounding that particular uterus.”

Except when the woman isn’t white, in which case the police beating her into a miscarriage during a traffic stop is A-OK.  Or when the woman isn’t married.  Or when the woman actually needs assistance.  Or when the woman isn’t particularly attractive.  Or when the woman is poor.  Protecting pregnant women is about on the same level as chivalry—it happens when it’s convenient, to women who fit into a fairly narrow definition of “woman”.

Additionally with the states’ rights argument, since the media are becoming more and more nationalized—local dailies are going away and most blogs focus on national issues to gain a wider audience while small time pols don’t have much budget or space for advertizing—very few people actually know who is running their state governments. State legislator is a low-pay, thankless job with no recognition. The people who run for state legislator are, by and large, crazy ideologues and since they are so unknown, the people don’t act as much of a check on their power. People focus on the federal government and expect what they don’t like about government to be changed at the federal level. This means that the ability to seek justice, and the very definition of justice can vary quite a bit from location to location, even if that is not what the voters of any location intended.

And this isn’t to say that there aren’t some dedicated and awesom low-level politicians—-it is just that local elections don’t offer much of a way for those pols to get recognized.

I’d think that poisoning someone’s letters could be called “taking place through the mail”, although it is a borderline case. After all, the letters weren’t in the posession of the Postal Service when they were poisoned.
Comment 4—hellocthulu

What I was told during the Census was: by Federal law, only you and the USPS is allowed to put anything into or take anything out of your mailbox. So that’s the Federal offense here.

What the hell, are they really trying to argue that the federal government can’t interfere with the attempted murder of one of its citizens?
Comment 26—Kyra

Well ... yeah. By this theory, I’m a New Yorker first and an American second; the Federal government shouldn’t {allocate resources to prosecute/trample my freedom by prosecuting} me for a crime unless I can evade or at least question the jurisdiction of New York: for instance, through the mail, over the Internet, on a plane (arguably not from New York to Buffalo) or train (arguably not Metro-North unless it goes to Connecticut) or bus (arguably not to Niagara Falls), etc.

I despise the culture’s tendency to decide that everything that happens to someone who is mentally ill is a product of their mental illness (and I mean everything: I’ve been sick with viruses and had them written off as a symptom of mental illness, no need for further testing just a psychiatrist).
Comment 32—A,AF

It’s a little like calling everything unpleasant involving a woman “PMS.”

Incidentally, I read 3-jon’s comment as being about what does happen, not what should happen. And I thought this was a both/and blog: just because it’s ableism doesn’t mean it’s not sexism too.

But my main consideration is that a bias against the mentally ill was at play much more than sexism.  I’m not dismissing that both are likely causes, but the circumstances of this crime make it such that it’s likely the police would have had plenty of reasons to dismiss the allegations because of a prejudice against the mentally ill.
Comment 46—3letterjon

Now, all that said, jon, you didn’t speculate that the police had reason to believe she had a mental illness. You speculated that the police consider all pregnant people likely to exhibit signs of mental illness. Since all pregnant people are women, that’s sexism; as Emmett says (67), the ableism stems from the sexism, it doesn’t exceed it.

Yes, it’s been very apparent for some time that only women get pregnant.  Thanks for pointing that out
46

Well, you appear to have omitted it from your analysis.

@69: I was also curious about the motive component, but I didn’t read to see if she actually gave the police the possible motive… it could be really bad for her if she did, because the cops could then see her as “deserving” attempted murder rather than just “imagining” it. And promptly do more of the same abso-fucking-lutely nothing they’d been doing.

I’m inclined to agree with Jon on this one. He’s definitely not saying that the fact that Haynes was a woman was not a factor (although in his first comment it sort of looked like he did); he was saying that the fact that she may have come off as a little cuckoo was probably another factor. He’s making that leap without direct evidence that that was what the police officers thought, but I think it’s a reasonable suggestion.  What he didn’t highlight in the first post—but has attempted to highlight in the second post—is that if his supposition is true, then it’s a matter of intersecting oppressions.  Women are less likely to be taken seriously by the police. Mentally ill people are less likely to be taken seriously by the police. Reports of violence or intimidation where no actual physical harm that the officers can observe are taken less seriously by the police*. Two of these factors were almost certainly at issue in the police’s neglect of their duty in Haynes’s case, and the other one (perception of her as mentally ill) might well have been, and if so, her being a woman (and thus perceived as prone to hormone-induced “hysteria”) and the lack of obvious evidence of harm would have contributed to that perception. Jon is out on a limb, but I think it’s a fairly sturdy one.

*I have a minor personal anecdote of police unwillingness to take things seriously when no physical harm has yet occurred. When I was a TA at a university, a student started sending me creepy emails about how he was “watching” me because my teaching expressed liberal views. I showed them to several faculty in my department, who all immediately saw that the emails were threatening and urged me to call campus police. I did so, and the grandfatherly man who responded to my call read the emails and said he saw nothing threatening. I pointed out that the email address this student had chosen to use was “Iwanttopork[myrealname],” and that this was an obvious threat of sexual violence. Grandfatherly police officer responded that I should probably keep my politics out of the classroom. I had to insist and drag in the faculty member whose office was across the hall to get him to even write down the details in his notebook, which I’m sure he did nothing with. 

The only actual help I got came from my department—they had the campus computer people trace the emails (they couldn’t tell me who it was or do anything to the person unless the campus police agreed to charge him with something, but at least I knew that somebody knew who it was) and they had various grad students and faculty be in the hallway when my classes were going in and out, and across-the-hall faculty member made sure to be in her office with the door open during my office hours in case he turned up there.  Creepy guy sent one more email after this and then stopped, but the response I got from the campus police was at least as upsetting as the incident itself. Obviously this is much more minor than what Haynes went through, but it seems to show the same general outline of police dismissing valid concerns about safety because they basically didn’t feel like doing anything.

Yes, it’s been very apparent for some time that only women get pregnant.

Not, in fact, universally true…

But pretending these officers have a good grounding in trans 101 stuff is about as realistic as pretending they weren’t being sexist, or pretending that ableism can be fully separated from misogyny in this case (and that the two can be quantified and measured against each other!), or pretending that being pregnant will make men take you more seriously about anything…

I think we all know who, here, is at a high risk for wildly making stuff up out of fantasies, and it’s not the “crazy” attempted murder victim.

Federal politicians use states rights as an excuse to avoid dealing with controversial issues.

Yes, everything would be perfect if only the federal government controlled everything, especially <strike>if</strike> when there’s ever another ‘94-type Republican takeover of Congress and the Senate.

Absolutely perfect.

but has attempted to highlight in the second post—is that if his supposition is true, then it’s a matter of intersecting oppressions.

I assumed the intersectionality was obvious.  I didn’t think that was a poor assumption at Pandagon, but hey.  I’m not sure why you think he was only helpfully pointing this out when it’s clear he thinks the driving factor in how the police acted was the mental illness angle.  Going so far as to suggest a pregnant woman invokes some magical power of patriarchal protection, so obviously it was how crazy she sounded that made them not take her seriously.  And of course, the strawman about people claiming it was 100% sexism, which is nowhere on the thread.

3letter, I gave you an scenario at comment 39 in which neither woman was pregnant, and the actually crazed-acting woman was ignored, and the woman keeping her head was told to “calm down” about her car being keyed with her in it and threatened.

I removed the “pregnancy” theme you are clinging so tightly to, and yet I was eye-rolled at and told to take a breather and just calm down and it’s not that big a deal.

I asked you what would happen if two men were involved in the same exact scenario and then explain how this situation is not, at its root, misogyny.  I see you haven’t answered the question, but are still clinging tightly to your mental health excuse or whatever the hell it is now.

As a recent victim of domestic violence, I believe the issue is deeper than a culture which accepts and looks past violence against women.  Our society has become immune to violence and our judicial system only reflects that mindset.  The police only know how to respond to crime, not prevent it, and the media only cover crimes that are especially brutal, shocking or against those who are famous.  If you aren’t going to make the evening news of front page of the paper, the police don’t care because they have come to accept most acts of violence.  When a black man is shot dead, you won’t see it on CNN, but when a white child is kidnapped, it becomes hot news.  This is because people judge some victims as less than human and more importantly, less important than themselves.  When a woman is beat, the police ignore it because they don’t value her as much as they value their own well being.  Violence is an acceptable act to most people, especially when they perceive the victim as less than human or worthy.

