Bing search results inform me that women from Texas seeking abortion-inducing drugs can likely get them through Whole Woman’s Health of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Why on Earth would I care about that, or want to tell you about it? I’m not a woman, I’m not from Texas, I don’t happen to know any women from Texas whom I also know to be seeking medication-induced abortions, and I doubt that any such women would need my help finding the above information anyway.

BUT!

Texas’s legislature,  the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports, may soon pass  SB 2880/HB 5510, which would make it illegal to “provide information on the method for obtaining an abortion-inducing drug” to women in Texas.

I publish my columns to the Internet (as do many of the newspapers which choose to publish them).

The Internet is, I understand, accessible from Texas.

If the new law passes, this column will remain accessible to Texan women in violation of it, theoretically exposing me to both criminal and civil liability.

So, notice to future Texas law enforcement agents and litigious busybodies:

Bring it.

From my viewpoint, this isn’t about abortion at all. I don’t consider it my job to advise women on whether, or how, to obtain one. In fact, I’m somewhat sympathetic to some moral arguments (though not laws) against doing so.

It’s also clearly not about the “sanctity of life” where Texas’s government is concerned. That regime has arguably executed more than one innocent prisoner, and last year governor Greg Abbott pardoned actual, convicted, unrepentant murderer Daniel Perry to “own the libs.” These people don’t care about “life” per se; they just care about scoring points with their political base.

What it’s about is your right to discuss whatever you please, however you please, whenever you please. That right just isn’t negotiable. There are no circumstances under, nor any subject upon which, the Texas legislature gets to infringe upon or prohibit its exercise in any way, shape, manner, or form.

At least not without a fight.

So, Texas politicians, here’s your chance to show yourselves for who you really are yet again: Pass that evil law and issue a warrant for my arrest or get one of your toadies to file suit against me (or both).

I won’t back down — in fact, I won’t be ABLE to. As soon as I published this column at the Garrison Center’s web site and submitted it to newspapers, I also published it to a blockchain-based medium from which I can’t delete it.

If you agree with what I have to say, please join me in spreading the word. Fortunately, I suspect the courts will nix SB 2880/HB 5510 long before Texas’s tyrants get around to us.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Photo by Lennart Tange. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says that HHS and the US Food and Drug Administration will phase out the use of petroleum-based food dyes over the next two years to “Make America Healthy Again.”

Of all the policy changes coming out of Washington DC, this is probably the most visible — literally.

If the changes go as planned, a lot of the foods you eat, liquids you drink, and medications you take will probably look a lot different than you’ve become used to.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it depends on who you ask.

For decades, scientists have researched — and lobbyists and activists have fought over — the effects of those artificial colorants on Americans’ health. Some researchers and advocates claim links between artificial food colorings and various disorders. The companies using those colorings, naturally, deny such links.

In the 1990s, I knew a couple who did everything they could to keep Red Dye 40 out of their son’s diet. He’d been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. They believed (upon observation I had to agree) that getting the food coloring out of his diet greatly relieved his inability to sit still, concentrate, etc. That’s just anecdotal, of course, but the differences did seem dramatic.

Chicken or egg? Did consumers nudge food makers to give their products the “pop” of more brilliant colors, or did that “pop” condition consumers to associate bright hues with quality?

Would we buy fruit-flavored cereal if it didn’t come in a mix of reds, yellows, purples, and green?

Would we want those gummy bears or shell-covered candies if they were off-white?

I don’t claim to know, but color’s what they’re selling and we buy a LOT of it.

I don’t support a ban.

As long as sellers truthfully disclose what they’re putting in their products, we’re free to buy or not buy — and one positive outcome of the “information age” is that we have instant access to both scientific information and others’ opinion (well-informed or not) on the ingredients in our food.

In the normal course of things, I might or might not give credence to RFK Jr.’s opinion on the matter when deciding what to put in my shopping cart and in my body. You might or might not as well. That’s fine. What’s not fine is him just deciding for all of us, whether we like it or not.

Most of us aren’t old enough to remember, but at one time many states required margarine to be dyed bright pink as a way of discouraging its use versus butter (as you might guess, the dairy industry lobby backed such laws).

It’s not a hill to dye on (see what I did there?), I guess. I’m sure we’ll get used to the changes in how our food looks.  Maybe we really will get healthier physically — who knows?  But letting a politician control our choices this way is a worse disease than any malady associated with food coloring.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Article III of the US Constitution provides for congressional establishment of “inferior courts” — that is, courts other than the Supreme Court — and for congressional regulation of those courts’ jurisdictions.

In that sense, there’s nothing unusual about US Senator Mike Lee’s proposal for a streamlined appellate process where actions “commenced against the executive seeking injunctive or declaratory relief against the Executive,” other than the stilted writing and mismatched capitalization.

The problem Lee’s trying to solve, if it really is a problem, is that individual US District Court judges can, and sometimes do, issue injunctions with nationwide effect.

Lee’s proposal would require such actions to be heard by panels of three judges rather than by a single judge, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court selecting the judges. It would also require the Supreme Court to hear all appeals of injunctions issued by those panels.

No problem, I guess. It seems well within Congress’s powers as described above.

Unfortunately, Lee decided to give the bill a title that doesn’t match its effect. He’s calling it “The Restraining Judicial Insurrectionists Act of 2025.”

“Insurrection” has remained much on the public mind since 2021 when outgoing US president Donald Trump was accused of fomenting one with his January 6 “Stop The Steal” rally preceding the notorious Beer Belly Putsch, also known as the Capitol riot and, by many, simply as “the insurrection.”

Some unsuccessful attempts to bar Trump from the 2024 ballot as an “insurrectionist” followed, and Trump, now in his second term, recently took up the word himself, asking the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to report to him with recommendations on “whether to invoke the Insurrection Act” so that he can use the armed forces to enforce his domestic immigrant abduction and deportation efforts (both departments are recommending against such an invocation).

It kinda feels like Lee wants to pander to Trump’s newfound fascination with “insurrection,” and that’s clearly working (Trump publicly agrees with Lee on the existence of something called “judicial insurrection” ).

Federal judges doing what federal judges are, at the moment, authorized to do (issue injunctions) based on what they’re constitutionally bound to support (due process) doesn’t really seem very insurrectiony,  though.

Can you think of something, anything, that sounds more like an “insurrection” — defined as “obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States?”

How about a rogue president and his co-conspirators invoking an extra-constitutional and ahistorical “unitary executive” claim to justify ignoring — when they’re not openly violating — laws they don’t like, in violation of the chief executive’s constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed?”

Trump, as Trump likes very much to do, is accusing others of doing what he’s actually doing himself in hopes of getting away with mischief.

As an anarchist, I’ve got no problem with insurrection as such. I’d just prefer insurrection in support of, rather than against, liberty. I guess the fake judicial insurrection looks a little more like that than the real Trump insurrection. But not much.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY