SCOTUS - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[LFC]

Mar 25, 2022 18:25:24 GMT pnwguy said:

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? 

There is but it's a process. They have plugins and I found one that does reactions but it requires a different plugin to work plus it apparently doesn't identify who reacted, which is weird.

[LFC]

Thomas's conduct "looks increasingly corrupt?" Wow, it was already starting at such a high point of corruption.

Sen. Ron Wyden says that Clarence Thomas’ conduct on the court “looks increasingly corrupt” and that at a minimum he should recuse himself from any cases tied to the January 6th conspiracy or the 2024 election if ex-President Trump chooses to run again for election. I was gratified to see this because I had suggested the same and it seems really the minimum that should be required of him. (He’s already sat in review of other January 6th cases and ruled adverse to the investigation.)

The question that occurs to me is why is Wyden the only senator asking for this? Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Thomas should consider appearing before the Jan. 6th committee. So he said something. But this isn’t a close call. A justice’s spouse is revealed as a participant in a conspiracy to overthrow the government, by definition to overthrow the constitution itself. That’s so over the top and bonkers it’s really hard to compare it to anything that has ever happened before. (In The New Yorker, Jane Mayer has more on legal scholars who say Thomas must recuse himself.)

It seems highly questionable that a Justice can even remain on the bench with any credibility when a spouse has done such a thing. Were any Justice’s spouses in touch with al Qaeda? Tim McVeigh? Even were we to indulge the hypothetical that Thomas knew nothing of his wife’s actions and is horrified by them, how could that person credibly serve? Obviously these hypotheticals are absurd on their face. Ginni Thomas has been this person, fairly publicly, forever. Of course he knew. Of course he shared her views?

Do we really know Thomas wasn’t involved himself?

[goldenvalley]

Mar 25, 2022 19:00:52 GMT LFC said:

Thomas's conduct "looks increasingly corrupt?" Wow, it was already starting at such a high point of corruption.

Do we really know Thomas wasn’t involved himself?

That's a big conclusion to leap to.  

[LFC]

I didn't realize that Thomas was the lone dissenting vote against the Jan 6 House Committee's ability to release materials they had gathered. Those materials included his wife's tweets. This member of the NYT Editorial Board wrote an op-ed under their own individual name calling on Thomas to step down, not that it will ever happen.

Stepping out under his own byline, a member of the New York Times Editorial Board used revelations in a Washington Post report that Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, conspired with members of Donald Trump's White House to overturn the 2020 election as a springboard to say the justice needs to resign.

According to Jesse Wegman, Clarence and Ginni Thomas have "done enough damage" since Clarence took his spot on the country's highest court in 1991.

As the columnist noted, Ginni Thomas' antics have not only cast a cloud over her husband's curious sole vote to keep Trump's White House documents secret but also what influence she has had on his 30-year career.

"What did Justice Clarence Thomas know, and when did he know it? " Wegman asked before adding, "The question usually gets directed at politicians, not judges, but it’s a fair one in light of the revelation on Thursday that Justice Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was working feverishly behind the scenes — and to a far greater degree than she previously admitted — in a high-level effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election."

Citing a speech by Justice Thomas, where he noted, "I think the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference. That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions, " Wegman pointed out, "Bench memo to the justice: You know what jeopardizes public faith in legal institutions? Refusing to recuse yourself from numerous high-profile cases in which your wife has been personally and sometimes financially entangled, as The New Yorker reported in January."

[LFC]

From the Annals of the Expected:

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) doesn't see any potential for conflict of interest if Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decides Jan. 6 cases that might involve his wife.

Newly revealed texts show the justice's wife Ginni Thomas discussed plans to overturn Donald Trump's election loss with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and the Republican minority leader dismissed calls for the conservative jurist to recuse himself from other cases that might involve the U.S. Capitol riot.

“No, I think, I think Justice Thomas could make his decisions like he’s made them every other time," McCarthy said. "It’s his decision based upon law. If you spent any time studying this Supreme Court justice, he's one who studies correctly, I mean, from all the way through. If he sees it's not upholding the Constitution he'll rule against it. If it's constitutional, that's what his job should be -- it's him."

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who was seated next to McCarthy at an event hosted by the Congressional Institute, said he agreed.

"Totally," Jordan said.

