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Jane Roe’s Baby Tells Her StoryNearly half a century ago, Roe v. Wade secured a woman’s legal right to obtain an abortion. The ruling has been contested with ever-increasing intensity, dividing and reshaping American politics. And yet for all its prominence, the person most profoundly connected to it has remained unknown: the child whose conception occasioned the lawsuit.Roe’s pseudonymous plaintiff, Jane Roe, was a Dallas waitress named Norma McCorvey. Wishing to terminate her pregnancy, she filed suit in March 1970 against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, challenging the Texas laws that prohibited abortion. Norma won her case. But she never had the abortion. On January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court finally handed down its decision, she had long since given birth—and relinquished her child for adoption.The Court’s decision alluded only obliquely to the existence of Norma’s baby: In his majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun noted that a “pregnancy…

Trump Calls Planned ‘Justice for J6’ Rally at the Capitol ‘A Setup’Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images Former President Donald Trump thinks the planned “Justice for J6” rally at the Capitol on Saturday is “a setup.” The rally is meant to protest how people arrested over the January 6 riots are being treated. Some Trump allies are referring to them as “political prisoners.” The mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol after the then-president pushed the big lie about the 2020 election over and over. Trump continued pushing that false claim in a statement Thursday that did not mention the Saturday rally, but did say, “Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest.” He directly weighed in on the upcoming rally in an interview with The Federalist Thursday: “People are so disgusted with the way people are being treated from the…

PPM’s Double-Digit Radio Stations 2021Last fall, when Radioinsight debuted its new, expanded ratings section, I took a “Fresh Listen” to the four PPM share champions, as well as cume leader WLTW (Lite FM) New York, as shown in ratings guru Chris Huff’s just-launched Ratings Top 50. The top four share leaders profiled were heritage stations that you would expect listeners to turn to during COVID-19: Classic Rock KSHE St. Louis and WHJY Providence, R.I.; Adult R&B WVKL Norfolk, Va., and AC WRCH (Lite 100.5) Hartford, Conn. All four of those stations were still in the top 10 when Huff did his latest calculations. WVKL is the No. 2-ranked station, and No. 1 music, trailing only N/T WLW Cincinnati. Listening levels have rebounded somewhat, radio usage has continued to evolve, and some of the unlikely winners of summer 2020 are at more typical levels. But the stations in the stratosphere are…

The Unmasked Avenger of MissouriThere’s a particular spot in Jefferson City, Missouri, the state capital, where you can walk a few yards and pass through three different sets of masking rules. Struggling against the heavy wooden doors of the state-supreme-court building and stepping through, you leave the zone of the city and county recommendations—mask when you can’t keep distance—and enter a space where masks are required by order of the court. From there, you can peer through a glass door into a government office, a parallel pandemic universe where no one can tell you what to put on your face—and where trying to do so is a form of government overreach and social control.This is the fiefdom of Eric Schmitt, the Missouri attorney general and Republican U.S. Senate candidate. Schmitt has routinely snagged national headlines throughout the pandemic for his habit of suing people, most recently over masks. He is…

Minnesota Police Face Backlash for Distributing ‘Not-Reaching Pouches’ to Use During Traffic Sto…Screenshot via Minnesota DPS on Twitter. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety faced swift backlash after they posted photos of “Not-Reaching Pouches” on their Facebook and Twitter accounts, meant to hold a driver’s license, insurance card, and vehicle registration to keep them within easy reach to produce during a traffic stop. The stated purpose of the pouches was “to help reduce deadly force encounters between law enforcement and citizens during traffic stops” by “making it easier for law enforcement to see when motorists are reaching for documents.” Subsequent tweets said that the Minnesota DPS had purchased a quantity of the “Not-Reaching Pouches” and they and other law enforcement officers planned to pass them out at community events. A similar post was made on the agency’s Facebook page, and a press release on their website listed the law enforcement…

Twitter Users Do Not Need to Know ‘What’s Happening’#NoPawsLeftBehind. Last Tuesday, I glanced at the “What’s happening” sidebar on Twitter and saw that nearly 32,000 people were tweeting about this topic; therefore, it was “trending.” A description of the trend, presented just beneath the hashtag, explained that it was  “commemorating the service dogs left behind following the withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan.”Clicking through the hashtag, I found a slightly more irritating story. Earlier that day, the alt-right personality Jack Posobiec had tweeted, “Today I am launching the #NoPawsLeftBehind Campaign,” and asked people to post photos of their dogs “in solidarity with the service dogs left behind in Afghanistan.” “Use the hashtag,” he wrote. “Let’s get it trending.” Of course, random people obliged, because random people like nothing more than to tweet blurry pictures of their pets with captions such as “Mocha and Macey sending prayers of comfort and safety…