The question is, why do we not value each other equally?  Is it because violence has been normalized and we live in a culture where people are disposable? Two weeks ago I had no issue watching television shows which featured violence, but now, after being on the receiving end of a violent attack, I realize that violence should not be used as a form of entertainment.  How can we expect to be treated as equals when we are constantly reminded that “might is right” and “only the strong survive.”  We have created a society where there are only predators and prey, victims and attackers.  The police are not here to protect us; they only are interested in maintaining what society finds acceptable.  Until people learn to see others as equals, they’ll feel qualified to not only ignore violence, but to incite and participate in it.

Geesh.  She must not have been much of a scientist if she 1) attacked the neighbor rather than her own husband and 2) couldn’t get the job done!

Bad logic, bad science, and nutjob that should be locked up with Amy Bishop for a roommate!

Oh, and speaking of Amy Bishop, seems she had a LONG RECORD of hurting people that was covered up by local townie police department making excuses for her and covering up her SHOOTING HER BROTHER and also waving a gun around while taking a hostage.Not to mention throwing a fit because another woman got the last high chair available in an IHOP.

This is EXACTLY why the Feds should get involved - wack jobs like this DO NOT learn their lessons and DO NOT stop.  Bishop gunned down her academic department over a tenure battle.

I wonder how this thread would have developed were this a case concerning a state which had decriminalized possession of marijuana and federal prosecution of drug possession in that jurisdiction.

Yes, because there is a federal precident that marriages in one state MUST be honored in other states, too.  I live in MA and my friends want their FEDERAL benefits, thank you.

What I was told during the Census was: by Federal law, only you and the USPS is allowed to put anything into or take anything out of your mailbox. So that’s the Federal offense here.

Yes.  And since I learned this at age 12 when I started delivering newspapers, I find it weirdly amusing that so many people DON’T know this.  It’s one of those things I just learned and never thought about the fact that most everyone else would have no occasion to learn it as well.  So I have to admit I was a little confused by the “wait, does the federal government even have jurisdiction if a Mail Carrier didn’t actually carry any mail?” debate.  I wasn’t quite sure what the hell everyone was talking about.

If there’s a fetus in there, some sexist assholes see that as a reason to go into Protective Mode regardless of the physical woman stuff surrounding that particular uterus.

The part about this argument (that the pregnancy was a mitigating rather than contributing factor) that is especially stupid is that “going into Protective Mode” actually has no bearing on how helpful said Protector would actually be - or, rather, said Protector is more likely to do more harm than good, for the reasons laid out in the sentence.  Going in Protective Mode does nothing to stop said Protector from believing that pregnant women are inherently crazy.  In fact, quite the opposite.  The fact pregnant women are clearly incapable of taking care of themselves - and therefore need a Protector - is exactly the same reason why they dismissed her assessment of the situation in the first place.

Ms Kate:

I’m not so sure that it was covered up so much as nothing ever stuck to her. The ex-police chief went so far as to admit that they screwed up the investigation of her brother’s death.

@Comment #76: keshmeshi on 10/19 at 01:58 PM

Yes, everything would be perfect if only the federal government controlled everything, especially if when there’s ever another ‘94-type Republican takeover of Congress and the Senate.

Absolutely perfect.

If you believe “states rights” would protect you from a Republican takeover of congress, then I really think you’re misunderstanding how that concept works in the real world.

These Tenthers have never read the NINTH amendment, have they?  No, no, the idea that people have rights, like the right not to be attacked with toxic chemicals, seems alien to them.

@neroden

I think for many of them the Bill of Rights was a tl;dr situation, but they did notice a few at the beginning and the bit at the end.  I think the Founding Fathers would have saved us all quite a bit of grief if they’d put the 10th Amendment 9th and the 9th Amendment 10th.  Then it would have read (simply) 9) States have rights, as do people and 10) Yeah, we meant that.  People have rights.  I think they thought they were doing that by moving from big/federal/fewer rights to mid/states/more rights to small/people/most of the rights, but they never foresaw the tendency of Americans to throw out things offset by commas.

As I asked my Tea Partying mom, if the problem is Big Government, then what will be accomplished my making any government (state included) bigger?  A state government can and will be tyrant just as surely as a federal government.

“A state government can and will be tyrant just as surely as a federal government.”

Yes, but it’s much easier for the local proles to put in people who are just as bigoted/stupid/ignorant/religiously-obsessed/sex-obsessed as they are.  (Texas school-book “standards” that remove Jefferson but add in John Birch?  A Texas governor openly slinging around the term “secession”?  Christine O’Donnell and “The 1st Amendment doesn’t separate church and state”?  Arizona making it illegal to “exist while Hispanic”?...)