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[LFC]

Hypocrite Josh Hawley's record on sex offenders when he was Missouri's AG was put under the microscope. Of course you know where this is going.

Sen. Josh Hawley was residing in a glass house when he metaphorically hurled rocks at Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson -- falsely suggesting that she was soft on sex-related crimes during her U.S. Supreme Court nomination hearing.

Hawley’s own record on the subject is nothing to boast about. On multiple instances in his fleeting two-year stint as Missouri attorney general -- before he was elected to the U.S. Senate -- Hawley was either disinterested or inept in prosecuting sex crimes.

Some of that history was laid out today in a National Memo report today.

“Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has spent the past few weeks attacking Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson for her sentencing record, including falsely accusing her of showing leniency for sexual predators. But Hawley's own record as a prosecutor may not match his current rhetoric.

“The Missouri Republican's widely debunked accusations falsely asserted that ‘Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker’ and showed an ‘alarming trend of lenient sentencing.’"

And then it noted Hawley’s hypocrisy.

“While Hawley has never served as a judge, he does have experience prosecuting sex crime cases as Missouri's attorney general from 2017 to 2019. Although that office has only a small prosecutorial role in the state's criminal justice system, Hawley's brief tenure was marred by criticism of his handling of sexual abuse claims by victims.

“In January 2021, the Kansas City Star published a guest column by Pam Hamilton, a former Hawley appointee who questioned his handling of human trafficking cases. "I was on Josh Hawley’s human trafficking task force," the headline of Hamilton's story read. "He sought TV cameras, not justice."

And as National Memo noted, things didn’t work out well even when Hawley presumably sought justice.

[LFC]

AOC brought up the "I-word" in a statement about Clarence Thomas, the single most corrupt SCOTUS judge for at least decades.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday became the latest Democratic lawmaker to demand that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas resign in the wake of new revelations that his wife, right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, pushed at least one Trump administration official to try to overturn the 2020 election.

If Thomas does not step down, said the New York Democrat, his conduct "could serve as grounds for impeachment."

Government watchdogs and a growing number of Democratic lawmakers have argued that Thomas' actions constituted a clear conflict of interest in cases her husband has heard since the election.

As Ocasio-Cortez noted on Twitter Tuesday, Justice Thomas dissented in a ruling regarding Trump's attempt to block the congressional committee examining the January 6, 2021 insurrection from viewing White House records.

The justice has not recused himself from hearing at least 10 cases related to the 2020 election which his wife worked to overturn, according to The Hill.

Ocasio-Cortez joined lawmakers including Reps. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) in calling on Thomas to step down. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was the first Democrat to call for Thomas' impeachment, while Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have demanded that the judge recuse himself from all cases involving the January 6 attack on the Capitol building.

Supreme Court justices are free to decide when it is appropriate to recuse themselves from hearing and ruling in cases; Jayapal called Thomas' decision not to recuse "stunning" and "outrageous."

"Clearly the Supreme Court is in need of ethics reforms," she told Politico Tuesday.

[LFC]

More analysis of what Republicans signaled and said out loud concerning the rights of Americans. They are gunning for every battle they lost for the past 50 years. Strap in because they're not just coming for abortion, they're coming for gays, contraception, freedom from religion, and anything else that does not hand them the power to force others into their world view. This is an all out culture war and they have the corrupt judges to do it.

Senate Republicans don’t have the votes to take down Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, but they’ve used her confirmation process to broadcast their intention to roll back decades of civil rights progress.

In public remarks, leading Republicans have almost casually and with little fear of political recrimination begun to relitigate same-sex marriage, contraception and interracial marriage. With a robust 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the GOP’s ambition to rework the privacy jurisprudence underlying many of the civil rights gains of the last 60 years isn’t idle aspiration but a very real threat.

If Republicans retreated on gay marriage over the past decade, it was a tactical retreat only. They’ve renewed their focus on 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that established the right of same-sex couples to marry. Senate Republicans characterized it as precedent wrongly decided, as an unenumerated right spun out of thin air.

“They’ve been targeting Obergefell since the day it was decided,” David Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline Law School, told TPM. “The right-wing legal movement has never moved on.”

Some other case fixations that surfaced during the Jackson confirmation, both inside and outside the hearing room, shocked legal experts in a way that the calls to overturn Obergefell didn’t.

One of those was Griswold v. Connecticut, the case that established a right to privacy related to the use of contraceptives. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the 1965 decision “constitutionally unsound” precedent.

