The Week Magazine December 24, 2021

Do you have a right to privacy? The question would prompt an indignant “I sure do” from most Americans. But nowhere in the Constitution did the Framers use the word “privacy” or expressly state any support for “my body, my choice.” Privacy is an invention of the Supreme Court. Until the Griswold decision in 1965, states could prohibit anyone—including married couples—from using contraception. Until 1967’s Loving decision, states could imprison people for marrying someone of another race. Until 2003’s Lawrence ruling, states could arrest gay men—or straight couples—for engaging in “sodomy” in their own bedrooms. Griswold was the big turning point. In that ruling, Justice William O. Douglas wrote that “penumbras” and “emanations” of protections actually spelled out in the Bill of Rights created an implicit “zone of privacy” upon…

What happened As U.S. Covid deaths passed the 800,000 mark, federal health officials warned this week that the nation could soon be deluged by a wave of new cases driven by the highly infectious Omicron variant. “This is going to take off. The numbers of people who get sick will be substantial,” said Marcus Plescia of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. He was among several experts who in a CDC briefing warned of the variant’s breakneck rate of spread and its potential to overwhelm hospitals already filled with Covid patients sickened by the Delta variant. Omicron now accounts for nearly 3 percent of U.S. cases, a sevenfold jump within a week. Britain’s health secretary said Omicron was spreading at “a phenomenal rate,” with cases doubling every…

What happened Rescue workers across the Midwest and South were digging through collapsed buildings and searching for survivors and bodies this week, after a string of tornadoes ripped through nine states and left behind a trail of devastation. At least 90 people were killed by the storms, 80 of them in Kentucky, and more than 100 people were missing. Meteorologists said the violence of the tornadoes was almost unprecedented for this time of year, with radar showing that debris was thrown more than 30,000 feet in the air. At least 39 tornadoes were recorded. One monster twister with 200-mph winds ripped apart a nursing home in Monette, Ark., killing a 94-year-old resident, before carving a path that was 230 miles long and up to three-quarters of a mile wide…

What happened The House of Representatives voted to hold former President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in contempt for refusing testify to the Jan. 6 special committee this week, following revelations that Trump allies had begged Meadows to persuade his boss to call off the U.S. Capitol riot. While violence engulfed the Capitol, Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, Donald Trump Jr., and others texted Meadows, warning the insurrection would destroy Trump’s legacy. “The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us,” Ingraham wrote. “He’s got to condemn this s---ASAP,” added Trump Jr. After Meadows replied that he would speak to Trump, the riot continued for more than three hours, contradicting Trump’s claim that he did not know…

It may have sounded like a rare legal victory for pro-choicers, but don’t “be bamboozled,” said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. When the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 last week that Texas abortion providers can sue state licensing bodies over Texas’ extreme new antiabortion law, it seemed like a respite from weeks of ominous anti-choice signals from the court’s new bloc of five far-right justices. But by letting the Texas law—which authorizes private citizens to sue abortion clinics for $10,000 for each abortion—stay in effect pending further litigation, the ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson shows “just how radical this new conservative majority is.” The ruling “erases all doubt,” said Molly Jong-Fast in Vogue.com. Roe v. Wade will fall this summer, when the court rules on a challenge…

Good week for: Nodding off, with a new study suggesting that as little as 15 seconds spent in “hypnagogia,” the first stage of falling asleep, can triple a person’s capacity for “creative problem-solving” afterward. Coveting, after Pope Francis told reporters that “sins of the flesh,” such as extramarital sex, “are not the most serious.” Far worse, Francis said, are the sins of pride and hatred. Remote workers, after a federal court in Germany ruled that a man who injured himself at home while walking from his bed to his desk was technically “commuting” and is thus entitled to worker’s compensation. Bad week for: Feeling guilty, after Sharon Whatley, 50, of Eros, La., tried to turn herself in at the Monroe Police Department but could not cite any crime she committed.…