@MikeEss

Part of that is that local politics seem small and inconsequential and so fewer people pay attention.  I would (probably falsely) hope that if the “States’ Rights” crowd got their way, states would finally seem important enough (and dangerous enough) to turn out for.

It is certainly a fear I share, but I try to stick to the less hypothetical arguments lest I get drawn into a “they’re local so they understand us better/are more like us” whine.  The results of that tend to be me asking about local politicians and the person I am arguing with realizing that they actually don’t know who their representatives are or what they do.  Anything I say about the local pols is of course a MSM leftist smear and then the “Bill Clinton had a blow job” or “Michelle Obama hates America” or “The Black Panthers beat up white people at the polls in 2008” shit starts.

Arguing with idiots is incredibly hard (particularly when you want them to still speak to you during the holidays).

I avoid even talking to the idiots so that I can still sneak the science and rationality in via kid books as Xmas presents.

@90

I don’t think that low turnout in state elections is because the issues are unimportant—things like police and schools, etc make the biggest direct difference in people’s lives. However the biggest cost of voting is becoming informed and information about local elections comes at a much higer cost. Cable news and websites both want to focus on national issues to include the largest potential audience. Local dailies are becoming a thing of the past. Local politicians don’t have large enough bases to raise major campaign funds and widely publicize their stances. One can become informed on local issues, it is just much more difficult so there will always be low turnout. Modern society just isn’t geared towards having local power.

@alysia

I agree, but not having the information readily available/drilled into people/whatever makes it seem less important to many voters.  If odds are your coworkers, neighbors, family, etc. won’t know or talk about it, then it is easier to see it as not a big deal.  State and local politics are important, of course, but they really don’t seem to be for many people.  I think most of that is because there is not enough talking about it to drive home its real importance.  It is easy for government to seem small and inconsequential when it is rarely noticed or mentioned.

One can become informed on local issues, it is just much more difficult so there will always be low turnout. Modern society just isn’t geared towards having local power.

The internet actually makes finding out about local issues a lot easier in some cases, though, especially if you can vote absentee easily.  You have to be interested (which I think is hard to do when it seems unimportant) or know someone who is (ditto).  I have found Republican/Conservative voting guides for a lot of really local races and issues.  They aren’t hard to find, but they are often very “early days of the AOL internet” in style probably because so few people who care.  I’m just not sure that not having all the information you need drives down the turnout as much as being able to think that it doesn’t really matter.

A state government can be just as oppressive as a national one. And yes, fundies can take over a state government too.

But it’s a lot easier to leave a state than it is to leave a country.

I spent the 1970s and 1980s in rural Washington, or as we called it, the People’s Republic of Cascadia. (There are a lot of other funny names people used too.) We were pretty much a one-region bastion against the rise of Reaganism.

One of the reasons to have diversity in all things - races, cultures, crops, politics, ideas - is that it is very rare for everything to go to shit at the same time. There can be a giant conservative sweep across the country - but it will not usually be everywhere and all the time.

The more different places and different ways of doing things we have, the better off we are. It is appealing to think that if only one government has a say, then all we have to do is grab hold of that one government and everything will be great. Unfortunately our enemies are not any less tactically aware.

Progressive politics will not be implemented worldwide with a set-piece battle where we only have to win one time. Instead it will be fought out over a thousand jurisdictions and places. We won’t always win, but we won’t always lose. We have a much better chance of winning the war, or at least continuing to exist even if we lose the war, if the war is widespread and not focused on winning one gigantic government to our side.

Not having meaningful states wouldn’t have meant that Reagan didn’t become president. It would have meant that people who hated Reagan would have had nowhere to go.

@Alkaloid

But it’s a lot easier to leave a state than it is to leave a country.

Because states have less power than countries.  If you make states into countries, it could be just as hard if not harder.

The problem with the states’ rights argument is that it frames the issue as state vs. federal rights/power.  That is a false binary.  I am in favor of human rights, the rights of the people.  Using the powers/rights of the state to advance that goal is great, and a great argument for balance of power.  Being in favor of states’ rights is not the same thing at all (in theory or in practice).

Something I thought of on the train, now discuss it in the next four hours: 3-jon’s point about pregnant women not being considered to be rational actors by the larger society is reflected in a lot of anti-choice laws and rules that presume women who think they want abortions must be under the influence of those crazy pregnancy hormones, and need to have it made clear to them what they’re doing, and need some time to think about it.