"It was unclear when the gas began flowing. Grayson rocked his head, shook and pulled against the gurney restraints."

"He clenched his fist and appeared to struggle to try to gesture again. His sheet-wrapped legs lifted off the gurney into the air at 6.14pm.... He took a periodic series of more than a dozen gasping breaths for several minutes. He appeared to stop breathing at 6.21pm, and then the curtains to the viewing room were closed at 6.27pm, with Grayson pronounced dead at 6.33pm.... Alabama is the only state to use the method... pumping nitrogen through a mask and depriving someone of oxygen. It has been banned by veterinarians for use on most mammals.... John Hamm, Alabama corrections commissioner, said... he thought some of Grayson’s initial movements – shaking and gasping on the gurney – were 'all show' but maintained that other movements exhibited by Grayson and the two others executed by nitrogen gas were expected involuntary movements, including the breathing at the end."

From "Alabama man shook and gasped in final moments of nitrogen gas execution/Death of Carey Dale Grayson, 50, marks third time the southern US state has killed someone using controversial method" (The Guardian).

"Evangelical tradition has built a public identity around being pro-family and pro-children, and many adherents are inclined to see I.V.F. positively..."

"... because it creates more children.... But the Alabama decision 'is a very morally honest opinion,' said Andrew T. Walker, associate professor of Christian ethics and public theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The ruling, he said, shows the direct line of reasoning between belief that life begins at conception, and opposition to abortion and I.V.F. 'It’s going to force conservative Christians to reckon with potentially their own complicity in the in vitro fertilization industry,' he said. The Roman Catholic Church is perhaps the largest institution in the world that opposes I.V.F. Nearly all modern fertility interventions are morally forbidden. The I.V.F. process typically includes many elements that the Catholic Church opposes. There’s masturbation — an 'offense against chastity,' according to the catechism, or teaching — often required to collect sperm. There’s the fertilization of an egg and sperm outside a woman’s body — outside the sacramental 'conjugal act' of sex between a husband and wife. And there is the creation of multiple embryos that are often destroyed or not implanted — an 'abortive practice.'..."

From "What Christian Traditions Say About I.V.F. Treatments/While Catholic teaching expressly forbids in vitro fertilization, Protestants tend to be more open" (NYT).

"Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory."

Wrote Chief Justice Tom Parker, in a concurring opinion, quoted in "Alabama Rules Frozen Embryos Are Children, Raising Questions About Fertility Care/The ruling raises worrisome legal issues for would-be parents far beyond Alabama whose hopes for children may depend on in vitro fertilization" (NYT).

It has become standard medical protocol during in vitro fertilization to extract as many eggs as possible from a woman, then to fertilize them to create embryos before freezing them. Generally, only one embryo is transferred at a time into the uterus in order to maximize the chances of successful implantation and a full-term pregnancy.

“But what if we can’t freeze them?” [asked the head of a group that represents the interests of infertility patients]. “Will we hold people criminally liable because you can’t freeze a ‘person’? This opens up so many questions.”...

I'm seeing the idea that the economics of the infertility treatment business have been radically transformed (at least in Alabama). 

"[Emily’s Law] passed in 2018... allows prosecutors to charge dog owners with felonies... [It] is in memory of Emily Colvin, who at 24 years old died after being attacked by five dogs..."

"... outside her home in northeast Alabama in December 2017.... A week before Colvin’s death, another woman, 46-year-old Tracey Patterson Cornelius, also was killed by a pack of dogs. A second woman was seriously injured in the same incident.... Similar fatal instances in the state happened in 2020 to a 36-year-old mother of four and in 2021 to a 70-year old man. [Jacqueline Summer] Beard went to the Red Bay area Friday to investigate a dog attack that occurred Thursday afternoon when a woman on a walk was mauled by the animals.... Investigators said Beard was attempting to contact the owner of the dogs when she was killed."

