My regular reader (Hi, Jeff!) knows I don’t go out seeking to offend or bother my kindly readers. I don’t always try to upset people, even though I propose our president should be removed from office via the 25th Amendment, if his cabinet were not bootlicking sycophants and vaccine denying minions who regularly fail to put the interests of the United States first, in spite of their slogans.

Remember when the president declared, in the war he started with Iran, “nothing short of unconditional surrender” by Iran would be an acceptable outcome? Or when he claimed every living former president had expressed support for President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, even though each and every former president denied saying that? Or Trump’s claim, in a book he “wrote” in 2000, he called for the assassination of Osama bin Laden? He told that lie, even though it can be proved he lied by reading his own book? Maybe he thought no one would check?

And of course, do you recall his oft-stated lie he personally ended eight wars so far this term? Just as a reminder, he included two examples that were never actually wars and one war that is ongoing in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

And yet his MAGA loyalist cling to Trump as if he was not the lying, self-aggrandizing failed president that he truly is. So, it is very tempting to once again leap atop my rickety soapbox to denounce a man who is so threatened by seashells on a beach he weaponizes his Justice Department even further (while claiming it was Biden who did it) to indict James Comey over Trump’s failure to understand what the term “86” actually means? I recall, gosh, more than 40 years ago now, when I was a McDonald’s manager and I once the crew taking orders, when our shake machine died, to “86 the milk shakes.” I had no idea I was urging the assassination of said shake machines (oh, and we couldn’t call them “mile shakes,” but only “shakes,” because, well, you can figure that out).

But I’m not going to talk about any of those important but controversial topics today. Instead, let’s have a calm and reasoned discussion about an issue we can all rationally and reasonably address…

Abortion.

Two stories in the news, including one reported on Colorado Politics, show partial victories for the pro-choice forces, albeit perhaps only briefly. Wyoming, a state close to my heart and the location of my first military tour of duty, saw a judge block that state’s new and very broad anti-abortion law. The law, like those proposed in the 13 most radically right states (so far) seeks, if we are honest about it, to ban all abortions by creating restrictions so severe that the practical impact is banning all abortions.

In Wyoming, as in other anti-choice states, the new law banned abortions after any embryonic cardiac activity could be detected. This happens early and can happen as soon as six weeks into a pregnancy, long before most women even know they are pregnant. I confess I did take some enjoyment when an anti-choice activist was shown a picture of a six-week-old embryo and was asked if, in his mind, this was already a human. The activist replied “without a doubt,” only to be told it was a dolphin embryo, not a human. So much for our embryos being “special.”

A Wyoming judge ruled the law was in violation of a voter-approved state constitutional amendment, passed in 2012, that said competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions.

It’s not clear what the ultimate fate of the Wyoming law will be, given the fairly specific state constitutional argument.

But on the national stage, the U.S. Supreme Court, in response to an emergency appeal, restored access to the abortion pill mifepristone by telehealth and mail. Abortion opponents had, in their ongoing efforts to ban all abortions, added a restriction that such pills could only be handed out directly from medical professional to patient, and not through the mail. That law would basically ban all abortions in quite a few locations where there are no clinics available for family planning. Such medications are used, I was frankly surprised to learn, in roughly 60% of abortions in the U.S. each year and so limiting the ability of telehealth and mailed pills would have an immediate and dramatic effect.

Now, those of us who are pro-choice shouldn’t celebrate yet. Oh, and I say it that way because no one is actually “pro-abortion.” I agree with those who have said that abortion should be safe, available and rare, but such arguments must await a future column.

The stay, written by arch-conservative Justice Samuel Alito, is an administrative and procedural move, to allow the case to develop more fully before the Supreme Court. The full court, or rather the six members of the radical-right activist branch of the court, may well rule against medications by mail. This court has proven beyond any doubt the term “activist court” is not, nor has it ever been, a term that can only be applied to “liberal” courts.

The Roberts court, on track to be remembered by history in the same breath as the Taney Court of the 19th century, has eviscerated the idea of precedent by overturning Roe v. Wade as well as gutting the Voting Rights Act and other important precedents. This is the same court that ruled Trump is immune from any criminal response to his actions as long as his actions were part of his “official duties,” a term Trump stretches beyond reason.

Sadly, I predict (and I hope I’m yet again wrong) the Roberts court will again cave to the Trump agenda and will uphold the ban on mailing medications. Someday, many years from now, I suspect historians will look back at this unhinged-from-reality time and wonder how such an obviously unfit individual as president was able to intimidate and bluster the other two branches of government to follow his passion for personal aggrandizement. Oh, and I don’t actually think Trump’s golden ballroom will ever be built, nor will his 25-story tall arch, but we’ll waste a lot of money getting to that point.

As noted in a recent popular musical, history has its eyes on you. Or in this case, on the president, the Congress and the courts, as all three have failed the Founders.

Stay tuned.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.