Men's Lifestyle September 25, 2026 0 Comments

Supreme Court’s Shocking Voting Rights Ruling: What It Means for Your Vote and the Midterm Showdown

Ever notice how some weekends come crashing in like a wrecking ball, dragging politics, scandal, and history into your chill time? Well, pull up a seat because this one’s got it all – from the Supreme Court scheming to hush-hush election antics, and yes, even dinosaur claws making an unexpected cameo. If you’ve been wondering how we ended up trusting a sketchy online database assembled by election denialists, or why handing over personal data to Big Government seems suddenly kosher only when it fits a certain agenda, you’re not alone. It’s as if the rulebook got tossed out and replaced with a Mad Libs version – bewildering, bizarre, and borderline absurd. So, is this just another chapter in the ongoing political circus, or a wake-up call poking at the very heart of our democracy? Buckle up – it’s gonna be a wild ride. LEARN MORE

8 min read

Out on the Weekend

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

They’re at it again. On Friday, the members of the carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court have lurked in the shadows once more in order to muck with the franchise and make voting scarier for people they find inconvenient. The justices live for that stuff. From The New York Times:

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration can deploy an expansive online system that combines citizenship information, Social Security numbers, and other sensitive data about millions of Americans, including to allow states to use it to hunt for ineligible voters. Critics fear that using the system could result in the purging of large numbers of valid voters from state rolls, if states choose to use it ahead of the midterm elections.

The majority concluded that a lower-court ruling that had blocked the Trump administration from rolling out the system was improper because it inhibited “the federal government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”

The emergency ruling was unsigned and gave no vote count, but the court’s three liberal justices joined in dissent. The ruling was a victory for the Trump administration as it tries to marshal the resources of the federal government to shape who can vote, and how. The effort has prompted legal challenges ahead of November’s midterm elections.

In a 12-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson emphasized that the majority’s decision created the conditions for some states to cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens or to force them to provide proof of citizenship before voting.

“The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,” she wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

That’s how you say “WTF is wrong with you clowns?” at Harvard Law.

Frankly, you have to be out of your mind to trust any results coming from this administration, but especially any alleged facts and figures regarding voting data. Back in August, you may recall, the Department of Homeland Security—will no one rid me of this turbulent agency?—’fessed up that it cooked some statistics on noncitizen voting. From NPR:

“We are an open book here,” said Heather Honey, an official at the Department of Homeland Security, who previously worked to push election falsehoods before her current post. “We are acting in very good faith. And we just want to help you.” But more than a month after President Trump touted in a primetime address that his administration had found more than 250,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls of Nevada and just three other states, those states are still asking for proof or even a complete list of the voters federal officials say should be investigated.

DHS initially announced it had found close to 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter list. But a DHS official acknowledged in the meeting with Nevada officials that number was “the ceiling” and each voter still had to be manually reviewed. Then, a day later, DHS provided the state with a list of 185 ID numbers pertaining to voters the agency said it was confident were noncitizens. NPR acquired records and a recording of the video call, first reported by The New York Times, via a public record request.

Nevada asked for more information on that smaller group of 185 voters, and the data points used to match them to noncitizens. DHS declined to provide that. The agency did say it still had more than 14,000 Nevada voters that “need additional review,” and it also provided the state with a list of more than 6,000 voter IDs the agency said were “higher confidence” matches but had yet to be reviewed.

And not for nothing, but what happened to the longtime conservative wariness of handing personal data over to Big Government? I mean, Jesus, when the federal government tried to establish national standards for driver’s licenses in the wake of 9/11, the howls from the Right were audible on Neptune.

Now, according to the carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court, we’re supposed to trust some online database thrown together by an election denialist named Heather Honey. Once again, we’re back in Sam Alito’s reality and not our own.

The picture of the president’s showing off his autopen “portrait” of President Biden to Xi Jinping is perhaps the most revolting photo ever taken in the White House. Lord knows what Xi was thinking, but, if he has a lick of sense, he should have wanted to get out as fast as he could. One, because he wanted to get home and do more work on his plans to rule the world, or two, simply to escape that gilded Chronic Ward. If the midterms go the way they seem to be going, somebody in the White House better have a trank gun.

Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click: “Sally, Where’d You Get Your Liquor At?” (Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Here, from 80 years ago this month, the verdicts are handed down. In the video, Hjalmar Schacht is ruled not guilty. There is something very unsettling about the shots at the end of all the paperwork on the floor of the courtroom. Scattered evidence of profound inhumanity.

