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       #Post#: 22--------------------------------------------------
       Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: June 30, 2020, 11:30 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       OLD CONTENT
       Here is a good set of in-depth articles from over the last few
       months:
       www.currentaffairs.org/2018/08/why-everyone-should-oppose-brett-kavanaughs-confirmation
       www.currentaffairs.org/2018/09/why-the-kavanaugh-allegation-is-so-important
       www.currentaffairs.org/2018/09/how-we-know-kavanaugh-is-lying
       www.currentaffairs.org/2018/10/if-the-rule-of-law-means-anything-kavanaugh-must-be-impeached
       From the last article:
       --- Quote ---
       > I think Democrats are handling this whole thing rather badly.
       They are focusing a lot on the weakness of the FBI investigation
       into Kavanaugh. And the investigation is a complete travesty.
       Deborah Ramirez submitted 20 names of potential corroborating
       witnesses to the agency, and hardly any of them seem to have
       been contacted (a respected theologian who went to Yale with
       Ramirez also says he is “100 percent” certain he heard about it
       at the time). But I do not think a focus on the investigation is
       especially compelling. Democrats said they wanted a delay and an
       investigation, Republicans gave them a delay and an
       investigation, now Democrats say they didn’t mean a brief and
       shoddy investigation. Arguing about the investigation’s scope
       obscures the clear message Democrats should be pushing to the
       public: Kavanaugh lied under oath about important factual
       matters related to a serious allegation. His nomination must be
       withdrawn, and he must be impeached. Republicans can muddy an
       argument about the FBI investigation; you say it’s shoddy, we
       say it’s thorough. It is far more difficult for them to respond
       to the very clear evidence of Kavanaugh’s false and misleading
       testimony.
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0gwBY3xTrc
       ---
       This proves there is no rule of law in the US:
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdTVLOlP25M
       But I disagree that "there is nothing we can do". This is the
       exact kind of scenario the Second Amendment was designed for.
       ---
       I told you nominating Kavanaugh was just the beginning:
       civilrights.org/2019/02/08/monster-markup-magnifies-republican-partisan-court-takeover/
       --- Quote ---
       > “Today’s ‘Monster Markup’ in the Senate Judiciary Committee
       disturbingly exemplifies the joint Senate Republican-Trump
       administration effort to distort our federal judiciary and roll
       back our civil and human rights. The chairman defied the
       committee rules and basic fairness in jamming through more than
       40 nominees for lifetime appointments, many of whom have a
       demonstrated hostility to our rights.
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
       The consequences continue:
       www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6826997/U-S-Supreme-Court-hands-Trump-victory-immigration-detention.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Supreme Court hands Trump an immigration victory in 5-4 ruling
       that ICE can arrest criminal illegals ANY time after their
       prison sentences are over
       > ...
       > The court ruled 5-4 along ideological lines, with its
       conservative justices in the majority and its liberal justices
       dissenting, that federal authorities could pick up such
       immigrants and place them into indefinite detention anytime
       > ...
       > Cecilia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who
       argued the newly decided case for the challengers, said that in
       both rulings 'the Supreme Court has endorsed the most extreme
       interpretation of immigration detention statutes, allowing mass
       incarceration of people without any hearing, simply because they
       are defending themselves against a deportation charge.'
       --- End Quote ---
       And the situation is just getting worse:
       www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-judicial-nominees-young-ideologues_n_5c7d698be4b0a6fcad23be3e
       --- Quote ---
       >
       > WASHINGTON ― Senate Republicans voted Monday night to
       advance the nomination of Allison Jones Rushing, yet another of
       President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees who is troubling for
       a number of reasons.
       >
       > Rushing worked for Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative
       Christian organization that has been classified as a hate group
       by the Southern Poverty Law Center. She has argued that there
       were “moral and practical” reasons for banning same-sex
       marriage.
       >
       > But it’s her age that may be most notable: She is 36. If she
       gets confirmed this week, as expected, she will be the youngest
       federal judge in the country.
       > ...
