Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie

@audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app

85955 Followers 1690 Following

Words at ballsandstrikes.org, and even more words in The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back Out now at tinyurl.com/originalismtrap !

screenshotted excerpt from a court opinion, linked in article, reading as follows:

Approximately two hours and 45 minutes after defendant invoked his right to counsel, Beasley returned. Beasley did not address defendant or provide him with information about efforts to locate an attorney. Beasley was accompanied by a uniformed officer who removed defendant’s handcuffs and then had defendant turn around so that he could handcuff defendant with his arms behind his back. This exchange followed:

Defendant: Where . . . where my lawyer?

Beasley: You don’t got one . . . so . . .

Defendant: Wait . . . huh?

Beasley: You don’t have a lawyer. You got one?

Defendant: No . . . I . . . you said . . .

Beasley: We tried to get . . . we tried to call one. Ain’t nobody
available and you ain’t got no money . . . so . . .

Defendant: Yeah I do. The money that I came in with. You can’t
use . . . that?

Beasley: I can’t use that money.

Defendant: Aww come on.

screenshotted paragraph from the linked article, reading as follows:

Thirty-two years after the publication of Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, the Rev. Jacob Gruber, a Methodist minister, stood trial for inciting the enslaved to mutiny with his sermon at a camp meeting in Maryland. More than 3,000 congregants, including about 400 Black people, most of them enslaved, gathered to listen to Gruber preach from Proverbs 14:34, “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” According to one witness, the minister denounced slavery as a “national sin” and called attention to “a great inconsistency in holding the Declaration of Independence in one hand and a bloody whip in the other, and the blood streaming from a negro’s back, literally cut to pieces.” At Gruber’s trial, one of his attorneys delivered a brilliant opening statement on freedom of speech and the Methodists’ obligation to oppose slavery. He also turned to the Declaration of Independence to criticize human bondage, which he argued had been imposed on the American people by the British “while we were yet in a state of colonial vassalage.” Slavery, the lawyer told the court, was “a blot on our national character, and every real lover of freedom, confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away. … And until it shall be accomplished: until the time shall come when we can point without a blush, to the language held in the Declaration of Independence, every friend of humanity will seek to lighten the galling chain of slavery, and better, to the utmost of his power, the wretched condition of the slave.” Gruber was acquitted of all charges.

Photo of a sign in the museum reading as follows:

A Dorsal View: Etymology and Origins

The human backside has been known by many names across cultures and languages. In Old English, the nether region of livestock and humans was referred to using the Germanic and Old French-derived haunches, which combined the buttocks and thighs. In the late eighteenth century, this area was euphemized as the French derrière for "back part, rear."

Today, one might hear ass, backside, batty, booty, bottom, bum, bumper, buns, butt, heinie, rump, seat, tush, tuchus- and the list continues. As many words for this body part exist as the emotions it evokes, a reflection of an undeniable societal fixation.

The rear end began featuring prominently in art during ancient times. In 300 B.C.E., the philosopher Aristotle, who sought to define the "highest good," claimed the sphere to be the perfect and most beautiful form. This set the stage for images of dorsal views to come. Three hundred years later, an early nude statue was created and titled Venus Callipyge, or "Venus of the beautiful buttocks" in Greek. The dorsal view continues to capture artists' attention, their interests ranging from anatomical study to aesthetic allure.

Venus Callipyge. 1st or 2nd century B.C.E. Marble. National Archaeological Museum, Naples. (Photo: ho visto nina volare)

4 panel Bors comic. Panel 1 features woman looking at her phone and saying "My GAWD these Trump people are racist " a dude in a MAGA hat pops out from the corner and says "That attitude is what's *pushing me to be racist*!"

In Panel 2, the woman asks "Say what?" And the exasperated MAGA hat guy says "Might as well! You say I'm a Nazi so, fine, I'll be a Nazi if that makes you so happy"

In Panel 3, the woman, looking somewhat distressed, says "it... doesn't." MAGA hat guy is already picking out what looks like a military-style jacket, and he says "I bought this Waffen SS uniform for Halloween. You'll cry 'offensive' so maybe I'll just wear it every day."

In Panel 4, guy is giving himself a buzz cut while getting a swastika tattoo, and he says, "I just hate to do this. I feel bullied, really."

Screenshot from Mark's article about a recent ruling by Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins, reading as follows:

The Roberts court, Eddins declared, “sees only white. It refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect. The freed people, their descendants, and all others denied equal citizenship. It turns its back on what is in plain sight. The Fourteenth Amendment is not colorblind. It never was.” He continued:

The court calls the Constitution colorblind while engineering the dilution of Black votes, the unraveling of hard-fought civil rights remedies, and the erasure of Black history. That is not blindness. That is white sight, by design. A Constitution interpreted this way is not colorblind. It is whatever the court needs it to be. A way to advance its partisan project.

