ILLUSTRATION BY SAM GREEN
It’s hard to find someone in Washington who doesn’t like Merrick Garland. There are Republicans who don’t like Barack Obama and accordingly blocked the former president from elevating Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016. There are Republicans who don’t like Joe Biden and don’t want to see him, through Garland, reshape the Justice Department into something less Trumpian than it became over the past four years. But the list of people who don’t actually like Merrick Garland for Merrick Garland’s sake is virtually nonexistent.
Even many GOP senators enthusiastically supported Garland’s appointment. “I think you’re a very good pick for this job,” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told the judge during his confirmation hearing. Iowa’s Chuck Grassley described him as “an honorable man” and likewise voted to confirm him. Even Mitch McConnell, who led the Supreme Court blockade of Garland five years ago, was an aye vote for Garland
You can get the abortion pill by mail for now, the FDA ruled. But it’s still an ongoing legal battle.
The pandemic brought increased demand for abortion pills through telemedicine, according to providers (iStock; Lily illustration)
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Last week, Jamie Phifer, a Seattle-based family physician, did something she has done regularly for the past decade: She had an appointment with a patient seeking an abortion.
But this appointment was different from many of the others that came before, because it was virtual. The woman was in another state, sitting in her car in her driveway, while her kids were inside on virtual school, Phifer said. The two spoke by video call.
The John Marshall Courts Building in Richmond. (Photo: Crixell Matthews/VPM News)
In Richmond, attorneys who represent people who can’t afford a lawyer are asking the city to help pay their salaries. Like many public defenders across the country, they say they struggle to keep lawyers on staff, which makes it difficult to provide equal justice for people accused of crimes.
After years of campaigning for more money, the office might finally get the funding it’s asked for as the city deliberates this year’s budget.
The state of Virginia pays the salaries of both the Commonwealth Attorney’s office and the public defender’s office. But the city supplements the salaries of its prosecutors.
Free Speech and the American Way
Second in a Six-Part Series by Larry Greenfield
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THE ENGLISH TRADITION
If the Ark of the Covenant that is, our modern religious views of speech commands morality in our speech and deference to religious authority and the sovereignty of God, the arc of western legal tradition defends our natural right to speak our mind as sovereign individuals.
An important early advocate for the right of publishers to print ideas without prepublication censorship was English poet and politician John Milton. In 1644, before he went blind and later wrote his most famous poems (e.g. “Paradise Lost”) Milton anonymously wrote a pamphlet entitled “Areopagitica” (a reference to the ancient Greek hill on which orators freely debated).