       > Rushing, who is a partner at the D.C.-based law firm Williams
       & Connolly, is not the only exceptionally young judicial nominee
       getting a Senate vote this week. McConnell has teed up votes for
       U.S. circuit court nominees Eric Murphy and Chad Readler, who
       are 39 and 46, respectively.
       >
       > All three have the ideological bent that Trump is looking for
       in his court picks.
       > ...
       > To some observers, the age of these nominees is part of a
       bigger problem of Republicans not taking the review process
       seriously and blowing through Senate customs to confirm as many
       of Trump’s circuit court nominees as possible. Circuit courts
       are often the last word in federal court cases. The Supreme
       Court hears only about 100 to 150 appeals of the more than 7,000
       cases that come before the nation’s 13 circuit courts each year.
       >
       > “[This week’s nominees] may lack life experience and will be
       serving many years after Trump … enjoying life tenure on the
       ‘Supreme Courts’ for their regions because the Supreme Court
       hears so few cases,” said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond
       law professor and an expert in judicial nominations.
       > ...
       > Rushing didn’t even have a real confirmation hearing. The
       Senate Judiciary Committee chairman at the time, Chuck Grassley
       (R-Iowa), scheduled her hearing last fall when the Senate was
       out of session and few senators were in town. Not a single
       Democrat could attend. Just two Republicans attended, and
       neither asked tough questions.
       >
       > McConnell has made judicial confirmations a top priority and
       has already helped Trump dramatically reshape the federal
       courts. To date, Trump has gotten 31 circuit judges, 53 district
       judges and two Supreme Court justices confirmed. That’s so many
       circuit judges ― more than any other president confirmed
       by this point in his first term ― that 1 in 6 seats on the
       U.S. circuit courts is filled by a judge nominated by Trump.
       > ...
       > There’s not much Democrats can do about any of this, beyond
       winning control of the Senate in 2020. The minority typically
       has some tools for affecting judicial confirmations; it is a
       Senate custom, for example, to wait for both senators
       representing a nominee’s home state to turn in so-called blue
       slips before that nominee can move forward. But Republicans have
       been bypassing the blue slip rule in their effort to fill up
       courts with Trump’s nominees.
       >
       > “The GOP majority has eviscerated nearly all Senate rules and
       customs, such as consultation and blue slips, that protect the
       minority party’s prerogatives in the nomination and confirmation
       processes,” said Tobias.
       --- End Quote ---
       I repeat: this is exactly the kind of scenario that the Second
       Amendment was designed to solve.
       ---
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrBTZE1Qb4
       ---
       The screw that keeps on screwing:
       news.yahoo.com/u-supreme-court-lets-trump-223553207.html
       --- Quote ---
       > WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday handed
       President Donald Trump a victory by letting his administration
       redirect $2.5 billion in money approved by Congress for the
       Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico
       border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding.
       >
       > The conservative-majority court on a 5-4 vote with the court's
       liberals in dissent blocked in full a ruling by a federal judge
       in California barring the Republican president from spending the
       money on the basis that Congress did not specifically authorize
       the funds to be spent on the wall project fiercely opposed by
       Democrats and Mexico's government.
       >
       > "Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court
       overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to
       proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!" Trump
       tweeted just minutes after the court acted.
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
  HTML https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nyt-reporters-uncover-new-sexual-misconduct-claim-kavanaugh_n_5d7d7ccde4b077dcbd5f6e7c
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc1_8xX1JYo
       ---
  HTML https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/09/17/ayanna-pressley-bring-impeachment-articles-against-kavanaugh/2349623001/
       news.yahoo.com/kamala-harris-impeachment-inquiry-brett-kavanaugh-141144467.html
       ---
       Supreme Court supports gerrymandering:
       news.yahoo.com/u-supreme-court-tosses-challenge-144630994.html
       --- Quote ---
       > WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw
       out a challenge to Republican-drawn congressional districts in
       Ohio that Democrats said were drawn to unlawfully diminish their
       political clout, a move that follows a major ruling by the
       justices in June that foreclosed such lawsuits.
       >
       > The court's action in the case involving a practice known as
       partisan gerrymandering means that 16 U.S. House of
       Representatives districts will no longer be reconfigured, as a
       three-judge panel had ordered in May.