Let us not be fooled by the clumsy shilling on ESPN, which now seems to think Tailgunner Ted Cruz is a great “get” for College Gameday. Cruz’s Save College Sports is nothing more than an attempt to reestablish control over the workforce in the industry of college athletics. (Nick Saban seems to believe that he’s the only person allowed to get fat in the game.) This, as well as the deafening omnipresence of the likes of Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee, is wrenching ESPN’s coverage of almost everything to the right while the network pretends to be proudly apolitical. I miss Stuart Scott and The Big Show more than ever.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found. From Live Science:

Archaeologists have unearthed a monumental 2,700-year-old tomb at Vulci, an important ancient Etruscan town north of Rome. Despite repeated attempts by tomb robbers to loot this burial over the centuries, the tomb still contained a massive collection of grave goods, including weapons, gold and bronze plates, chariot parts, a rare pair of women’s shoes, and a complete banquet set. The burial, nicknamed the Tomb of the Stone Chamber, was excavated this summer, according to a translated statementfrom the Italian Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Province of Viterbo and Southern Etruria (SABAP-VT-EM). But the discovery builds on work that French archaeologists carried out in the late 19th century.

…

The new excavation revealed the Tomb of the Stone Chamber, which dates to the seventh century B.C. Archaeologists uncovered the walls of the tomb’s three burial chambers and found numerous artifacts preserved beneath the chambers’ collapsed roofs, including jewelry, clothing and shoes. In the side chambers of the tomb, archaeologists recovered much rarer items, according to the SABAP-VT-EM statement, such as a bronze tripod made on what is today the Greek island of Rhodes, just off Turkey’s southwest coast. They also found a nearly complete banquet set, and some of the vessels were still in their original positions after spending centuries underground.

I’ve always thought the Etruscans got short shrift in history because Rome sort of blotted out the sky. It’s nice to see them get a little pub.

Hey, phys.org. is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Paleontologists have described a new species and genus of therizinosaur found in the Yixian Formation of western Liaoning, China, that lived during the Early Cretaceous.Therizinosaurs were a group of primarily plant-eating theropod dinosaurs with long necks, pot bellies and large claws that may have been used for feeding. This new dinosaur measured more than 3.6 meters (11.8 feet) long and is estimated to have weighed between 117 kilograms (258 pounds) and 274 kilograms (604 pounds). It is thought to be the largest therizinosaurian specimen discovered in the Jehol Biota (an Early Cretaceous ecosystem in northeastern China), at least 1.6 times larger than Beipiaosaurus inexpectus, the previous record holder.

Well, this is certainly the most multi-syllabic find in paleontological history. And this new fella is quite the freakazoid.

These distinctive traits include a jaw packed with numerous teeth. The upper jaw carried more than 32 teeth, while the lower jaw had more than 45. They were unusually small and tightly packed. Its neck vertebrae were also much longer than those of its back, and one of its claws had a raised lip not seen in other therizinosaurs. But the differences don’t end there. Its upper jaw had an unusually large opening near the snout, while its nasal bones stretched back to the middle of the eye sockets and split into a strange two-pronged tip. The lower jaw also featured a tall, triangular side opening.

Also, those claws. Yikes. And on a plant-eater. The world’s first weed-whacker. That’s enough to make me happy today.

I’ll be back on Tuesday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for all the victims of our current epidemics, including the killer countertops, and for the victims of the horrific glacial collapse and flood in Nepal, and for Rep. Max Miller’s wife and child, and for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention,and the victims of ICE violence, and the Epstein victims, and Eric Swalwell’s victims,and the victims of the storms in Hawaii, and the victims of the Canadian wildfires, and also the ones in Spain, and the victims of the floods in Missouri, and the victims of the heat domes, and those affected around the world by wildfires, and the victims of the Venezuelan earthguake, and for the victims of the earthquake in Japan, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and for the families of the victims of the mosque shooting in San Diego, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the victims and their families of the shootings in Wilmington, Delaware and Kansas City, and for the families and victims of the mass shooting in Midland, Texas, and for the brilliant journalists of the Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont, and the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and for the storm-clobbered, flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and in Georgia, and for the people affected by the tornados in Mississippi, and for people suffering from the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius, the outbreaks of measles, the Hegseth Flu down in Texas, the explosive diarrhea bug, and the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in Harlem, and the victims of the heat wave in Europe, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.