More shocking a position still came from Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), who, speaking to a conference call of local reporters, argued that the case legalizing interracial marriage nationwide, Loving v. Virginia, should be overturned.

“When you want that diversity to shine within our federal system there are gonna be rules and proceedings that are gonna be out of sync with maybe what other states would do,” he said. “It’s the beauty of the system — that’s where the differences among points of view in our 50 states ought to express themselves.”

When asked further if he was really saying he’d leave the legality of interracial marriage up to individual states, he said yes.

“That’s something that if you’re not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you’re not gonna be able to have your cake and eat it too, I think that’s hypocritical,” he added.

He later walked back the comments, claiming not to have understood the question which was posed to him in two different ways.

The senators aren’t waiting for the fall of Roe v. Wade, expected this summer, to question other rights, many of which flow from a similar understanding of the privacy and personal autonomy the Constitution grants.

“What’s shocking about it is that it’s a direct attack on the idea of substantive due process and the whole constellation of privacy rights,” said Jessie Hill, associate dean and professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. “No one made an attempt at pretense, that abortion is different or that same-sex marriage is less traditional — it reveals the extent to which this was a full-frontal attack on all of those concepts.”

I doubt Rod Dreher can even comprehend that this is literally everything he claimed the left was doing. Every ... f***ing ... thing. Woke? That's chicken shit compared to religious. We're seeing just how little cries of "FREEDOM!" really mean.

[pnwguy]

These A-holes want the FREEDOM! to institute a theocracy. Final stop on the crazy train -- Gilead City.

[LFC]

Since her vote likely won't matter Susan Collins is going all noble.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) announced on Wednesday morning that she plans to vote “yes” for Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation on the high court, the first drop of support Jackson has received from a Republican as President Joe Biden’s SCOTUS pick.

“After reviewing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s extensive record, watching much of her hearing testimony, and meeting with her twice in person, I have concluded that she possesses the experience, qualifications, and integrity to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court,” the GOP senator said in a statement. “I will, therefore, vote to confirm her to this position.”

Given that Supreme Court confirmations are approved by a simple majority vote in the Senate, plus indications that all 50 Democratic senators that make up the majority are on board with Jackson, the appointee likely wouldn’t have needed Collins’ support when her confirmation gets put to a vote next week.

If Sinema backed out and there were only 49 votes I wonder what excuse she'd make for switching her vote.

[LFC]

Dems are continuing to take it to Clarence Thomas. He's been a disgrace since day one but now he's so compromised that no reasonable person could expect him to be able to credibly do his job. Of course that won't stop him but every time he votes on anything to do with his wife's activities and income, in even the slightest manner, the Dems will use it as a cudgel. Unfair? Tough. Clarence earned this.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Thursday took congressional Democrats’ demands for Justice Clarence Thomas’ recusal from Jan. 6-related cases up a notch, following revelations of his wife’s pro-coup texts.

Speaking to reporters during a press conference on Thursday, Pelosi didn’t mince words when asked whether she agrees with members of her caucus calling for Justice Thomas’ resignation now that the extent of his wife’s involvement in Trump’s election subversion efforts has been revealed.

“I don’t think he should’ve ever been appointed,” Pelosi said, before saying that she wouldn’t directly address some of her colleagues’ calls for Justice Thomas’ resignation.

Pelosi, however, urged the House to pass a standalone bill to impose a code of ethics on Supreme Court justices.

“They have no code of ethics and — really? It’s the Supreme Court of the United States,” Pelosi said. “They’re making judgments about the air we breathe and we don’t even know what their ethical standard is?”

“Why should they have lower standards than members of Congress?” Pelosi continued.

Pelosi then argued that Ginni Thomas’ damning pro-coup texts to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election demonstrates Justice Thomas’ lack of “ethical standards.”

“I hear people say from time to time, ‘well, it’s a personal decision of a judge as to whether he should recuse himself,” Pelosi said. “Well if your wife is an admitted and proud contributor to a coup of our country, maybe you should weigh that in your ethical standards.”

[LFC]

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MOron) tries to defend Clarence Thomas. What a transparent steaming pile of bullshit.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), a top Senate Republican set to retire this year, on Sunday struggled to explain his opposition to Justice Clarence Thomas’ recusal from Jan. 6-related cases after revelations of Thomas’ wife’s pro-coup texts.