       >
       > The Supreme Court had put the panel's ruling on hold ahead of
       its rulings, issued the next month, in two major gerrymandering
       cases from Maryland and North Carolina.
       >
       > The justices in June dealt a major blow to election reformers
       by saying in its June 27 ruling that federal courts have no role
       to play in reining in electoral map manipulation by politicians
       aimed at entrenching one party in power.
       >
       > The ruling gave the Ohio challengers little option but to
       concede defeat.
       >
       > A similar case from Michigan, in which a lower court
       invalidated nine Republican-drawn U.S. House districts and 25
       state legislative districts, was also put on hold by the Supreme
       Court in May. An appeal in that case remains pending and would
       be expected to be dealt with the same way as the Ohio dispute.
       >
       > The June high court ruling did allow partisan gerrymandering
       to be challenged in lawsuits based on violations of a state
       constitution. On Sept. 3, a state court in North Carolina struck
       down the Republican-drawn state legislative electoral map as an
       unlawful example of partisan gerrymandering under the state
       constitution.
       >
       > In partisan gerrymandering, one political party draws
       legislative districts to marginalize voters who tend to support
       the other party. The lines are typically redrawn once a decade
       after the U.S. census, and in many states the party in power
       controls the decision-making.
       >
       > Included in the 2012 Ohio electoral map drawn by Republicans
       at issue in the case was the "Snake on the Lake," which the
       judges called "a bizarre, elongated sliver of a district that
       severed numerous counties," referring to the state's 9th
       district that runs along Lake Erie. The electoral map
       consistently led to a lopsided advantage for Republicans in U.S.
       House races.
       >
       > The League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties
       Union sued to challenge the legality of the map.
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
       news.yahoo.com/elizabeth-warren-plan-brett-kavanaugh-130000893.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Warren’s plan includes closing a loophole that allows federal
       judges to escape investigations for misconduct when they resign
       from office or are elevated to the Supreme Court ― a
       loophole that Warren has railed against in the past.
       >
       > “My plan extends the authority of the Judicial Conference to
       former judges so that individuals under investigation cannot
       simply resign from the bench to avoid accountability,” Warren
       said. “This provision would allow the judiciary to reopen the
       investigations into Alex Kozinski, Maryanne Trump-Barry, Brett
       Kavanaugh, and any other judge who benefited from this
       loophole.”
       >
       > Kozinski was a judge on the federal 9th Circuit accused in
       2017 by at least 15 law clerks of sexual misconduct. But, as
       Warren noted, the investigation into Kozinski’s behavior was
       dropped when he retired.
       >
       > Trump-Barry, President Donald Trump’s sister, resigned as a
       federal appellate judge in April, ending a probe into whether
       she violated judicial conduct rules by participating in the
       Trump family’s alleged tax fraud schemes.
       >
       > When Kavanaugh rose to the Supreme Court, sexual assault and
       perjury complaints against him were dismissed.
       >
       > “The basic premise of our legal system is that every person is
       treated equally in the eyes of the law ― including
       judges,” Warren said on Monday. “Our judiciary only functions
       properly when it lives up to this promise, and it risks eroding
       its legitimacy when the American people lose faith that judges
       are ethical and fair-minded.”
       > ...
       > Warren cited the 83 ethics complaints lodged against Kavanaugh
       that were dismissed upon his confirmation to the Supreme Court,
       as well as the lack of action after Supreme Court Justice
       Clarence Thomas failed to disclose payments his wife received
       from a conservative judicial activist group.
       >
       > “Because the Supreme Court is not covered by a Code of
       Conduct, no procedure exists to file new complaints” against
       Kavanaugh, Warren said.
       >
       > She added that “questions are often raised about the behavior
       of Supreme Court Justices, such as Justice Thomas’s 13 years of
       financial disclosures that failed to list $690,000 in payments
       to his wife from the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing judicial
       activist group ― but these actions are beyond the scope of
       current rules.”
       >
       > Such lack of oversight, Warren said, has gone on for long
       enough.
