Word: penumbras
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...right of a woman to choose an abortion is nowhere in the actual text of our Constitution; it was found by the Supreme Court in a constitutional "penumbra" known as the right of privacy, which was first established to protect the use of birth control. But the Constitution explicitly and augustly ratifies "free exercise" of religion and "freedom of speech" in the First Amendment. A religiously-inspired refusal to help pay for elective abortions is an exercise of religion, and a denial by government of an exemption must survive "strict scrutiny," which is the same standard applied to state-sanctioned...
...refusal to pay for elective abortions also falls within the immediate penumbra of the free-speech right not to be forced to, as Supreme Court justices proclaimed, "confess by word or act" any particular view of "politics, nationalism, religion or other matter of opinion." The Supreme Court has protected under this aspect of free speech a Jehovah's Witness's refusal to salute the American flag and a refusal to carry a license plate with a libertarian state motto...
...upon/ and we've moved on to the electric chair"--and then shifts easily to an image of digging deeper to uncover cultural truths "beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals/ beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels." It's a smart offering that rests comfortably in the penumbra between spoken word and song...
...fault of the curator, Kirk Varnedoe, who has done an exemplary job of hanging the show and, without resorting to the usual pseudo-philosophical guff that attends critical discussion of Johns, describing and analyzing his work in the catalog. Rather, it seems immovably built into the penumbra--glowing, and yet after all these years possessing the consistency of solid concrete--that surrounds the work...
...necktie, it signaled a relaxation into informality at the end of a meal or the start of a baseball game, before drinks or after sex. Even for the solitary steam fitter or housewife, the act of sending a geyser from mouth to ceiling could envelop the user in a penumbra of calm thoughtfulness. It was an empyrean for daydreams -- the cloud of smoke our thoughts went...