Peculiar wedding photo, taken in front of a bright orange curtain, of, on the left, Julia Allison, wearing a sort of hot pink and black lacy bralette with a large hot pink skirt that kinda starts corsetty but quickly expands into poofiness, along with lacy black gloves; and on the right, Harvard Law prof Noah Feldman, who is wearing a hot pink suit and tie with a white shirt. He also has a black mask strapped over his eyes; she has a similar masquerade ball type mask on a stick in front of her face. And, importantly, he has a BIG OL FUCKIN SNAKE DRAPED OVER HIS SHOULDERS?

screenshotted paragraph excerpted from the linked article, with the first two sentences highlighted in green, reading as follows:

In addition to all the factual errors, this is simply not how due process works. Miller’s claim is that people should not get due process because they broke the law, but this puts the cart before the horse: Only through due process can a judge determine whether anyone actually broke the law. Furthermore, the Due Process Clause does not protect only citizens, or only law-abiding citizens, or only law-abiding people with lawful immigration status. It protects people. And no matter how much it may upset Miller and his ilk, immigrants are, in fact, people who have rights under the Constitution, as the Supreme Court has long recognized. “Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a person in any ordinary sense of that term,” wrote Justice William Brennan in 1982 in Plyler v. Doe. “Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as persons guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.”

screenshotted excerpt of the linked article reading as follows:

It is reasonable for Cornyn and Tillis to want real assurances that the slush fund is dead. But doing so overlooks the problems with Blanche’s creation of the slush fund in the first place. Earlier this week, a federal judge found that Blanche’s actions in Trump v. IRS reflected an abdication of his responsibility to “zealously defend” the interests of the United States. The judge had a copy of the court’s opinion sent to the New York bar, which is currently conducting disciplinary proceedings following an ethics complaint about Blanche.

In other words, a couple of Republicans have mild doubts over whether Blanche is qualified to be the top attorney in the country. They should have strong doubts over whether he’s qualified to be an attorney at all.

screenshot of an exchange in the women-in-the-family group chat

I send a picture of myself, taken from about chest up. i'm wearing a burnt orange tank top and nice earrings and smiling, and my hair is tightly coiled. I say "I have a call this morning and I realized I didn't quite remember if it was being video recorded or not, so I made myself look halfway decent today just in case lol"

Nneka replies saying "Is that a pajama top I see" with a laughing emoji. She then said "Im going to bed, night night" (she's in a different time zone rn)

Mama replies "Pj top I see"

indignant, I reply, "It is not! Just a tank!"

screenshotted text reading as follows, and with asterisks to indicate italics in the image:

Either way, the stakes remind me of a question I once asked Graham on a long flight over Central Asia. At what point in his career, I wondered, had he gathered the boldness to assert himself so overtly in foreign policy?

"When I was first elected to the House," he recalled, "I looked for the *they.* *They* who run things. *They* who know how things really work. *They* who know what they are doing. But I couldn't find the *they.*" After that, he went on, “I went to the Senate. But there was still no *they.* And then I started to get invited to the White House, and to closed-door briefings, and to meetings with top officials. No *they.*" "What I finally realized," he concluded, "is that there is no *they.* There is only *we*, and we usually don't know what the fuck we're doing."

meme of dude in a suit with head bowed in prayer saying "Jesus, I see what you've done for other people, and I want that for me."

screenshotted paragraph excerpted from the quote-skeeted article (also linked below) reading:

But Roberts’s legal analysis was limited to a single sentence that left much unsaid. The World War II internment camps held both citizens and noncitizens, for example, and Roberts’s opinion did not say if it is “objectively unlawful” to shuffle noncitizens into concentration camps—or to torture facilities in El Salvador. The Court did not say if putting citizens into camps is “objectively unlawful” if race is one of multiple reasons for confinement, but not the sole reason. And the Court did not say if camps are “objectively unlawful” if race is the sole basis for confinement, but the president did not say so explicitly. For people living under a white supremacist government, that would be a useful thing to know.

https://ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/korematsu-trump-v-jgg-john-roberts/

image of Captain Holt in Brooklyn 99, yelling, in response to someone saying that he's already told a story many times, "And you'll hear it again!"

Photo of me with my hands on my hips and a 'youre annoying' type smile on my face. I'm wearing my new shirt, which is short sleeved and made out of this textural knit linen, which gives it a really interesting structure, and it has a sort of tannish/goldish metally hue imo. I think it's neat!

