Supreme Court on Pro-Life Demonstrators and on Hobby Lobby, Hillary's Secret Advisor, News from the Butterfly Garden

News from the Butterfly Garden

It has been an odd year for butterflies.  Monarchs, usually the mainstay of any butterfly garden, are around, but in far fewer numbers than in other years.  To encourage their presence, I have put in some additional milkweed, their larval host plant, in the hopes of some finding a home in my yard. 

But the biggest failure has been the absence of gold rimmed swallowtails.  There were a few around a few months ago, but despite a thriving Dutchman’s Pipe vine (which they usually love to devour and lay eggs upon), I have pretty much counted them out for the summer.

From a plantings standpoint, more successful have been the passiflora subrosa corky vines which have attracted some Broad Winged Zebras (the state butterfly of Florida).  Though I have difficulty locating their caterpillars and chrysalises, these butterflies’ presence indicates that they are around. But even then, sometimes a week or so goes by between their appearances.                                                                                                                                 

Most successful have been the passiflora incarta and passiflora incense vines.  The fragrance of these passion flowers has attracted Gulf Fritillary butterflies and the “egg-caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly” cycle is repeatedly occurring for this species.  Here is a cell phone photo taken a few days ago of a Gulf Fritillary on one of these vines.                                                      

Jack Lippman
                                                        
                                                     
Politics:   Three Hundred Year Old Advice and What's Doing in Mississippi

Here’s an interesting “strategy” from “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” by Baltasar Gracian, a Seventeenth Century Jesuit scholar.  It looks to me as if Hillary Clinton has read this at one time or another.

Gracian and Clinton

“(3) Keep matters in suspense. Successes that are novel win admiration.  Being too obvious is neither useful nor tasteful.  By not declaring yourself immediately you will keep people guessing, especially if your position is important enough to awaken expectations.  Mystery by its very arcaneness causes veneration.  Even when revealing yourself, avoid total frankness, and don’t let everyone look inside you.  Cautious silence is where prudence takes refuge.  Once declared, resolutions are never esteemed, and they lie open to criticism.  It they turn out badly, you will be twice unfortunate.  If you want people to watch and wait on you,  imitate the divinity.” 
 

And while on the subject of giving advice, the folks involved in the Mississippi senate run off election last week certainly seem in need of some.  Even though incumbent Thad Cochran defeated his right wing Tea Party challenger in the Mississippi senate run-off election, the aftermath of the contest amounted to another nail being driven into the lid of the Republican Party’s coffin.  I had previously said that would be the case if challenger Chris McDaniel had won the run-off, but even with Cochran’s victory, the result does not bode well for the G.O.P. McDaniel’s stubborn and bitter refusal to concede, claiming voting irregularities, splits the party even more than his victory would have. 

And this “right wing versus establishment” Republican schism is not limited to Mississippi.  It defeated Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia;  apparently it permeates the entire party.  True, there are conflicts between very liberal Democrats on the left and establishment centrist Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, but they do not come close to ripping their party apart as is the case with Republicans.

Actually, in a state where Democrats are very weak, and the G.O.P. primary is tantamount to being elected, what normally would have been a Democratic constituency came out to vote in the Republican run-off election, recognizing that Cochran was not so far right as was McDaniel, whose history was tinged with racism.  The run-off campaign was run in the gutter, with “dirty tricks” used by both candidates.  In fact, the Mississippi Tea Party leader who had been involved in the McDaniel campaign’s “dirty tricks” has since committed suicide.   It's sad that politics in the United States has reached this point, a level usually found in Third World countries, unused to democracy.                                                                                                     

JL                                                                                                  

                                               
                                                        

Supreme Court Rules Against Pro-Life Demostration Restriction; My Personal Experience with These Folks ... and the Hobby Lobby Decision

In preserving the First Amendment’s freedom of speech guarantees, the Supreme Court this week ruled against Massachusetts' 35 foot limit regarding how close protesters can get to abortion facilities where they demonstrate and attempt to discourage women from entering.  Fortunately, the Court did not rule out all such limits and pointed out that there remain many other legal ways to impose reasonable control of demonstrators, including state laws concerning harassment, intimidation and obstruction. 