       >
       > “These changes will not only allow us to ensure accountability
       for bad actors, including reopening inquiries into the conduct
       of offenders like Brett Kavanaugh,” she wrote. “They will also
       hold the vast majority of judges who act in good faith to the
       highest ethical standards, and in the process, begin to restore
       accountability and trust in a fair and impartial federal
       judiciary.”
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMPVwAxPmfI
       ---
       It never fails:
       news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-blocks-trump-financial-233735724.html
       --- Quote ---
       > The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a setback to the House
       Democrats' impeachment probe by blocking a lower court decision
       that had granted them immediate access to President Donald
       Trump’s financial records.
       >
       > At least five justices agreed to the unsigned, one-paragraph
       order putting the pause on a lower court ruling that had favored
       a Democratic subpoena for the materials from one of Trump’s
       accounting firms. No justice publicly noted any opposition to
       the stay.
       >
       > The ruling will prevent Democrats from swiftly obtaining
       Trump's tax information as they start to prepare articles of
       impeachment against Trump. Lawmakers are expected to decide in
       the coming weeks whether to broaden out their case beyond the
       swirling Ukraine scandal to include allegations that Trump
       abused his position for personal financial gain.
       --- End Quote ---
       It doesn't matter how overwhelming our side of the case is; they
       will just use the Supreme Court to block everything they
       dislike.
       Still think this can be solved without the Second Amendment?
       ---
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toBb4zAAB7o
       ---
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPm6vj7Q4hw
       ---
       www.yahoo.com/news/mitch-mcconnell-laughs-stopping-obama-162750124.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Mitch McConnell laughs about stopping Obama hiring judges,
       allowing Trump to fill courts with conservatives
       >
       > Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell boasted about blocking
       former president Barack Obama's judicial appointments, a
       two-year effort that allowed Donald Trump and a
       Republican-controlled congress to stack courts with conservative
       judges and create a conservative majority on the nation's high
       court.
       >
       > Fox host Sean Hannity told the Kentucky senator that he was
       shocked that the Obama administration "left so many vacancies
       and didn't try to fill those positions".
       >
       > "I'll tell you why," Mr McConnell said, laughing. "I was in
       charge of what we did the last two years of the Obama
       administration."
       >
       > Mr Hannity said: "I will give you full credit for that, and by
       the way, take a bow."
       >
       > When he took office, the president inherited more than 100
       vacancies, many of them lifetime appointments. More than a
       quarter of all active judges sitting on appeals courts were
       nominated by Mr Trump.
       >
       > In the last two years of Mr Obama's term, only 28.6 percent of
       his judicial nominees were confirmed.
       >
       > Mr Trump has selected nearly as many federal appeals judges in
       his three years in office than Mr Obama did in his entire
       two-term presidency — Mr Trump's 48 compared to Mr Obama's 52.
       >
       > Mr McConnell most famously blocked Mr Obama's Supreme Court
       nominee Merrick Garland — the former president's pick to fill
       the seat left open by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in
       February 2016 — from even receiving a confirmation hearing.
       >
       > The senator issued a statement on the day of Mr Scalia's death
       that the Senate would not consider any of Mr Obama's nominees
       from that point on, an unprecedented blockade that Mr McConnell
       said would be lifted by the next president
       >
       > After a 263-day vacancy on the high court, the seat eventually
       was filled by Mr Trump's pick Neil Gorsuch.
       >
       > "The most important decision I made in my entire political
       career was not to fulfil a Supreme Court vacancy" following the
       death of Mr Scalia, Mr McConnell said on Fox.
       >
       > Mr McConnell also criticised judges who have empathy for
       people who appear in their courts while promoting his book, The
       Long Game, which includes a forward by the president, on the
       network.
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
       www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-push-weaken-court-caught-110052025.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Republicans push to weaken court that caught them rigging
       elections
       >
       > Two years ago, Pennsylvania’s supreme court dealt a blow to
       state Republicans when it said they had unconstitutionally
       rigged congressional elections in the state. Republicans fumed
       and threatened to impeach four of the justices, but the map was
       redrawn, and voters elected an even split of Democrats and
       Republicans to Congress in 2018. Now, Republicans are
       weaponizing a new tactic – a move that seems designed to
       increase their power on the state’s highest court.