2 panel meme from The Office where the first image is of Dwight looking pleased, not knowing that Angela is lurking immediately behind him; and the second panel is Dwight jumping and exclaiming 'Fuck!' as he's startled to see Angela right next to him, slightly looking up so as to make direct eye contact

In the first image, Dwight is labeled "Everyone waiting for the official announcement that Mitch McConnell has died" and in the second image, Angela is labeled "Lindsey Graham dying"

Screenshotted sentence from NYT article, linked below, reading as follows:

At the center of the fulcrum is Mr. Rubio, dubbed by other officials as “viceroy,” the title given to the powerful governors who ruled the Spanish empire until Venezuela and most of its other provinces rebelled and won independence in the early 19th century.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/us/politics/how-marco-rubio-runs-venezuela.html

screenshot of a post in my apartment residents' facebook group

someone posted a photo of a goose standing in the road, right off of the front sidewalk [there's another sidewalk in the background, on which a couple stands with groceries]

OP said "This guy is out our door on [redacted street.] does someone know who is the right place to call? I really don't know" followed by a frowny face emoji

Someone then replied saying "Goosebusters" followed by one of those red circle with a line through emojis indicating NO and then a goose emoji

I laugh emoji reacted

screenshot of two paragraphs from the linked article, "Reconstructing the Reconstruction," with the second paragraph highlighted. text reads:

Our argument is that the Court’s methodology weaponizes claims of adherence to history and Reconstruction while avoiding America’s more ugly history of enlisting Black women’s bodies in the service of forced sex, coerced birth, and involuntary reproduction. The Court harnesses the tools of liberation—the Reconstruction—while backsliding on civil liberties and civil rights. This method, which lacks historical rigor and commitment to the rule of law, not only poses a harm to abortion rights, but also to other concerns regarding sex, race,
gender, religion, and class equality. Despite its blistering critiques and condemnation of Roe and Casey, the Dobbs Court poorly performs its alleged historical review and, in doing so, exposes its craft and deceit. The originalism to which the Court adheres allows the country’s early penholders—land-holding white men—to dictate today’s rights and liberties. In doing so, it ignores the powerful and important narratives of others whose voices may have been unheard but were nevertheless pivotal to our nation’s “history and tradition."

In our view, Dobbs is a burning house. The opinion presents a powerful warning about the instability of the rule of law on the Roberts Court and the weaponization of history as a proxy for dismantling hard-won civil liberties and civil rights protected by the Reconstruction Amendments. It reflects an abrogation of the principles of fair and transparent legal process and adjudication, equality before law, respect for individual rights, accountability, avoidance of arbitrariness, and an independent judiciary that are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

screenshot from the quote-skeeted interview, with questions from Isaac Chotiner and responses from Elie Honig:

What would be cases where you think Kavanaugh and Barrett voted against their preferences?

Barrett crossed over, so to speak, on the tariffs case, the National Guard case, the mail-in ballots case, and the mifepristone case.

Why do we think these cases are necessarily against her political views?

She’s a staunch, longtime conservative.

Of course. But I can find conservatives who hate tariffs and think the Federal Reserve should be independent, right? Or who think that Trump is being stupid on mail-in ballots.

All of those opinions are certainly against the position of either the Trump Administration, the R.N.C., or the Republican powers that be. And by the way, I would add, birthright, of course, to that as well, yeah.

That’s the reason I brought up the nineteen-eighties Reagan Justice Department. That could be the type of conservatives they are.

It may well be.

screenshotted excerpt from the linked article, reading as follows:

The high-schoolers and alumni explained that windows have been the preferred method of sneaking onto the premises. One girl said that last year a security guard grabbed her shoe as she hurled herself through an open window. She managed to evade capture. Later, she returned to retrieve her shoe and found that it had been kindly left for her.

Creative methods for sneaking in abound, including pretending to be a pizza delivery driver or desperately needing to use a restroom.

As the high-schoolers navigated from one tent to another through the basement of a dorm building, a group of slim blondes emerged. They told us they had been hiding in the laundry room for an hour. It was unclear if this was necessary. They seemed giddy, delighted by the mere act of rebellion.

Screenshotted excerpt of Query XVIII that exceeds the alt text limit so here are some select quotes:

...There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal...The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities...And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other...can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever...But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.

Photo of the view outside my window, which shows nice blue skies and some scattered clouds over lush green trees and--oh, wait, what's that? Fuckin 7 military helicopters dotting the sky and whirring by

screenshotted excerpt from the linked article, reading as follows, and with the sentences after 'Trump' highlighted in blue:

And the country is still fighting to reject authoritarianism, with millions of Americans taking to the streets to again declare “No Kings.” It would be easy to mistake the list of grievances created by the former colonists, cataloging the injuries inflicted on them by the King of Great Britain and Ireland, for the to-do list of President Donald Trump. “Obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners” and “the administration of justice”? Check. Sending “swarms of officers to harass our people” and “transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences”? Check. “Cutting off our trade with all parts of the world” and “imposing taxes on us without our consent”? Check. (No, really—give us our tariff-refund checks.)