Appearing on ABC News, Blunt was asked about calls for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from election cases given his wife’s, Ginni Thomas, active involvement in former President Trump’s election subversion efforts.

Blunt suggested that Justice Thomas disagrees with his wife’s Big Lie efforts in arguing his dismissal of calls to recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases.

“Well, the idea that you can’t disagree with your wife on a public issue and still be able to function as a judge or as a government figure of any kind, I think is an idea that’s long outlived any idea that it might be reasonable,” Blunt said.

Pressed on whether he knows that Justice Thomas disagrees with his wife, Blunt said he does not know for sure, before going on to deflect from his initial argument.

“Judge Thomas has to decide that, in his personal opinions, I think in his writings over the years aren’t part of his judicial philosophy,” Blunt said. “He’s going to look at the law. He’s going to look at what the law says and what the Constitution says and rule in that regard.”

Thomas has a long history of not looking at the law and being the odd man out who clearly does exactly the opposite of looking at the law. You can predict his results oriented votes more than any other justice. On top of that he's corrupt as hell. And on top of the financial corruption now we know he's married to a seditionist.

[LFC]

OH NOES! How did we ever get here?

GOP Sen. Bemoans SCOTUS Politicization His Party Started

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) is Quite Concerned that we might be entering an era “where the only way to confirm a Supreme Court nominee is the party of the president has to be in control of the Senate,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

• “And I’m pretty certain that the founders didn’t have that in mind,” he added. Maybe there’s a Senate party leader Cramer can talk to about that!

I can hardly wait to see what his vote will be. "Well, I wanted to vote for her but she's just sooooo radical. Not like the fine judicial Federalist candidates I've voted for in the past."

[LFC]

Little Lindsey just admitted that no Democratic president is allowed to have a SCOTUS pick if Republicans control the Senate. It's not like that we didn't realize this a long time ago but it's nice to have the confession.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the quiet part out loud on Monday when he declared that President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee wouldn’t get a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee if Republicans held the majority. Prior to the committee’s vote to advance the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Graham explained why he is now against her nomination despite previously voting to confirm her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “Now that you’re talking about Supreme Court, you’re making policy not just bound by it,” he said, adding that Jackson is an “activist to the core” who’s been embraced by the most “radical people in the Democratic movement.” He also groused yet again about her supposedly lenient sentencing in child-porn cases, a largely refuted GOP talking point that’s been negatively received by the public. He then concluded with a warning: “If we get back the Senate and we are in charge of this body and there is judicial openings, we will talk to our colleagues on the other side,” he proclaimed. “But if we are in charge, she would not have been before this committee. You would have had somebody more moderate than this.” Back in 2016, President Barack Obama’s moderate Supreme Court choice Merrick Garland was denied a hearing by a GOP-majority Senate, and the opening was carried over to Donald Trump’s presidency.

[LFC]

With the upcoming vote for Katanji Brown Jackson looking like a sure thing Sen. Tom Cotton (R-ARen't I A Dumb F***) has decided there are too many POGers on the pedophilia bandwagon. (It doesn't help that he looks like Hollywood's typecast of a sexual deviant.) He decided to go pure "SHE LOVES NAZIS!" It's ... bizarre.

Yeah Let’s Sink Lower

Apparently not content with hurling accusations of being pro-pedophilia, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) found a new angle with which to smear Supreme Court pick Ketanji Brown Jackson.

• Yep, Cotton declared the following during Jackson’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday: “You know the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the Nazis. This Judge Jackson may have gone there to defend them.”

• It goes without saying that there’s literally nothing to back up Cotton’s latest accusation against Jackson, who would be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court if successfully confirmed.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 6, 2022 14:43:30 GMT LFC said:

With the upcoming vote for Katanji Brown Jackson looking like a sure thing Sen. Tom Cotton (R-ARen't I A Dumb F***) has decided there are too many POGers on the pedophilia bandwagon. (It doesn't help that he looks like Hollywood's typecast of a sexual deviant.) He decided to go pure "SHE LOVES NAZIS!" It's ... bizarre.

Yeah Let’s Sink Lower

Apparently not content with hurling accusations of being pro-pedophilia, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) found a new angle with which to smear Supreme Court pick Ketanji Brown Jackson.