       >
       > The Republican proposal overhauls the way that court justices
       are elected in a state that can swing both red and blue. The
       justices on the court, where Democrats hold a 5-2 majority, are
       currently appointed through statewide elections, but the new
       plan would make it so the justices are elected from districts
       throughout the state. The change would probably hurt Democratic
       candidates – four of the current justices are from the
       Pittsburgh area and one is from Philadelphia, both urban areas
       that tend to skew blue.
       >
       > If the proposal is successful, it could offer a roadmap for
       Republicans elsewhere to undermine state courts. That’s
       significant after last year’s supreme court decision that
       determined federal courts couldn’t stop gerrymandering – the
       partisan redistricting of state maps – but that nothing stopped
       state courts from acting. State courts responded swiftly: a
       state court in North Carolina followed Pennsylvania and struck
       down electoral districts as unconstitutional gerrymanders there.
       And a slew of gerrymandering lawsuits are expected when
       districts are next redrawn in 2021.
       >
       > “With the Pennsylvania supreme court having struck down the
       general assembly’s gerrymandering, the general assembly is now
       clearly trying to gerrymander the Pennsylvania supreme court
       itself,” said Daniel Jacobson, an attorney who helped represent
       the plaintiffs in the gerrymandering case. “It only goes to show
       the lengths that the general assembly leaders will go when they
       feel that their grip on power is threatened.”
       --- End Quote ---
       #Post#: 23--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: June 30, 2020, 11:43 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       OLD CONTENT contd.
       ---
       www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/immigration-judges-admit-trump-reason-114533279.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Immigration judges are reaching their breaking point with this
       administration’s racist policies
       >
       > This is a perilous time for a fair and passionate judge to
       leave the bench. By doing so, they risk having Donald Trump
       appoint their replacement, and considering Trump’s policies and
       beliefs, that new appointee is pretty likely to have a harsh
       anti-immigration stance.
       >
       > But dozens of immigration judges have reported that despite
       their efforts to stick out the presidency, they’ve just reached
       their breaking points. The Los Angeles Times spoke with dozens
       of judges who are quitting or taking early retirement because
       they simply cannot stomach having to enforce Trump
       administration policies on immigrants.
       > ...
       > According to former San Francisco immigration judge Ilyce
       Shugall, Trump is “using the court as a weapon against
       immigrants,” and her post became a “nearly impossible job.”
       >
       > “There are many of us who just feel we can’t be part of a
       system that’s just so fundamentally unfair,” she told the Times
       about why she quit her job as a judge last March. “I took an
       oath to uphold the Constitution.”
       --- End Quote ---
       The second paragraph says it all. It was probably Trump's
       intention all along with his ostentatiously cruel policies to
       make the fair judges quit so that he can fill the vacancies with
       his own picks.
       ---
       The condition of the courts today:
       thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/481993-appeals-court-rules-democrats-cant-sue-trump-over-emoluments-claims
       --- Quote ---
       > A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., threw out a
       lawsuit accusingPresident Trump of illegally profiting off his
       private businesses whilein office, ruling that the Democratic
       lawmakers who brought the suit lack legal standing.
       >
       > A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on
       Friday did not rule on whether the president was violating the
       Constitution by profiting off foreign governments' spending at
       his hotels. The judges unanimously said in a brief 12-page
       decision that the dispute centering around the Constitution's
       emolumentsclauses has no place in the court system.
       > ...
       > "The Framers included the Foreign Emoluments Clause in the
       Constitution as the Constitution’s chief bulwark against the
       foreign corruption of America’sleaders, and for more than half
       of his term, President Trump has been violating this critical
       anti-corruption provision, accepting benefits from foreign
       governments without first obtaining Congress’s affirmative
       consent," said Elizabeth Wydra, the president of the
       Constitutional Accountability Center, who is representing the
       Democrats in the case, ina statement.