Archived version of article available at https://archive.ph/nmYpt

Photo of me sitting on the ground, with one leg tucked in towards me and the other sprawled out, carefully investigating a puzzle piece. In front of me on a wooden board are hundreds of multicolored puzzle pieces, with bright aquas and reds and whites especially popping against the wood

screenshot from a discussion about Section 2 of the VRA and Brnovich on p.129 of The Originalism Trap ( in the "Stealing Our Elections" chapter) reading as follows:

If you actually wanted to know what the drafters intended, they’re still alive and would be happy to tell you. And in fact, that’s exactly what they did. A group of former staffers to both Democratic and Republican senators, along with other leaders who worked on the 1982 amendments, submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court with the goal of providing “an accurate account...of Congress’ understanding of the amendments at the time of enactment.” In it, the amici emphasized Congress’s consistent understanding that Section 2 applies “broadly and pragmatically to root out a wide range of procedures that perpetuate discrimination.” The amici elaborated that they always understood and intended Section 2 to reach all facially neutral regulations—including time, place, and manner restrictions—“without a shadow of a doubt.” [this next sentence is highlighted] Your
guess as to where the Court’s conclusion that a whole category of law
was exempt came from is as good as mine; I can only assume Justice
Alito pulled it out of someplace unmentionable. The Supreme Court’s conservatives present themselves as originalists to masquerade as faithful executors of the law, but are quick to discard originalism if it would yield results contrary to their regressive policy goals.

The Brnovich Court further prescribed that judges must consider
how many opportunities a state provides to vote overall when determining whether any single provision is unlawful. Much like the
Court’s choice to channel the VH1 series I Love the ’80s in its first
guidepost, this directive makes little sense. The dissent astutely observed that this factor and the terms of Section 2 are inherently contradictory [it goes on a lil bit from here but im about out of characters]

screenshot of two consecutive posts

first, there's David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social, who posted: cheering for england on the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence is anti-american, anti-liberty, anti-independence, and anti-Irish too. I'm very disappointed in so many of you. :)

then immediately below that, there's Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò ‪@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social‬, who posted: I am - with great, world historical reluctance - officially handing it to Harry Kane

[note that Harry Kane is a striker on the English national team who just delivered England a victory]

a screenshotted excerpt from the NYT conversation linked in the previous post

Kate Shaw: There’s no way to talk about this term without discussing Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and sent state legislatures racing to redraw their voting maps just months out from the midterms. Since you’re both experts on the emergency or so-called shadow docket, I want to focus on what came after the opinion in Callais — in particular the Supreme Court order in Allen v. Milligan greenlighting Alabama’s use of a map that the lower court had found was the result of intentional racial discrimination. Why reach out so aggressively in that case?

William Baude: [and I've highlighted the first sentence here] I wish we knew. That said, I think it was Callais that functionally overruled Allen v. Milligan (despite implausibly claiming otherwise). And I also wish we knew why it took the court so long to get to Callais. In that sense, the court made some of the timing problems for itself.

screenshot from a conversation published in the NYT between three law professors

Kate Shaw kicks the convo off saying, Let’s start with the big picture. Have the emphatic six in the six-to-three splits that have dominated the last few weeks of decisions made clear that this court is one devoted — and increasingly nakedly so — to an ideological project?

William Baude then replies, saying--and I've highlighted this part--"No way."

selfie of me smiling, taken from about chest-height up, as I sit in front of a bookshelf on which I have strategically placed several copies of The Originalism Trap. i'm wearing a red dress and lip gloss, and my curly hair is curlin

screenshotted excerpt reading:

Of the eight justices who previously made up the Gobitis majority, two had retired before the Court heard Barnette, three changed
their minds, and three were left to dissent. The lone dissenter in
Gobitis, Harlan Stone, had also become chief justice by the time of
Barnette. The Barnette opinion was written by Justice Robert Jackson, but some legal scholars contend that credit for the decision
really belongs to “those who refused to accept the Court’s 1940 pronouncements on the meaning of the Constitution, minority rights,
and religious liberty.” There is evidence for this assessment in the
opinion itself. The decision cites several law journal articles that
were written by people who weren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses and nonetheless opposed Gobitis. “Many citizens who do not share these religious views hold such a compulsory rite to infringe constitutional
liberty of the individual,” Jackson wrote. Further, contemporary
records now reveal that earlier drafts of the decision included references to the violence perpetrated against Witnesses in both Nazi
Germany and the United States, as well as the Justice Department’s
public statements opposing the Gobitis ruling. This recognition of
outside influence was removed at the explicit urging of Chief Justice
Stone to avoid “the impression that our judgment of the legal question was affected by the disorders which had followed the Gobitis
decision.”

[this bit is highlighted now] A common thread unites these examples of legal change around flag salute mandates, anti-gay discrimination, and segregated buses. They all show that actors outside of the Court and Congress can use nontraditional channels to change what the Constitution means. Barnette in particular demonstrates that justices’ decisions are informed by more than their own sterile analyses of the law, despite them pretending otherwise. People shape what’s possible.

