SCOTUS - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[LFC]

Here's a case of "The Ugly" as Clarence Thomas still "shines" on as the most corrupt Supreme Court justice in my lifetime.

When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was promoting a new release of his 2007 memoir last October, he made an interesting choice for his public relations firm, a company run by one of the most influential figures in conservative legal circles: Leonard Leo.

Leo, the former head of the Federalist Society and a top fundraiser for right-wing judiciary activist groups, wasn’t just in charge of Thomas’ memoir; Leo’s PR firm, CRC Advisors, was also tasked with promoting a Thomas documentary, and the firm was the registered agent for four Thomas-centric web domains.

The interesting part of this choice is not that Leo’s firm was incapable of handling the work—far from it. What makes Thomas’ decision notable is that Leo happens to have a vested interest in the Supreme Court, and his dark money network actively tries to influence rulings.

The revelations of Leo and Thomas’ business relationship offers new evidence of ties between a sitting justice and a man widely considered the most powerful conservative judicial activist in the country. And while it might not be an instantly damning smoking gun, experts say the connection—where Thomas stands to gain financially—raises further questions about the arch-conservative justice’s deep and shady ties to a sprawling network of dark money organizations and right-wing activist groups, many of which have business before him.

The news also comes at a time of dwindling public faith in the Supreme Court’s impartiality. That faith hit an all-time low last September, the month before the audiobook’s press release.

[LFC]

The radical, right-wing, activist court wants to run the country. They are power mad and clearly loathe democracy. Their "interpretations" of the Constitution is clearly not remotely originalist. That's just a talisman to excuse anything they pull out of their asses.

On the surface, the Supreme Court’s order in a Republican challenge to North Carolina’s redistricting maps earlier this week was a win for voting rights advocates.

The majority refused to stay a congressional map drawn by the North Carolina Supreme Court after voters challenged the legislature’s version that heavily favored GOP candidates. That leaves the state court’s map in place, which is much fairer than the legislature’s concoction.

But the dissent authored by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, along with, to a lesser degree, a concurrence from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, offer a dark indication as to where the right wing of the bench would like to go. The dissenters say that North Carolina Republicans had the stronger argument and likely would have won on the merits to get the court’s map invalidated.

“That some of the justices rejected outright state court interpretations of state statutes is, frankly, a power grab by the Supreme Court,” Carolyn Shapiro, law professor and founder of Chicago-Kent’s Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States, told TPM. “It’s an astonishing shift of authority over election law from state courts to federal courts, but primarily to the Supreme Court.”

Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas also expressed their support in the dissent for the “independent state legislature theory,” which rests on an ultra-narrow and literal reading of a couple constitutional clauses. The Elections Clause of the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to dictate the “times, places and manner” of holding elections. The Electors Clause gives state legislatures the power to appoint presidential electors in the “manner” they choose.

The conservatives are interpreting those two clauses to empower state legislatures, solely, to the exclusion of state courts. Legislatures would get to craft voting regulation, redistricted maps, election rules — all without any judicial review. A maximalist embrace of the independent state legislature theory would mean that state constitution provisions and voter-passed initiatives on elections would not apply, and that state courts would have no place intervening in election litigation.

The theory is a wild break with the logic on which the Constitution is built, Douglas Spencer, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School, told TPM.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 9, 2022 16:28:35 GMT LFC said:

The radical, right-wing, activist court wants to run the country. They are power mad and clearly loathe democracy. Their "interpretations" of the Constitution is clearly not remotely originalist. That's just a talisman to excuse anything they pull out of their asses.

On the surface, the Supreme Court’s order in a Republican challenge to North Carolina’s redistricting maps earlier this week was a win for voting rights advocates.

The majority refused to stay a congressional map drawn by the North Carolina Supreme Court after voters challenged the legislature’s version that heavily favored GOP candidates. That leaves the state court’s map in place, which is much fairer than the legislature’s concoction.

But the dissent authored by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, along with, to a lesser degree, a concurrence from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, offer a dark indication as to where the right wing of the bench would like to go. The dissenters say that North Carolina Republicans had the stronger argument and likely would have won on the merits to get the court’s map invalidated.

“That some of the justices rejected outright state court interpretations of state statutes is, frankly, a power grab by the Supreme Court,” Carolyn Shapiro, law professor and founder of Chicago-Kent’s Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States, told TPM. “It’s an astonishing shift of authority over election law from state courts to federal courts, but primarily to the Supreme Court.”

Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas also expressed their support in the dissent for the “independent state legislature theory,” which rests on an ultra-narrow and literal reading of a couple constitutional clauses. The Elections Clause of the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to dictate the “times, places and manner” of holding elections. The Electors Clause gives state legislatures the power to appoint presidential electors in the “manner” they choose.

The conservatives are interpreting those two clauses to empower state legislatures, solely, to the exclusion of state courts. Legislatures would get to craft voting regulation, redistricted maps, election rules — all without any judicial review. A maximalist embrace of the independent state legislature theory would mean that state constitution provisions and voter-passed initiatives on elections would not apply, and that state courts would have no place intervening in election litigation.

The theory is a wild break with the logic on which the Constitution is built, Douglas Spencer, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School, told TPM.

So the state legislature is the final authority on anything and no court has the power to interpret or to determine that a statute is unConstitutional. So why is the SCOTUS issuing any rulings on anything passed by the states?  

[LFC]

Mar 9, 2022 16:38:38 GMT goldenvalley said:

So the state legislature is the final authority on anything and no court has the power to interpret or to determine that a statute is unConstitutional. So why is the SCOTUS issuing any rulings on anything passed by the states?  

Shorter Right-wing SCOTUS: The Constitution says that state legislatures have the right to violate the state constitutions and laws they passed.

What in the actual hell? These people are anti-democracy but then again so is their chosen political party.

[LFC]

The Republicans are coming for nominee Katanji Brown Jackson with screeching that she's soft on crime because she was a public defender. Josh Hawley decided to go to an even lower level of nauseating lies. Jen Psaki got in a great dig.

Hawley’s Jaw-Dropper

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) took the theme in a more radical direction, claiming in a lengthy Twitter thread that Jackson has been notably lenient with sex offenders, particularly those who hurt children.

• “I’ve been researching the record of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, reading her opinions, articles, interviews & speeches,” he wrote. “I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children.”

• A White House spokesperson called the comments “toxic and weakly-presented misinformation.”

• “I’m not sure that someone who refused to tell people whether or not he would vote for Roy Moore is an effective and credible messenger on this,” added White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki at her briefing.

[LFC]

The Republican clown show is about what you'd expect. Josh Hawley's pre-gaming accusation of defending pedophiles has gone down in flames.

On Monday, writing for MSNBC, commentator Steve Benen observed how these attacks are quickly backfiring on him.

"The GOP senator’s line of attack did not go unnoticed, but fact-checkers quickly dismantled Hawley’s nonsense. The Associated Press said the senator’s claims 'don’t stand up to scrutiny.' Fact-check reports from the Washington Post and CNN came to the same conclusion," wrote Benen. "Others were even more direct in their denunciations. Vox’s Ian Millhiser described Hawley’s attempted smear 'genuinely nauseating.' In National Review, a leading conservative publication, Andrew McCarthy concluded that Hawley’s allegation 'appears meritless to the point of demagoguery.'"

All of this is beclowning not just Hawley but the entire Republican Party, Benen claimed, in light of GOP leadership's promise to be more high-minded than Democrats supposedly were with the sexual misconduct allegations against Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. "In reality, it’s rather easy to defend the ways in which Democratic senators handled the credible allegations surrounding Thomas and Kavanaugh. But putting that aside, the assurances about the GOP staying away from 'the gutter' and approaching Jackson’s nomination in a 'respectable' way look ridiculous in the wake of Sen. Josh Hawley’s attempted smear."

"But the fact remains that Senate GOP leaders have made no effort to follow Hawley’s lead; observers from the left, right, and center have been quick to shred his baseless smear; and by mainstream standards, Hawley’s attack backfired," concluded Benen. "The Missouri Republican meant to make Jackson look awful. He denigrated himself in the process."

Marsha Blackburn is about as vapid as you'd expect her to be.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Monday repeatedly cast aspersions on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson's judicial record by insinuating she had a secret plan to bring critical race theory to the Supreme Court.

While addressing Jackson in her opening statement, Blackburn wasted no time tossing out red meat to GOP voters.

"You once wrote that every judge has 'personal, hidden agendas' that influence how they decide cases," she said. "I can only wonder what your hidden agenda is. Is it to let child predators back to the streets? Is it to restrict parental rights and expand government into our schools and private family decisions? Is it to support the radical left's attempt to pack the Supreme Court?"