From "While investigating a dog attack, a state worker was killed by the pack" (WaPo).

I opened the WaPo comments with the expectation of seeing condemnation of the deplorable people who live in Alabama, but my expectation of high politicization was wrong:

"For the first time in nearly three decades, Alabama will allow yoga to be taught in its public schools, but..."

"... Teachers will be barred from saying the traditional salutation 'namaste' and using Sanskrit names for poses. Chanting is forbidden.... Some conservative groups had called for the prohibition to be preserved, contending that the practice of yoga is inseparable from Hinduism and Buddhism and amounted to a religious activity.... [Amendments added to the bill] require parents to sign a permission slip for students to practice yoga. They also bar school personnel from using 'hypnosis, the induction of a dissociative mental state, guided imagery, meditation or any aspect of Eastern philosophy.'... The [1993] ban was enacted after parents in the state raised concerns not only about yoga, but also about hypnotism and 'psychotherapeutic techniques.'... [O]ne mother in Birmingham said her child had brought a relaxation tape home from school that made a boy 'visibly high'...."

The NYT reports.

I've told you my opinion before. Back in 2016, I had a post, "WaPo seems surprised that people regard yoga in school as an Establishment Clause problem":

The headline is: "Ga. parents, offended by the ‘Far East religion’ of yoga, get ‘Namaste’ banned from school."

In my opinion, it's cultural appropriation and otherizing not to perceive that this is religion.

Commenters [at WaPo] pick up the cue and say things like "Georgia hicks object to 'mindfulness.' Why am I not surprised?"/"They opt for 'mindlessness.'"

Wow. Double otherizing.

"Why isn't Tuberville on the front page of the NYT?"/"If Tuberville had lost it would have been at the very top."

Overheard at Meadhouse.

I had to do a search to find the article. The headline doesn't mention Trump: "Alabama Votes for Tommy Tuberville, and Democrats Name a Challenger in Maine/A former college football coach defeated Jeff Sessions in a Republican runoff in Alabama, and Sara Gideon will challenge Susan Collins for the Senate in Maine. Key races also took place in Texas." But Trump is mentioned in the subheadline like this:

Trump’s support lifts Tuberville to victory.

Jeff Sessions spent his final days on the campaign trail reiterating his support for President Trump’s agenda, reminding voters of his efforts to curb illegal immigration while attorney general and emphasizing how, as a senator, he had endorsed Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign at a time when few others in Washington would.

But in the end, it wasn’t enough. And in truth, after Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Sessions’s opponent, it probably never was.

If Tuberville had lost, the stinging defeat for Trump would have been trumpeted.

Political theater, Alabama style.

Al.com reports:

A state representative from Birmingham filed a bill Thursday that would require Alabama men to get a vasectomy once they reach 50 years old or father three children, “whichever comes first.”

The legislation by state Rep. Rolanda Hollis, D-Birmingham, says that a man will have to pay for the vasectomy “at his own expense."

Hollis said the bill is a response to last year’s abortion bill that passed the legislature and included a near-total ban on abortion.

“Some liberals tried to come to my hometown and start some trouble. That ain’t happening. I did get arrested. I got charged. That’s all right. I’d do it again given the opportunity.”

Said Hoyt Hutchinson of Tuscaloosa, arrested for slashing the baby Trump balloon, which was on display near the stadium where President Trump attended a football game, WaPo reports. The charge is first degree criminal mischief.

ADDED: Flashback to July 2011! There was an attack on a balloon during the Wisconsin protests. Blogged here:

"The incident allegedly involved a citizen, a state worker and a balloon..."

Protesters have been releasing red heart balloons throughout the months of demonstrations...  The protester involved in Monday's incident told a Capitol police officer that the worker came at her with a knife. She did not appear to be injured, but was holding a blood-smeared paper bag and what looked like popped red heart balloon....