[the passage goes on but the highlight ends there, & I'm out of characters]

To all the readers out there:
My deep love for Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, the subjects of my 2014 biography Charity and Sylvia, has kept me silent, up to this point, about Tillie Walden's new graphic novel by the same title. Charity and Sylvia's story has been so deeply meaningful to so many people their story has, without exaggeration, saved lives that I've tried to be happy that Walden's book is making their story more widely known, even if she chose to take my title and my cover design as well as my narrative and my research with only a single sentence of acknowledgement at the end of her book in her notes section. Walden's illustrations and storytelling are wonderful, as I told her when she reached out to me during the writing process. It would take nothing away from her hard work to be honest about how it is built on my hard work. But in Walden's publicity tour, she has repeatedly made the claim to have based her book on her extensive research in the archive without acknowledging that her book is, in fact, based on my book. This false representation demands response not only for my sake, but for the sake of all the hard-working historians out there whose work has similarly been taken without credit. No, Walden has not "uncovered a chapter of queer history" in the archives, as her media interviews have claimed. She has adapted my book without credit or compensation, and claimed my research for her own. I don't doubt that Walden spent time looking at letters at the Henry Sheldon Museum, but the story that Walden tells is not to be found there. It is a story that I pieced together from years of visits to at least twenty different archives and locations across the United States, not only in Vermont but in Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and Washington State, as well. This is not just a question of facts but of story: the story of how Charity and Sylvia built a life together based in tailoring, struggled with their faith, and maintained relationships with t

screenshot of the final page and a half of Chapter 1 of The Originalism Trap, which reads:

Justice Alito would say that the Constitution means only what people would have understood it to mean at the time it was written. He is wrong. But hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent over the course of decades to convince us that legitimate constitutional interpretation is primarily the province of white men in robes who graduated from Yale Law School and use Ouija boards to communicate with the spirits of dead slaveholders. I decline to be bullied by ghosts any longer. And I invite you to do the same. The hypocrisies of the Framers need not be our own. By being honest about the law—both its shortcomings and its possibilities—we can discard the harmful originalist model of legal interpretation in favor of a new approach tied to underused constitutional principles like freedom from oppression, due process, and equal protection under law.

Dispensing with originalism’s artifice of legitimacy is our first step toward reclaiming the Constitution. The Supreme Court seeks to quell public revolt—even while vindicating the interests of the powerful over the rights of the marginalized with alarming regularity—by presenting its chosen outcomes as eminently reasonable. Such decisions are rational and objective, they assure us, because originalism says our rights and liberties are frozen in the 1800s. But our country’s founding documents are aspirational, and we can reject the originalist command to stop striving. In the next few chapters, I interrogate how originalism tries to limit what control we have over our lives (in due process and equal protection law), what say we have in our communities (in election law), and who deserves to have a say (in the census, an underappreciated but absolutely essential part of understanding how our democracy works—or doesn’t). And through inclusive constitutionalism, I show how we can demand better for our democracy and for ourselves.

Screenshot of dude who replied to my post saying "ChatGPT respectfully disagrees. Your Red Queen Constitution has a different outcome, but Mullin was probably correct. Originalists accept that COTUS doesn't precipitate the answer we might prefer." Dude also shared a screenshot of him asking ChatGPT to analyze the briefs filed in a case and tell him who should have won and why

Screenshot of texts I received from mama this morning, reading as follows:

You need to make an anthology of all of your articles. Put them in categories. I assume you would have to get permission from all the different places that you previously published with [I laugh emoji reacted to this]
Any way, good 250 article. I enjoyed it. I loved the Douglass sections and you were quite clever the way you inserted the Originalism Trap. [I heart emoji reacted to this]

😊 [I heart emoji reacted to this, too]

flyer proposing direct payments to Black people in NJ (statewide financial reparations), with three examples

Paul, a descendant of enslaved people in NJ and/or free Black people in NJ during slavery, would receive compensation for:
- period of enslavement in NJ
- period of Jim Crow in NJ
- post-Fair Housing Act (1968) harms in NJ
- to close racial wealth gap in NJ

Whitney, a descendant of Black people not enslaved in NJ or living in NJ during slavery whose family moved to the state during the Great Migration (early 1900s, before 1968), would *not receive compensation for the period of enslavement in NJ, but *would receive compensation for
- period of Jim Crow in NJ
- post-Fair Housing Act (1968) harms in NJ
- to close racial wealth gap in NJ

And Lauren, a descendant of Black people not enslaved in NJ or living in NJ during slavery whose family moved to NJ after the Fair Housing Act of 1968, would *not receive compensation for the period of enslavement or Jim Crow in NJ, but *would receive compensation for
- post-Fair Housing Act (1968) harms in NJ
- to close racial wealth gap in NJ

screenshot from the linked article reading as follows:

Sex already has plenty of consequences, to be clear: It can produce satisfaction, companionship, joy, and yes, sometimes, children. The right’s position is that only the last one matters: One man and one woman should produce children (ideally white Christian children) who will then be raised by the mother in the home. And the point of law is to compel conformity with this narrow vision.

The problem conservatives have with sex is not that sex lacks consequences. It is that people are choosing the consequences that are right for them. Wanting sex to be “dangerous”—in a bad, reproductive coercion way; not a fun, BDSM way—is to treat pregnancy and children as an appropriate punishment for the offense of having any sex at all.