And Raphael put on a little show so people would know how tough he is. So did Gr-ASS-ley, the dipshit who whined the Dems were moving too fast after the Republicans rammed in the right-wing religious radical Barrett.

Taking full advantage of his ten minutes of TV time at the first hearing on Ketanji Jackson Brown's nomination to the Supreme Court, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) delivered a tirated loaded with attacks on Democrats for their treatment of nominees including now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Similar to comments made by ranking Senate Judiciary Republican Chuck Grassley, the Texas Republican went even further, making his opening statement more about perceived slights and less about the nominee who sat patiently listening to him.

"It is only one side of the aisle that, with Justice Clarence Thomas was so reprehensible that as the president who nominated him said at the time, 'what is happening to Clarence Thomas is just plain horrible,'" he exclaimed.

This is a good description of Gr-ASS-ley: "Impossibly boring man of no principles."

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, the seven-term Republican senior Senator from Iowa, promised his side would not turn Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing Monday "into a spectacle," yet proceeded to do just that.

Republicans are vastly opposed to Judge Jackson, who, as many have noted, is not just more qualified than every Supreme Court Justice currently on the bench was when they were nominated, but more qualified than at least three of them combined.

Grassley, 88, running for re-election this year, is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. On Monday he delivered his opening statement, using it to promote his fictious judicial theories, saying outright that he will use the hearing to determine if Judge Jackson subscribes to originalism – which only right-wing judges do.

I like this summation of a particular stupid Gr-ASS-ley point.

The Nation's Justice Correspondent Elie Mystal observed: "Grassley says Democrats voted against nominees that were 'diverse racially.' This is a good time to remind you that Donald Trump's nominees were 85% white and 75% male and he's the only president to not appoint a black male judge since Nixon.

The GOP is obsessed with identity."

[AnBr]

josh-hawley-slams-ketanji-brown-jackson-for-letting-ped-1848687154

[LFC]

Yes, Republicans, you are f***ing racists.

In news that manages to be both shocking and unsurprising, the GOP launched an ugly, racist attack against the absurdly qualified Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom President Joe Biden has nominated to be the first Black female Supreme Court Justice in this nation’s history.

At 10:52 a.m. on the second day of Jackson’s confirmation hearings, the GOP’s official account tweeted a GIF with her face next to the letters CRT, which were then scratched out and replaced by her initials KBJ.

Subtle.

You can throw away the dog whistles of the old-time Republican propagandist Lee Atwater, the GOP of 2022 just goes right for the overt racism.

A few hours after the GOP’s racist tweet, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz did his part to advance the cause. Like a loyal footsoldier, he insinuated that Judge Jackson is an anti-white radical. He spent a majority of his time asking her about Critical Race Theory (CRT), knowing full well his questions had no bearing or relevance to her career, her qualifications, or her performance as a Supreme Court Justice.

It’s all ugly theater of the absurd, but that’s exactly the point. This is red meat for the conservative base, which has been increasingly radicalized and fed a steady diet of conspiracy theories and lies that deliberately and inaccurately redefine CRT as a pernicious ideology unleashed by the deep state to teach our children to be anti-white, anti-democratic, Marxist sex criminals.

As Judge Jackson herself said in response to one of Sen. Cruz’s many insulting questions, “[CRT] doesn’t come up in my work as a judge. It’s never something that I studied or relied on and it wouldn’t be something I would rely on if I was on the Supreme Court.”

But her record and statements don’t matter, because Judge Jackson is a Black woman—nominated by a Democratic president. That alone condemns her as a Trojan horse who will allegedly use her considerable talents and powers to attack an increasingly paranoid GOP base that have been told they are being “replaced.”

[goldenvalley]

Mar 23, 2022 15:35:05 GMT LFC said:

Yes, Republicans, you are f***ing racists.

In news that manages to be both shocking and unsurprising, the GOP launched an ugly, racist attack against the absurdly qualified Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom President Joe Biden has nominated to be the first Black female Supreme Court Justice in this nation’s history.

At 10:52 a.m. on the second day of Jackson’s confirmation hearings, the GOP’s official account tweeted a GIF with her face next to the letters CRT, which were then scratched out and replaced by her initials KBJ.

Subtle.

You can throw away the dog whistles of the old-time Republican propagandist Lee Atwater, the GOP of 2022 just goes right for the overt racism.

A few hours after the GOP’s racist tweet, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz did his part to advance the cause. Like a loyal footsoldier, he insinuated that Judge Jackson is an anti-white radical. He spent a majority of his time asking her about Critical Race Theory (CRT), knowing full well his questions had no bearing or relevance to her career, her qualifications, or her performance as a Supreme Court Justice.