Blue Cheddar has some more detail:

Jenna says that she was standing with Leslie when Ron [Blair, the assistant facilities director,] approached “out of nowhere”... Jenna says Ron rushed at the balloon and popped it and then darted down a back stairway. In the course of the action Jenna says he did not say anything she could clearly hear, though he may have been mumbling.

"The devastation is incredible."

"The devastation is incredible." #Alabama #tornado kills at least 23 https://t.co/JO3wAWy5s4 #AlabamaTornadoes pic.twitter.com/Peebh9ozH2

— Fire Engineering (@fireengineering) March 4, 2019

Video shows destruction in Beauregard, Alabama after #tornado leaves at least 22 people dead, according to officials in #LeeCounty. https://t.co/hGIE2J1cs1 pic.twitter.com/K6V8hPRwFZ

— Washington News Line (@WashNewsLine) March 4, 2019

"As Russia’s online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics..."

"... in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results," report Scott Shane and Alan Blinder in the NYT. This was the election where the Democrat, Doug Jones, narrowly defeated the Republican Roy S. Moore.

Though the margin of victory was only about 20,000 votes (with a decisive turnout of black voters), we're told the project was "likely too small to have a significant effect on the race...".

One participant in the Alabama project, Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says....

There is no evidence that Mr. Jones sanctioned or was even aware of the social media project. Joe Trippi, a seasoned Democratic operative who served as a top adviser to the Jones campaign, said he had noticed the Russian bot swarm suddenly following Mr. Moore on Twitter. But he said it was impossible that a $100,000 operation had an impact on the race.

I hope he'll also say that it's impossible that what the Russians did in the 2016 presidential election could have had an impact on the race — but somehow the nation has been roiled by that impossibility for 2 years.

The funding [for the Alabama false flag project] came from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who has sought to help Democrats catch up with Republicans in their use of online technology.

The money passed through American Engagement Technologies, run by Mikey Dickerson, the founding director of the United States Digital Service, which was created during the Obama administration to try to upgrade the federal government’s use of technology....

So, our tax money got these people up and running?

Mr. Morgan reached out at the time to Renée DiResta, who would later join New Knowledge and was lead author of the report on Russian social media operations released this week.

“I know there were people who believed the Democrats needed to fight fire with fire,” Ms. DiResta said, adding that she disagreed. “It was absolutely chatter going around the party.”...

The report does not say whether the project purchased the Russian bot Twitter accounts that suddenly began to follow Mr. Moore. But it takes credit for “radicalizing Democrats with a Russian bot scandal” and points to stories on the phenomenon in the mainstream media. “Roy Moore flooded with fake Russian Twitter followers,” reported The New York Post.

"Goodson listened to the podcast alone in his bed. Every few hours, his wife would crack open the door to make sure he was OK."

"'I was just clusterfucked,' Goodson recalled. The hardest part to hear wasn't the sections about him—it was hearing his late friend's voice. 'Oh Lord. I probably bawled my eyes out through the whole thing,' Goodson said. 'Up until it got up to that fruity stuff. I don’t have nothing against homosexuals, but it was too much for me. I felt like they took that a little far.' Listening to the podcast was the first time he learned McLemore had intimate relationships with men. 'I had my thoughts, but it wasn’t none of my business on his sexuality and all that,' he said... Not much has changed in Woodstock, Alabama in the last year. 'It's still the same old shit town,' Goodson said. There have been visitors. Fans of the podcast will drop by the property he shares with his wife, four daughters, five-month-old son, grandmother and uncle to take a photo, which annoys the hell out of Goodson. 'It still gets aggravating when you got people coming up in your yard and wanting to take pictures all the time and that kind of crap,' he said."

From "'It’s the Same Old Sh*t Town': Tyler Goodson Explains How S-Town Changed His Life/One year and nearly 80 million downloads later, Tyler Goodson discusses life after a podcast" (Esquire).