A war on sex is undoubtedly unpopular—Republicans might as well declare war on puppies or ice cream. But the conservative legal movement has never cared about the will of democratic majorities. And since it captured the courts, it doesn’t have to.

screenshot of my results from https://britmonkey.com/2020s-political-compass/ showing 88% woke v 12% chud, 36% techbro v 64% neo-luddite, 47% hopepilled v 53% doomer (that one's a surprise to me, im a hopeful person!), and 84% Davos v 16% Dubai, which led me to a "Closest Match" oooffffff.......

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani! aaaayyy

screenshotted excerpt of the top of p.15 of The Originalism Trap, with the first sentence highlighted in blue. excerpt reads as follows

Originalism is regressive by nature: an outsized focus on the alleged original meaning of the Constitution at the time of drafting means the rights of modern-day individuals—and the ability of legislatures to protect those rights—must be constrained by the outdated concerns of the Framers, like keeping British soldiers out of their living rooms. Former justice Stephen Breyer’s dissenting opinion in Bruen spotlighted how originalism binds lawmakers from meeting the present needs of their constituents. Even if the justices were trained historians (which, remember, they aren’t), Breyer argued that “laws addressing repeating crossbows, launcegays, dirks, dagges, skeines, stilladers, and other ancient weapons will be of little help to courts confronting modern problems.” This, to be sure, was the plan all along. The originalist ideology declares that random historical windows of conservatives’ choosing are society’s high-water marks, and we are constitutionally powerless to surpass them without formal amendment. The core function of originalism is providing aesthetically pleasing legal flourishes around the uglier idea that things shouldn’t get better than they’ve been. And if originalism is left unchecked, things will keep getting worse.

Book is available at https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-originalism-trap-how-extremists-stole-the-constitution-and-how-we-the-people-can-take-it-back-madiba-k-dennie/e138f3ec1f8a65b1

screenshot of a new text from Dad to Fam Bam reading as follows:

Solomon The Wise has ruled that the representations of Madiba and Musukeba are meritorius [sic] and tne [sic] claims of NARCO- TERRORISTS AND GRAND-MOTHER SUPPORTISTS for extra apportionments of juc cannot be sustained.

Hence Madiba wull [sic] be AWARDED SIX JUCS.

KEBA WILL BE AWARDED EIGHT.

THE TERRRORISTSVGET [sic] THREE EACH.

AND THE NARCO YERRORIST [sic again lol] SUPPORTING GRANDMOTHER GET ΤΕΝ.

THAT is the final ruling. In addendum, the holder of juc have more in SVG to address future claims!

Audaciously, mommy then replied: I better get at least 12 or you would meet a terrorist! [I wow emoji reacted to this]

screenshot of a text in the family group chat ("Fam Bam") from Dad, which begins as follows:

The ju-cs have been awarded on the basis of THE MOST CREDITS ATTAINED BY VIRTUE OF SENIORITY AND OBLIGATIONS.

12 go to Deborah Dennie with maximum credits based on seniority and obligations.

8 go to Nneka whose obligations now extend to taking over my ticket buying responsibilities

6 go to Keba for srcond [sic] in seniority and has responsibilities for THE TWIN FORCE OF NATURE IN HER HOUSE.

4 go to Diba for being third in seniority and with no responsibility other than to THE US SUPREME COURT

4 go to [redacted name of a smol child] for being an ABSOLUTE TERRORIST

4 go to [redacted name of another small child] for being her perfect COMRADE IN ARMS.

excerpted screenshot from the linked article, reading as follows:

Throughout American history, Black people have transformed law and society by contending in both word and deed that the abstract principles in the Declaration and the Constitution serve—and must serve—the tangible purpose of fostering an equitable multiracial democracy. In the decades immediately preceding and following the Civil War, for instance, tens of thousands of Black people attended hundreds of political gatherings in which they organized for racial justice, including by making broad claims about the scope of their constitutional rights.
As early as 1844, for example, delegates at the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Ohio pronounced it legally wrong that Black people were “shut out from the means of education, notwithstanding by the plain and indubitable language of the Constitution, every inhabitant of the State is entitled to those privileges.” In 1848, Black Philadelphians demanded entry through “the doors of the Constitution” as equal citizens by virtue of their being born in the United States. “If we are asked what evidence we bring to sustain our qualifications for citizenship, we will offer them certificates of our BIRTH and NATIVITY,” they avowed. At a National Convention in 1855, Black people declared that slavery unconstitutionally deprived them of liberty “without due process of law.” As a contemporary newspaper recounted, “The thing is settled, and the Constitution is Anti-Slavery, the ‘public sentiment’ of the Convention having so declared it!”

archived copy of article available at https://archive.ph/nmYpt#selection-1307.0-1322.0

screenshot of 3 paragraphs from the linked article, w/ final paragraph highlighted in green from second sentence onwards. excerpt reads:

Lee’s case is the second time in three weeks that a splintered Court rebuffed one of Alabama’s attempts to play fast and loose with the Eighth Amendment. Alabama appealed to the Court last year after lower courts ruled that a man on death row was intellectually disabled and therefore cannot be executed. The issue in that case was how courts should determine whether a person is intellectually disabled. The Court heard oral argument in Hamm v. Smith in December, but on May 21, the Court dismissed the petition as improvidently granted, which means the lower court order prohibiting the execution stands.