It’s all ugly theater of the absurd, but that’s exactly the point. This is red meat for the conservative base, which has been increasingly radicalized and fed a steady diet of conspiracy theories and lies that deliberately and inaccurately redefine CRT as a pernicious ideology unleashed by the deep state to teach our children to be anti-white, anti-democratic, Marxist sex criminals.

As Judge Jackson herself said in response to one of Sen. Cruz’s many insulting questions, “[CRT] doesn’t come up in my work as a judge. It’s never something that I studied or relied on and it wouldn’t be something I would rely on if I was on the Supreme Court.”

But her record and statements don’t matter, because Judge Jackson is a Black woman—nominated by a Democratic president. That alone condemns her as a Trojan horse who will allegedly use her considerable talents and powers to attack an increasingly paranoid GOP base that have been told they are being “replaced.”

I can't find the tweet now but yesterday a California state senator tweeted that he was a classmate of KBJ in law school.  She was very intelligent and well liked.  Cruz was in the class ahead of them.  No one liked him.

[Art Vandelay]

Mar 23, 2022 15:58:46 GMT goldenvalley said:

Mar 23, 2022 15:35:05 GMT LFC said:

Yes, Republicans, you are f***ing racists.

I can't find the tweet now but yesterday a California state senator tweeted that he was a classmate of KBJ in law school.  She was very intelligent and well liked.  Cruz was in the class ahead of them.  No one liked him.

I am reminded of this quote:

"I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz." --- Al Franken

[indy]

What was it that John Boehner called Cruz? Lucifer in the flesh?

[Art Vandelay]

Mar 23, 2022 17:03:31 GMT indy said:

What was it that John Boehner called Cruz? Lucifer in the flesh?

Yes. He also said: “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”

[LFC]

Right-wing SCOTUS just used the shadow docket to interfere with Wisconsin's redistricting. So much for states' rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court just sidelined Wisconsin’s highest court and delivered a significant win for Wisconsin Republicans, who were trying to throw out a state legislative map that included a new majority-Black district.

Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the lone dissenters Wednesday, called the Court’s action “unprecedented” and said it should have let the legal conflict play out at the state level, “rather than further complicating these proceedings with legal confusion through a summary reversal.”

The maps overturned Wednesday, which were adopted by the state Supreme Court earlier this month, disproportionately favored Republicans. But that wasn’t enough for Republican state legislators, who appealed the state Court’s ruling on an emergency basis to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision Wednesday was the first time this year that the high Court used its “shadow docket” — that is, decisions made on an emergency basis, rather than after hearing oral arguments from both sides — to throw out a redistricting map based on a Voting Rights Act argument, Democracy Docket noted.

In effect, the decision erases the conservative state Supreme Court’s decision to side with legislative maps drawn by Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, and sends the case back to the state Supreme Court to be decided again, offering fresh hope for Republicans.

[LFC]

Little Lindsey went full metal douchebag. He's a pathetic little boy who has no principles and no talents, just a love of the sound of his own voice when he tries to play big boy.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) raked Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) over the coals on Wednesday after the Republican senator repeatedly harangued and thundered over Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing, refusing to let her finish answering his questions.

Graham’s attacks were “an abrogation of everything the Senate should stand for,” Leahy told reporters outside the chamber.

“You had a Republican member who went way the over time allotted, ignored the rules of the committee, badgered the nominee, would not even let her answer the questions …. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been here 48 years,” the Democratic senator continued.

Leahy accused Graham of having a “political motivation” to come after Jackson.

“To see the badgering of this woman as she’s trying to testify, I thought was outrageous,” the Vermont lawmaker said.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 23, 2022 21:42:38 GMT LFC said:

Right-wing SCOTUS just used the shadow docket to interfere with Wisconsin's redistricting. So much for states' rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court just sidelined Wisconsin’s highest court and delivered a significant win for Wisconsin Republicans, who were trying to throw out a state legislative map that included a new majority-Black district.

Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the lone dissenters Wednesday, called the Court’s action “unprecedented” and said it should have let the legal conflict play out at the state level, “rather than further complicating these proceedings with legal confusion through a summary reversal.”