I'm a big fan of the podcast "S-Town" (i.e., "Shit-town). A year ago, I wrote, "I've thought a lot about what will happen to Tyler. It seems inevitable that less scrupulous people than the 'This American Life' team will find him and want to use him for purposes that he may not competently evaluate. He's a young man and — you won't learn this listening to the podcast — unusually good looking. I can't believe there won't be offers to participate in filming a reality show. Wouldn't people love to see that house he's built out of scraps and wisteria vines and a horse trough? Wouldn't people love to hear him talk with Uncle Jimmy shouting 'Goddam right!' and 'Yes suh!' in the background? What is 'This American Life' doing to protect him? What can they do? What should they do?"

Roy Moore won't go away.

He's filed a complaint in the Circuit Court of Montgomery, Alabama and is trying to stop the certification of the election results (which is supposed to happen today). Moore wants a new special election, CNN reports.

Alleging voter fraud, Moore says that out-of-state residents voted and that there was an "anomalous" turnout in Jefferson County (which is 43% black and had a 47% turnout).

Moore lost by 21,311 votes, in case you're wondering how many bad votes he'd need to locate. Imagine a new special election! Who benefits from Roy Moore staying in the news? I'd say: Democrats.

UPDATE: Maybe now he's gone away:

An Alabama judge's ruling against Roy Moore. pic.twitter.com/T9xl3K4NND

— Alan Blinder (@alanblinder) December 28, 2017

Trump absorbs the Roy Moore loss: "the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!"

Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017

That's a modest, well-balanced response, but will he get any credit for that?

In the primary, Trump fought hard for Moore's GOP opponent, but he adjusted and found a way to support Moore — who was made very hard to stand anywhere near. Now that Roy Moore is out, Trump is moving on. He's an optimist who tends to see the good in whatever happens and to go searching  for new ways to win. In this case — I'll say, modeling optimism — Trump is better off looking for good things elsewhere than stuck with Roy Moore, his candidate, in the flesh, in the Senate, vocalizing social conservatism in an unappealing way and attracting a big expulsion effort.

Do you remember that it was called a "stunning defeat" for Trump when Roy Moore won the primary?* On September 27, I blogged by WaPo's Robert Costa, said:

Moore’s win... demonstrates the real political limitations of Trump, who endorsed “Big Luther” at McConnell’s urging and staged a rally for Strange in Huntsville, Ala., just days before the primary. The outcome is likely to further fray Trump’s ties to Republicans in Congress, many of whom now fear that even his endorsement cannot protect them from voter fury.

I said:

What if this thing that seems to be Trump is bigger than Trump — a wave he figured out how to ride for a little while, but from which he can fall and which will roll on without him? Or is the whole thing — whatever it is (anti-establishment fury?) — already played out? We can't have an endless string of characters like Trump and, now, Moore... can we?...

How many "out there" candidates can there be? How wild can you be before people won't trust you? It's hard to know in post-2016 America. We've got a taste for the bizarre and we don't trust the appearance of normality anymore.

Yesterday, Alabama chose normality, and there's good in that for Trump, who's pretty bizarre.

"Me and the wife are thinking about voting for Moore, but I just don’t like some of the things they saying about him."

Roll Call finds an Alabaman to quote.

Liberal media pats Jimmy Kimmel on the back for helping Roy Moore get elected.

That's not what they think he did. They think he was brilliant and really drove home the awfulness of Roy Moore. But that's what he did. I mean, if I know Alabamans, and I don't, really. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think this kind of thing exalts Roy Moore in the eyes of the relevant electorate.

Emily Yahr, at Washington Post, does a phenomenal job of showing how it looks inside the liberal cocoon, in "Read Jimmy Kimmel’s scathing response to Roy Moore after their ‘Twitter war.'"