The dismissal of Hamm v. Smith was a per curiam order, which means it was attributed to the whole Court. But it clearly caused a lot of division: Alito wrote a dissent, joined by Thomas in full, and Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts in part. The four of them argued that defendants bear the burden of proving that they have an IQ of 70 or less in order to be spared from execution, and that an IQ test result of at least 70 should be a can-kill cutoff point. In the portions of the opinion that Roberts and Gorsuch did not join, Alito and Thomas contended that the lower courts “did not apply any defensible method” to determine the defendant’s IQ.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a concurrence, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, showing that Alito’s discussion of the Court’s precedents and the scientific consensus on how to evaluate IQ scores was “incomplete and potentially misleading.” Meanwhile, Thomas dissented alone, calling for the Court to overrule its precedent prohibiting the execution of disabled people. According to Thomas, the Eighth Amendment was “originally understood” to only ban cruel and unusual methods of punishment. “Executing someone with a particular IQ does not implicate a method of execution at all,” he said.

Hotel mirror selfie of me lookin a lil cute today, with my hand on my hip. I'm wearing a dress, with sleeves a bit past the elbow, that's white on the top half and black on the bottom half, but with a black and white criss cross in the middle. The top also has a zipper. I'm wearing black flats with a gold chain on em, big dangly earrings. My hair is big and curly, and my lips are glossy and smiley

Photo of my hand holding up the program for Truth and Repair NJ: A Juneteenth Reparations Convening

The program has a sankofa symbol on it, and I'm holding it up in front of a New Jersey Institute for Social Justice banner

My thumb (with lilac nail polish!) is also conveniently positioned over the address of the event lol

screenshot from the end of the article, quote-skeeted in the previous post, reading as follows:

Rattled by the experience, Mohamed Hussein isn’t sure what it means for his politics going forward.

“Many, many hear these things, the messaging, and think that they’re dog whistles,” Hussein said. “I was hopeful that I’d come here and get a clarification. What we got was kind of a confirmation.”

screenshotted excerpt from The Originalism Trap, which reads as follows (and starts with a quote from Alito's opinion in Dobbs):

“Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on
precedents that do not concern abortion.” But last time I checked,
one plus one equals two, and Alito’s statements don’t add up.

Justice Thomas, however, did the math. In his separate concurring opinion, he urged the Court to take the next logical step and overrule a slew of cases including Griswold v. Connecticut, which decriminalized the use of contraception for married couples, Lawrence v. Texas, which decriminalized private, consensual intimacy between people of the same sex, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized the legality of marriage between people of the same sex. Justice Thomas’s omission of Loving v. Virginia, which recognized the legality of interracial marriages like his own, is not subtle, but Loving may be vulnerable to the same reasoning threatening other landmark rights-protecting cases.

screenshot of an excerpt from The Originalism Trap reading as follows:

Virginia defended the legality of its anti-miscegenation law on
originalist grounds. The o-word was still not in common usage, but
the analysis is unmistakable: the state argued at length that the
meaning of the Constitution is fixed at the time of adoption and
courts must give effect to the intent of the Framers and the people
who adopted it. If one accepts that premise, they continued, there’s
no constitutional problem with criminalizing interracial marriage.

Screenshot from the quote-skeeted article reading as follows:

Mariska Hargitay is such a devoted Knicks fan that she decided to sprint to Madison Square Garden after a two-show day on Broadway to make it to the 8:30 p.m. ET game.

“I took four minutes off the running time of my show, and I knew the traffic would be crazy, so I sprinted from the Hudson Theater on 44th and 6th to MSG,” Hargitay writes in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “But I knew everything was going to be alright, because I was wearing my Jalen Brunson Kobe 5 Protos that Jalen gave me a few months ago. But I’m not gonna lie, the ten block sprint after a 2-show day was no joke.”

screenshotted excerpt from the linked article reading as follows:

Johnson, now around 55 years old, was scheduled to be released on July 19, 2028. And he already started making plans for what he would do as a free man: He would get a job at an electrical company, having passed West Virginia’s electrician license exam while behind bars; he would publish a book to deter others from crime; and he would ask his longtime partner and the mother of his daughter to marry him.

But on Monday, the Supreme Court vacated the Fourth Circuit’s decision. United States v. Johnson, a one-paragraph, unreasoned order issued over the dissent of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, remands Johnson’s case back to the Fourth Circuit for “further consideration” in light of Fernandez v. United States and Rutherford v. United States, two cases the Court decided late last month.