The maps overturned Wednesday, which were adopted by the state Supreme Court earlier this month, disproportionately favored Republicans. But that wasn’t enough for Republican state legislators, who appealed the state Court’s ruling on an emergency basis to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision Wednesday was the first time this year that the high Court used its “shadow docket” — that is, decisions made on an emergency basis, rather than after hearing oral arguments from both sides — to throw out a redistricting map based on a Voting Rights Act argument, Democracy Docket noted.

In effect, the decision erases the conservative state Supreme Court’s decision to side with legislative maps drawn by Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, and sends the case back to the state Supreme Court to be decided again, offering fresh hope for Republicans.

So much for rule of law.  The Wisconsin Supreme Court made the wrong decision and therefore the US Supreme Court strikes it down.  Result oriented, not principled application of any rule, governs the decision.  

[pnwguy]

The GOP's idea of Rule of Law is that Law is whatever keeps wealthy white men in power.

[LFC]

One person said that the Democrats, with the exception of Corey Booker, didn't do much to defend KBJ. That's pretty typical. They should have been ripping the likes of Cruz, Hawley, and Grassley to shreds.

Why Didn’t Senate Democrats Defend Ketanji Brown Jackson?

Dahlia Lithwick puzzles over Judiciary Committee Democrats’ “chilling unwillingness to go to the mat” for Ketanji Brown Jackson:

Take my word for this one thing: If you have been subject to abuse, bullying, and intimidation, what you really don’t need to hear from people in power is that they think you are “brave,” or that you’re modeling perseverance and grace. What you really want is for someone to stand beside you and take a punch—or throw one. Yet beyond a handful of such moments, and notably Booker’s final speech, virtually everything Democrats did felt insufficient to the moment. More than that it felt inexplicable.

[LFC]

Where's Clarence?

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas missed a third day of oral arguments on Wednesday after being hospitalized six days ago to receive treatment for what a court spokesperson described as an infection.

Thomas entered Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, DC, Friday after experiencing flu-like symptoms. He has been absent from the bench all week.

The court announced Thomas' hospitalization on Sunday and has declined repeated requests for updates on his health since then. When asked Wednesday about his status, Patricia McCabe, the court's public information officer, said: "No update."

Please, please, please, please, please, please, ...

[LFC]

Republicans brought in a fascist, anti-democratic piece of shit from Alabama to testify in opposition to KBJ. He's the state's attorney general but clearly doesn't believe in the Constitution he's supposed to uphold.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall was invited by fellow Republicans to testify today in opposition to federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Like most Trump-affiliated Republicans, Marshall refused to respond directly to a simple question from Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D) as to whether he accepts the fact that President Joe Biden was duly elected. Marshall danced around Whitehouse's very direct question.

During his testimony before the Senate committee, Marshall accused Jackson, without evidence, of supporting a “fundamental redesign” of criminal justice that would be lenient on sentencing guidelines and said she should not be confirmed as the next associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Marshall was one of 13 witnesses, and the only one from Alabama, who appeared before the Senate panel to argue for or against Jackson’s confirmation to the nation’s highest court during the fourth and final day of hearings.

His performance on Thursday was yet another display of his fealty to former President Donals Trump. In December 2020, Marshall joined other Republican attorneys general who filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to delay certification of the presidential electors in four battleground states where Trump lost. That far-fetched lawsuit failed.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 24, 2022 21:02:25 GMT LFC said:

Republicans brought in a fascist, anti-democratic piece of shit from Alabama to testify in opposition to KBJ. He's the state's attorney general but clearly doesn't believe in the Constitution he's supposed to uphold.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall was invited by fellow Republicans to testify today in opposition to federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Like most Trump-affiliated Republicans, Marshall refused to respond directly to a simple question from Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D) as to whether he accepts the fact that President Joe Biden was duly elected. Marshall danced around Whitehouse's very direct question.

During his testimony before the Senate committee, Marshall accused Jackson, without evidence, of supporting a “fundamental redesign” of criminal justice that would be lenient on sentencing guidelines and said she should not be confirmed as the next associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Marshall was one of 13 witnesses, and the only one from Alabama, who appeared before the Senate panel to argue for or against Jackson’s confirmation to the nation’s highest court during the fourth and final day of hearings.

His performance on Thursday was yet another display of his fealty to former President Donals Trump. In December 2020, Marshall joined other Republican attorneys general who filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to delay certification of the presidential electors in four battleground states where Trump lost. That far-fetched lawsuit failed.

Is this the secret plan that Blackburn asked about? 

[LFC]

There's a line that even Republicans won't didn't cross. Well, at least not for a SCOTUS nominee.