The Jimmy Kimmel show sent its comedian down to Alabama to disrupt a Roy Moore rally that was taking place in Magnolia Springs Baptist Church in Theodore, Alabama. That gave Roy Moore the opportunity to put up this tweet:

.@jimmykimmel If you want to mock our Christian values, come down here to Alabama and do it man to man. #ALSen https://t.co/E7oQB9D83P

— Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 30, 2017

That tweet gave Jimmy Kimmel the opportunity to put himself at the center of the important Senate race, and he did it in a way that is powerfully viral to Moore haters:



Kimmel did a great job, within his own realm, playing to his audience, going viral through the Washington Post and other liberal media outlets, but I think it will help Roy Moore in Alabama. I don't want to say comedians should restrain themselves lest they skew an election. I want vibrant, vicious comedy that flies free from political practicalities. But I think Jimmy Kimmel just helped Roy Moore a lot.

Now, is the Washington Post stupid not to go into the political downside of Kimmel's comedy? Maybe not. Maybe it's choosing to amuse and soothe its readers, and it's all for the good of circulation. It's too late to undo what Kimmel did, and the clip is viral whether WaPo participates in the vitality or not, and if it doesn't, it risks looking dull and unaware of what's happening in pop-culture media. And anyway, they already knew by yesterday that Roy Moore had made it through his ordeal so it was okay to give up on trying to affect the election and move on to the painful enjoyment of hating the new Senator.

A video promoting a University of Alabama sorority has been taken down because it was perceived as blindingly blonde.

"The university was quick to disavow the video. A statement from the school’s associate vice president for university relations, Deborah Lane, said that the video 'is not reflective of UA’s expectations for student organizations to be responsible digital citizens.'"

"Blindingly blonde" is my expression. I was going to say "insufficiently diverse," but that didn't really convey the problem. Here, see and judge for yourself:



ADDED: For context, here's a Buzzfeed article from last year titled "University Of Alabama’s Sororities Still Resist Integrating/Seven months after allegations of racism were raised, little has changed. 'There is a strong sense of ‘There’s nothing you can do about it.'" Excerpt:

UA sophomore Khortlan Patterson, a black woman from Houston, was offered multiple bids to join Alabama’s traditionally white Panhellenic sororities but turned them down. “I don’t want to pay $6,000 a year to get criticized and ostracized,” Patterson said. “I don’t want to pay money to be a part of that.”

Instead, Patterson pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first historically African-American sorority. She considered joining a Panhellenic chapter in order to push change from the inside, but ultimately, Patterson decided it would have been more of a trial than an opportunity.

“No one’s going to say flat out, ‘You can’t hang out with us because we don’t consider you to be our sister.’ But I think that in their actions it would probably be communicated in that way.”

Anniston, Alabama... Coldwater Mountain...

Alabama legislature is halfway through the process of ending the state's participation in licensing marriage.

With the U.S. Supreme Court about to bar the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage (in all probability), Alabama is stepping up to the option of ending the state's role in licensing marriage. The bill has passed the senate and is under consideration in the house. Couples will make their own contracts and file them in the courthouse.

Also in Alabama, the chief justice of the state supreme court, Roy Moore, is saying that if the U.S. Supreme Court requires marriage to include same-sex couples, it's "an attempt to destroy the institution of marriage and I think it will cause, literally cause the destruction of our country or lead to the destruction of our country over the long run." He adds: "And I think there are people who would like to see this country destroyed.... I’m not saying that everyone who’s homosexual wants to see the country destroyed. I’m not saying that. I’m saying there’s a push for it."

ADDED: Posting that and rereading it, I observe that I've presented that completely neutrally, and yet it seems to me to express my disapproval of what the Alabama legislature is doing and and Justice Roy Moore is saying. I'm just adding this postscript to observe that the legislative action and the judicial statement, standing alone, work as their own criticism. Nothing needs to be said. Oh, Alabama!

"It is easy to read the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama and Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama as a mostly inconsequential case..."

"... giving a small, and perhaps only temporary, victory for minority voters in a dispute over the redrawing of Alabama’s legislative districts after the 2010 census," writes Richard Hasen at SCOTUSblog.