Legally speaking, this makes little sense: Fernandez and Rutherford both ask and answer different questions than the one at issue in Johnson’s case, so the Court’s decisions shouldn’t actually have any bearing on whether Johnson can leave prison. Practically speaking, it makes all the sense in the world: The Supreme Court will find any excuse to keep people in prison, and if they can’t find one, they’ll make one up.

screenshotted excerpt of 2 paragraphs from the linked article, with two sentences (beginning with 'in 1848') highlighted in blue. text reads as follows:

Throughout American history, Black people have transformed law and society by contending in both word and deed that the abstract principles in the Declaration and the Constitution serve—and must serve—the tangible purpose of fostering an equitable multiracial democracy. In the decades immediately preceding and following the Civil War, for instance, tens of thousands of Black people attended hundreds of political gatherings in which they organized for racial justice, including by making broad claims about the scope of their constitutional rights.

As early as 1844, for example, delegates at the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Ohio pronounced it legally wrong that Black people were “shut out from the means of education, notwithstanding by the plain and indubitable language of the Constitution, every inhabitant of the State is entitled to those privileges.” In 1848, Black Philadelphians demanded entry through “the doors of the Constitution” as equal citizens by virtue of their being born in the United States. “If we are asked what evidence we bring to sustain our qualifications for citizenship, we will offer them certificates of our BIRTH and NATIVITY,” they avowed. At a National Convention in 1855, Black people declared that slavery unconstitutionally deprived them of liberty “without due process of law.” As a contemporary newspaper recounted, “The thing is settled, and the Constitution is Anti-Slavery, the ‘public sentiment’ of the Convention having so declared it!”

screenshotted excerpt from the linked article reading as follows:

Forcing immigrant detainees to work for their captors isn’t just exploitative. It’s unconstitutional. The Thirteenth Amendment explicitly prohibits slavery and indentured servitude, except “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” But immigration detention is a form of civil confinement. People held in detention centers are simply waiting—behind bars—for the resolution of their immigration cases. This is punitive in practice, but not in law, as they are incarcerated, but not in prison. Only 12 percent of the people who have been detained at Delaney Hall since it opened have ever been convicted of anything.

Photo of Mama's plate, which is mostly empty but for a few leftover shrimp, and a PILE OF PEAS which she picked out of her fried rice smh lol

Screenshot of an exchange in the women-in-the-family group chat. Recall that yesterday mama "grudgingly" admitted that my hair looked cute, as I had not done it in her "preferred style."

On a whim today, I decided to give mama what she wants, and fro'd out my hair a bit, with a slight part. I took a couple smiling selfies and sent them along, saying, "Are you satisfied mommy"

Mommy replied saying "Close" [Nneka laugh reacted to this] and she then said "Lol"

I replied with an incredulous keysmash, 'Mslzklwm CLOSE?"

Mama then said "That's not a full fro" [I laugh emoji reacted to this]

Photo of a cute black and brown lil mutt (likely some kind of chiweenie), perched on the top of a couch cushion--like where people's heads are supposed to be if they're sitting down and leaning back on the couch. The pup's posture (slightly shrinking in to himself) and his big eyes and downturned ears all look like 'ruh roh, I've been caught in the act!'

Screenshot of a message exchange in the women-in-the-family group chat

Keba (discussing Nneka's dog) said "But he's cute though" to which Mommy replied "Lol. Yep"

Seeing my opportunity, I then said "Speaking of cute" and sent two selfies of me looking mad cute today. I'm wearing a simple fairly high-necked black with my black glasses but with v blingy jewelry -- a big cubic zirconia tennis necklace and matching dangly earrings -- and my hair is absolutely doing their thing, with great volume and curliness. I'm smiling broadly with nice lipgloss on and the light is just right too. I'm feelin myself, clearly

image of text reading as follows:

The Problems with the Wurman-Barnett-Epstein Argument

PART ONE OF TWO

This largely addresses Wurman alone, as Barnett only initiated a NYT op-ed with him and never produced independent scholarship other than a WSJ op-ed. Epstein, similarly, never produced serious work outside an amicus.

1. He misses ligeance as a term of art. He derives a parental-allegiance rule from Coke's Calvin's Case while ignoring the older Anglo-Norman term the sources actually use. Across centuries, ligeance consistently described the natural-born subject as one born within the king's territorial jurisdiction not within a web of parental consent.

2. No Year Books. Wurman claims to reach into the medieval common law to find the origins of alienage but never cites the Year Books - the single largest body of primary records of what English judges (albeit imperfectly) thought. An entire, well-known archive of early legal development goes unexamined.

3. Esterling's Case (1480) is a serious blow. A child born in England to a mother who owed allegiance to an enemy sovereign, the King of Denmark, was treated as a potential natural-born subject, and the judges asked only one question: where was he born? If enemy-alien parentage could not disqualify an English-born child, parental status was never the operative rule.

4. He ignores two decisive episodes. The Roma experience goes untouched: a 1562 statute shielded native-born Roma from expulsion despite their parents' unlawful presence, and Roma children were later baptized and treated as natural-born subjects. The readmission of the Jews and the eighteenth-century landholding opinions go unmentioned entirely. Both cut against his theory.