The Supreme Court ruled that a 35 foot buffer zone around entrances to clinics was a violation of the First Amendment

While most foes of abortion are reasonable and civil in advocating their pro-life position, often calmly suggesting alternatives to woman seeking an abortion, many of those who are concerned enough to get out there in the street and demonstrate at the clinics are sometimes extreme in their efforts, making it physically difficult for women to enter the facility by talking to them in an direct  "in-your-face" manner.  It is their right to this kind of freedom of speech which the Court defends by saying that Massachusetts goes too far by drawing a “do not cross” line 35 feet from the clinic, keeping demonstrators a bit further away than the distance needed to make a first down in a football game. 

The pro-life people who turn out for such demonstrations are such that while I agree that there should be no restrictions on what they are saying, on their freedom of speech, there should be some kind of constraint on what they do physically, aside from their verbal efforts to dissuade women from entering the clinic.  Often, this indeed involves the harassment, intimidation and obstruction mentioned in the Court's opinion.   A personal experience illustrates what I mean..

Some demonstrators go beyond trying to quietly dissuade women from visiting abortion clinics

About 25 years ago, I had an office on the second floor of a small office building on Long Island.  There was an abortion clinic on the fourth floor, but during the week, I never saw any demonstrators at the building.  One Saturday, I had occasion to visit my office in the morning to pick up some papers.  To my surprise, I found a raucous anti-abortion demonstration going on, with shouting, sign-waving marchers circling the front of the building.  When I went to enter the lobby, I found that the doors had been chained shut by the demonstrators.  Seeing a policeman nearby, I explained that I had to get up to my office.  He told me that would be impossible, but the police were arranging to have someone come with a hacksaw to open the door shortly.  I asked why the demonstrators who had chained the door closed weren’t being arrested, he said the police really didn’t know who did it, but the matter would soon be cleared up.

Within about half an hour, with the lobby door still chained closed, those waiting to get into the building were led by the police to a back door which led through a fitness center on the first floor.  Immediately, some of the demonstrators clustered about the door.  One screamed at me for trying to enter the building and another tried to film me on his camcorder which much to his consternation, I slapped to the ground from out of his hand.  At the door, a man in what appeared to be a monk’s robe tried to bar my entrance.  Ignoring my request to let me go by, he started reciting Hail Marys.  Gingerly, I then nudged my briefcase into his thighs, pushing him back, and entered the building.  When I left it about a half hour later, the chain had been removed but the demonstrators were still there. 

These are the kind of people at whom the Massachusetts 35 foot limit was aimed, not those whose pro-life tactic is simply quiet persuasion.  As is usually the case with most zealots, they are not nice people.  But it is their freedom of speech which the Court is defending, along with yours and mine.  That is understandable since the Court also has defended the right of Nazis to demonstrate in Skokie, Illinois, and really, anti-abortion demonstrators are not quite so objectionable as are Nazis. 

Regardless of what the anti-abortion people are claiming, the Court's ruling had more to do with guaranteeing freedom of speech than being an attempt to remove protection from abortion clinics.  That is why the decision was unanimous.  Nevertheless, although  I cherish the First Amendment, I do disagree with the Court's decision because something more than free speech is involved: the right of a woman to make her own decisions without being the subject of harassment, intimidation and obstruction. 

                                                       *   *   *

 

And in regard to the Court's decision in the Hobby Lobby case, it is reassuring that they limited it to closely held corporations.  Hobby Lobby, a family-owned business, took the form of a corporation for the administrative, tax and liability advantages that way of doing business offers.  But it remained, in reality, more like a partnership, since all of the shares of the business were owned by family members. It is not like a publicly traded corporation whose stock is available for purchase by any investor who wants to buy a piece of its ownership.

It is then understandable that the Court saw that the family's personal religious convictions, part of their way of doing business, should entitle them to be allowed to not comply to certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act dealing with contraception.  I am sure, in view of other exceptions to the Act which have been made, that the Administration can live with this decision.  The danger it poses is that the decision encourages other opponents of the ACA to find more reasons to go to court to fight the Act, which otherwise is thriving, despite repeated and often unfounded conservative claims to the contrary.

For those who strongly disagree with the Hobby Lobby decision, there is solace in the fact that it is far, far less damaging to American democracy than the Court's vile betrayal of the nation in the Citizens United decision, which gave corporations the same free speech protection from a monetary standpoint as individuals have. 

JL

                                               
                                                                                
                                                   

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