Indeed, although the Supreme Court sent this “racial gerrymandering” case back for a wide and broad rehearing before a three-judge court, Alabama will be free to junk its plan and start over with one that may achieve the same political ends and keep it out of legal trouble. But Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent sees the majority as issuing “a sweeping holding that will have profound implications for the constitutional ideal of one person, one vote, for the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and for the primacy of the State in managing its own elections.” Time will tell if Justice Scalia’s warning against the implications of what he termed a “fantastical” majority opinion is more than typical Scalian hyperbole....

 ADDED: Here's the PDF of the opinion, which I can't read just yet.

WaPo columnist says it's "trivial to compare" Roy Moore's trying to stop gay marriage in Alabama to George Wallace's blocking the door to racial integration at the University of Alabama.

But which way is it trivial? I couldn't believe the columnist Philip Bump could possibly say that what Moore is doing is a much bigger deal than what Wallace did, to the point where anyone just saying they are at the same level was being trivial, and Bump's convoluted verbosity makes it especially hard to see what one finds hard to believe. But I slogged through it, and I survived to report that Bump actually thinks Moore's resistance to the federal court requirement that Alabama immediately issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples is a far bigger deal that Wallace's resistance to integration.

Bump's hard-to-understand argument has to do with Obama's reelection in 2012 and the Republican victories in 2014.

Moore's move is very much in the "states' rights" vein of the 1960s, a 10th Amendment argument that's seen a renaissance in the era of a president who is deeply unpopular with Republicans. But it's hard to point to Moore's action as being simply Wallace redux when you consider the national picture. Boehner and McConnell are necessarily arguing for the primacy of local priorities, representing states and districts, not the whole country. In those places, Obama is so unpopular among their constituents that 66 percent of Republicans opposed working with Obama in the wake of last year's election; the response to his actions was similarly predictable. For the next two years, we have a Congress that was elected by Americans to be Republican and a president that was elected to be Democratic. Moore's battle is with the Supreme Court, hardly an arm of the Obama administration, but the political fervor he's likely to leverage echoes the strains in national politics.

Sorry to call attention to something so badly slapped together and so blatantly partisan in the bemoaning of partisanship, but I think the utter badness of the column deserves some attention.

I was surprised to see that Roy Moore was back on the Alabama Supreme Court. He got kicked out back in '03 over that 10 Commandments business. I hadn't noticed — or I'd forgotten — that he got elected to the position again in 2012. If it weren't for the reappearance of Moore, I would have passed by this topic — the same-sex topic of the week. There are so many of these states, falling one by one, to the seemingly inevitable consequences of earlier constitutional law decisions. I see the headlines, but, even though I've been blogging profusely about same-sex marriage since early 2004, I don't feel the call to blog every new state that finds itself subject to a judicial ruling. But Moore kicked up some resistance, and he's getting attention in the style that made him famous back in the simpler times, when passions swirled rather innocuously around 10 Commandments monuments, which no one gets heated up about anymore.

And I know this will bother some of you, but I think it's pretty obvious that in 10 years, we'll look back on the swirl of passion over same-sex marriage as something even more of the past than getting heated up over 10 Commandments monuments. People will be living their private lives, as they always have, and some of the people will be gay, as they always have been, and life will go on.

Meanwhile, "Clarence Thomas faults Supreme Court for refusing to block gay marriage in Alabama."

“This acquiescence may well be seen as a signal of the Court’s intended resolution of that question,” Thomas wrote in a dissent from the court’s order refusing to stay the weddings. “This is not the proper way to discharge our . . . responsibilities.”

He was joined by one other justice, Antonin Scalia, in saying the court should agree to postpone the weddings until the justices hear the same-sex-marriage case in April and rule by the end of their term in June.

Do we need any more "signal[s] of the Court’s intended resolution of that question"?