It would only take one Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee to thwart a boycott of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing — and as of Thursday, there are at least four.

Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) all told reporters that they won’t boycott the vote.

“It was never even seriously considered, it’s never ever gonna happen, let me be clear,” Tillis said. “Zero, nada, zip.”

The idea, which would have seriously complicated Jackson’s path through the Senate toward confirmation, has been percolating since Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee used this strategy to block Sarah Bloom Raskin’s confirmation to the Federal Reserve board. She has since withdrawn her nomination.

By preventing the evenly-split committees from amassing a quorum necessary to discharge the nominations to the full Senate, the lawmakers leave the nominees in limbo. There’s been discussion of a potential rule change to circumvent the blockade, but Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) came out in opposition to Raskin’s nomination, dooming her confirmation anyway.

BTW there is still no news about Clarence Thomas after his hospitalization last Friday. I suspect that if he dies the Republicans will protect their majority in any way possible.

[goldenvalley]

The Huffington Post says Thomas is out of the hospital. 

[LFC]

I think this analysis of a recent SCOTUS ruling is being overly generous. We'll see the next time they rule on a case involving a non-Christian. The history the author gives us does not make me hopeful. Bold blatant unconstitutionality mine.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Ramirez v. Collier, which involved a death row inmate who sought to have his pastor lay hands on him and audibly pray during his execution. Though there are some procedural complexities to the decision, eight justices sided with John Ramirez, the inmate. Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.

It was, in short, a ruling that prioritized religious liberty.

But, perhaps surprisingly, the Ramirez decision should be comforting to liberals, including myself, who’ve watched the Court’s recent religion decisions with alarm. Especially after Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation in the fall of 2020 gave Republicans a supermajority on the Supreme Court, the Court has been extraordinarily solicitous toward conservative Christian litigants — even ruling in favor of litigants who sought legal exemptions that potentially endangered other citizens’ lives.

But the Court hasn’t always shown the same respect for religion claims brought by people who do not make up a key constituency of the Republican Party.

In Trump v. Hawaii (2018), the Court upheld former President Donald Trump’s policy banning people from several majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States — and it did so despite the fact that Trump repeatedly bragged about his plans to implement a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Then, in Dunn v. Ray (2019), the Court’s Republican appointees ruled against a Muslim inmate in Alabama who wanted to have his imam present at his execution. Significantly, Alabama permitted Christian inmates to have a spiritual adviser present, but not Muslims. But the Constitution does not permit such discrimination among faiths. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her Dunn dissent, “the clearest command of the Establishment Clause ... is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.”

Two years later, the Court seemed to realize it had gone too far, and ruled a Christian inmate could have his pastor present. John Ramirez, the Texas death row inmate in the case decided Thursday, sought to test the extent of that walk-back. His case is distinct because he did not simply ask to have his pastor present, but also to have that pastor pray audibly and lay hands on him during his execution.

At oral arguments in Ramirez, most of the Court’s conservative bloc appeared likely to say their new permissiveness was quite limited. Although Ramirez is a Christian, several of the justices suggested at oral argument that the Court should not entertain his claim because doing so could lead to too much work for the justices themselves.

Justice Samuel Alito, for example, complained that “we can look forward to an unending stream of variations,” from death row inmates seeking different religious accommodations if the Court ruled in Ramirez’s favor.

Ultimately, however, Alito — along with every justice other than Thomas — joined an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, which ruled in Ramirez’s favor. Technically, the opinion permits Texas to continue litigating this case in a lower court, but Texas would also have to delay Ramirez’s execution in order to do so. And Roberts’s Ramirez opinion announces a legal rule which would make it difficult for Texas to prevail if it does decide to continue litigating this case.

If nothing else, this opinion is a sign that the Court will not always limit the blessings of religious liberty to politically favored causes.

[LFC]

Manchin is in.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said Friday that he intends to vote for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, all but ensuring her confirmation to the Supreme Court.

“After meeting with her, considering her record, and closely monitoring her testimony and questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, I have determined that I intend to vote for her nomination to serve on the Supreme Court,” he said in a statement.

Apparently they believe Sinema will be also.

Sinema has not yet spoken publicly about her support for Jackson, but her opposition would be a surprise.

[pnwguy]

Mar 25, 2022 15:23:58 GMT goldenvalley said:

The Huffington Post says Thomas is out of the hospital. 

Is there no way to get Proboards to offer us a thumbs DOWN button?