The herons of February
February 22, 2024
Soaring Great Blue Heron
Frontnotes
It’s a good thing that two of this week’s gobsmacking news stories drew the attention of two of my favorite writers: Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Joyce Vance, and Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson whose daily Letters from an American Substack postings are an internet sensation.
•Joyce takes up the remarkable (8-1) decision handed down Tuesday by the all-Republican Alabama supreme court, with its finding that embryos frozen after in-vitro fertilization should be considered children under Alabama law. The ruling arose from a regrettable 2000 instance in which a hospital patient removed frozen embryos from a liquid nitrogen tank and dropped them on the floor. The decision cast an ominous legal cloud over the future of invitro fertilization in Alabama and raises questions—given the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision in 2022—about how other state courts may ultimately rule. Part of what is extraordinary about the Alabama supreme court decision is the majority’s invocation of Christian theology to support its ruling that frozen embryos are beings entitled to the same rights as unfrozen, living children. It raises rather obvious First Amendment (establishment of religion) issues. Joyce explains the case and its broader implications in her Wednesday dispatch entitled When SCOTUS leaves it up to the States…
•For her part, professor Richardson unravels the truly bizarre way in which the Republican “impeachment inquiry” into President Joe Biden bought into the story being told by Alexander Smirnov, an Israeli citizen, who is identified as the sole source for allegations that Biden and his son, Hunter, accepted millions of dollars in bribes from foreign nationals. Former President Trump appointed a special counsel—David Weiss—to investigate allegations that the Bidens received bribes from a Ukrainian energy company, Barisma, on whose board the younger Biden served. But now Weiss is going after the informant—Smirnov. The FBI arrested Smirnoff at the Las Vegas airport last Thursday and, on Tuesday, court documents were made public revealing that Weiss and the Justice Department are accusing Smirnoff of lying about the Bidens and working with Russian intelligence agents. You can read Richardson’s post about the episode here.
Now to some striking birds with 6 foot wingspans….
Getting to know a heron…
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—tjc
