…because you didn't really expect respect for organized religion here, did you?
- With yet another ill-advised dissolve-before-full-briefing-let-alone-judgment misuse of the misnamed "shadow docket," the Supreme Court has (again) implicitly declared the primacy of one clause of the First Amendment: The fundamental right to engage in bad parenting. This is well beyond any right to direct the purely religious upbringing of children, because it's not at all about anything said — let alone instructed — to children (many of whom are old enough to have paying jobs outside the family).† It's about what is, or isn't, said about those children to the parents. And what the Court should have been asking itself is the motivation not of the school systems in prohibiting this, but of the children in not feeling free to discuss these matters with their parents — the very rationale for secrecy.
Too often, that rationale of those protected by confidentiality laws — indeed, those least able to otherwise protect themselves — is avoiding expected abuse (even if consciously they can't, or won't, express that). It's abuse often rationalized via purported religious imperatives, but it's still abuse to so thoroughly terrorize one's children that they expect such severe consequences and can rationalize a need for confidentiality to discuss a critical aspect of their still-forming identities… and can't do so at home. Prohibiting school employees from communicating a "nonconformance" to the parents still leaves those children free to discuss that same nonconformance with those same parents… unless they can't, because the anticipated consequences of seeking guidance and approval from those parents are subjectively too severe. I am not entirely certain what that is, other than or in addition to "bad parenting"; I am entirely certain that it's not "free exercise of religion."
- So the former governor of one of those Dakotas is out at the Gehaimstaatssicherheitsbüro. Good riddance, although I'm unsure that the not-yet-confirmed-or-even-formally-nominated replacement is much of an improvement. Any rumors that this firing resulted, even in part, from inability to recruit and train K-9 units for ICE are just rumors. And if there are no such rumors, there should be.
- Speaking of misguided fascists who lived for years on something unrelated to their actual "job"… Pound is perhaps the paradigmatic, albeit far from unique, example of why taking policy or hiring advice from people in the arts (for anything except the arts) is a baaaaad idea. And I'm specifically thinking of a former President when I say that.
- If you want a preview of what we can very likely expect to have happen after any "externally-instigated regime change" removing a true monster from power in Iran, take a look at Libya (and this article describes the polite, based-on-open-sources version). Or, better yet, don't… and don't pretend this is anything other than commercial-interest bullshit left over from 1953. If there's one thing that we should have learned by now, it's that human nature abhors an abuse-of-power vacuum and will rush to fill it — usually to overflowing.
- On a much, much cheerier note, the Tokyo High Court has seen through the religious justifications and rejected status as a "religion" for the Unification Church. Note that this does not impair any right to exercise — just tax-exempt (and related economic) advantages.
† Maybe a few more judges, or even lawyers — let alone legislators — need some experience dealing even second-hand with the consequences of extreme parental displeasure at a child's decision inconsistent with parental… guidance, indoctrination, sometimes brainwashing. Not all that long ago, the frequent nonconformance target was race (although there were certainly other subtexts in there). One wonders how this Court would have approached a California statute that prevented school personnel from reporting the race, ethnicity, or nationality of students' dance partners to parents…