• Yep, Cotton declared the following during Jackson’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday: “You know the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the Nazis. This Judge Jackson may have gone there to defend them.”

• It goes without saying that there’s literally nothing to back up Cotton’s latest accusation against Jackson, who would be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court if successfully confirmed.

Public defenders offices exist because it was thought that everyone accused of the crime should have a lawyer.  Of course that's for the little people. There are lots of white collar crime defense lawyers in private firms, I doubt he has much problem with them.

[LFC]

As if Republicans hadn't already killed irony, mangled its body, and pissed on its grave.

[LFC]

Right-wing SCOTUS just f***ed the Native Americans ... again. And once again they used the shadow docket to make a major decision that deserved a hearing, something that is now a standard for right-wing SCOTUS. (But they're not "partisan hacks", right Amy?)

In a 5-4 split, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily revived a Trump-era rule intended to fast-track big energy projects by limiting the states' power to curtail them under the Clean Water Act.

The majority voted to block the effect of an October ruling that vacated the 2020 rule while industry groups, Louisiana and seven other Republican-led states appeal that ruling, and if either side seeks review by the Supreme Court.

The majority gave no reasons for granting the application filed on its emergency docket - often called the shadow docket because the cases are decided with minimal briefing, no arguments and no explanation.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined in her dissent by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said the case did not belong on the emergency docket because the petitioners had not identified any threat of immediate harm. By granting relief anyway, the majority “signals its view of the merits” and “renders the Court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all,” Kagan wrote.

The legal dispute stems from changes the Environmental Protection Agency made in July 2020 to its interpretation of Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which gives states and eligible Tribes some power over interstate pipelines, coal terminals, and other federally licensed projects affecting waterways and wetlands in their jurisdictions.

The 2020 revision made it impossible for states to block projects for any reason other than direct pollution into state waters. Some states had previously weighed other factors, such as climate change.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 7, 2022 18:12:37 GMT LFC said:

Right-wing SCOTUS just f***ed the Native Americans ... again. And once again they used the shadow docket to make a major decision that deserved a hearing, something that is now a standard for right-wing SCOTUS. (But they're not "partisan hacks", right Amy?)

In a 5-4 split, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday temporarily revived a Trump-era rule intended to fast-track big energy projects by limiting the states' power to curtail them under the Clean Water Act.

The majority voted to block the effect of an October ruling that vacated the 2020 rule while industry groups, Louisiana and seven other Republican-led states appeal that ruling, and if either side seeks review by the Supreme Court.

The majority gave no reasons for granting the application filed on its emergency docket - often called the shadow docket because the cases are decided with minimal briefing, no arguments and no explanation.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined in her dissent by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said the case did not belong on the emergency docket because the petitioners had not identified any threat of immediate harm. By granting relief anyway, the majority “signals its view of the merits” and “renders the Court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all,” Kagan wrote.

The legal dispute stems from changes the Environmental Protection Agency made in July 2020 to its interpretation of Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which gives states and eligible Tribes some power over interstate pipelines, coal terminals, and other federally licensed projects affecting waterways and wetlands in their jurisdictions.

The 2020 revision made it impossible for states to block projects for any reason other than direct pollution into state waters. Some states had previously weighed other factors, such as climate change.

And just a few days ago Justice Coney Barrett said they aren't a results oriented body...all you have to do is read the opinion to understand the careful judicial thought process.  But with the shadow docket there isn't always a majority opinion, so gee Justice what do you say to that?

[goldenvalley]

And the Senate just confirmed a new Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. After Rand Paul made them wait for his vote...he apparently wasn't in the building and showed up after everyone else had voted.  Grandstanding for no purpose.  Another nutball.

[LFC]

Apr 7, 2022 18:19:06 GMT goldenvalley said:

Apr 7, 2022 18:12:37 GMT LFC said:

Right-wing SCOTUS just f***ed the Native Americans ... again. And once again they used the shadow docket to make a major decision that deserved a hearing, something that is now a standard for right-wing SCOTUS. (But they're not "partisan hacks", right Amy?)

And just a few days ago Justice Coney Barrett said they aren't a results oriented body...all you have to do is read the opinion to understand the careful judicial thought process.  But with the shadow docket there isn't always a majority opinion, so gee Justice what do you say to that?

Yep, and she told us that while speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation, a perfect venue for somebody who isn't a partisan hack.