       --- End Quote ---
       And next:
  HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRF7Y62KU40
       ---
       One point I keep emphasizing:
       --- Quote ---
       > In saying this they expose only their own disregard for the
       fundamental principle of law that the only people obliged to
       abide by any given law of any country are those who receive
       protection from the same law in return. For example, we are
       obliged to not steal because in return the state will protect
       our property. We are obliged to not run red lights because in
       return we get to use the safer roads that result from
       trafficlights. And so on. This principle breaks down when it
       comes to immigration, because those who abide by a so-called
       “law” that prohibits them from entering are not in any way
       protected by this same so-called “law”. On the contrary, they
       are simply left outside where thestate need not care about them
       at all (and can even bomb them)! Thus so-called “laws”
       prohibiting immigration are not really laws at all, but tyranny.
       --- End Quote ---
       now has a perfect example to accompany it thanks to Kavanaugh &
       Co.:
       www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-denies-mexican-familys-152319989.html
       --- Quote ---
       > WASHINGTON – A deeply divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that
       the family of a Mexican teen shot and killed by a U.S. Border
       Patrol agent cannot seek damages because of the border that was
       between them.
       >
       > The justices ruled 5-4 that Sergio Adrian Hernández Guereca,
       15, lacked constitutional protection against the use of
       excessive force because he was in Mexico. Had he been in Texas
       with Border Patrol agent Jesus Mesa,his family would have had a
       claim.
       --- End Quote ---
       In that case, by the same argument it should be OK for Mexicans
       to start shooting CBP agents from their side of the border.
       Don't expect Kavanaugh & Co. to agree, though.
       ---
       www.yahoo.com/huffpost/trump-mcgahn-lawsuit-house-democrats-215417364.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Devastating Court Ruling Allows White House To Block Testimony
       From Former Counsel Don McGahn
       > ...
       > The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed McGahn in 2019 as
       part of its investigation into Trump’s potential obstruction of
       former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. McGahn
       previously told Mueller’s grand jury that Trump ordered him to
       direct the Department of Justice tofire Mueller in 2017 in order
       to end the probe. He did not carry out the order. This incident
       appeared as one of 10 potentially obstructive acts committed by
       Trump in Mueller’s final report.
       >
       > Democrats sought to bring McGahn before the committee to get
       his testimony on thisalleged obstruction. But the White House
       declared that the president and his direct aides had an
       “absolute immunity” from congressional investigation and ordered
       McGahn not to honor the subpoena. The administration never made
       a formal declaration of executive privilege over McGahn’s
       testimony.
       >
       > The court said Democrats will just have to find some other way
       to force the administration to comply with their demands.
       --- End Quote ---
       At what point does "some other way" start to involve the Second
       Amendment?
       ---
       www.yahoo.com/news/u-supreme-court-conservatives-lean-175347537.html
       --- Quote ---
       > WASHINGTON(Reuters) - Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices
       appeared sympathetic on Monday toward a bid by President Donald
       Trump's administration to buttress its power to quickly deport
       illegal immigrants without court interference in a politically
       charged election-year case concerning one of Trump's signature
       issues.
       >
       > The justices heard arguments in the administration's appeal of
       a lower court ruling that a Sri Lankan asylum seeker - a farmer
       named Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam - had a right under the U.S.
       Constitution to have his case reviewed by a federal court.
       >
       > Conservative justices signaled support for the administration.
       Liberal justices appeared to back Thuraissigiam. The court has a
       5-4 conservative majority including two justices appointed by
       Trump.
       > ...
       > The American Civil Liberties Union, representing
       Thuraissigiam, said the administration's arguments, if accepted
       by the court, could be used to deport millions of other illegal
       immigrants without meaningful judicial review.
       --- End Quote ---
       Remember, Kavanaugh & Co. are appointed for life. Are we really
       going to let them stay in control for decades to come?
       ---
       finance.yahoo.com/news/u-supreme-court-lets-states-152838602.html
       --- Quote ---
       > WASHINGTON,March 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on
       Tuesday widened the ability of states to use criminal laws
       against illegal immigrants and other people who do not have work
       authorization in the United States in aruling involving identity
       theft prosecutions in Kansas.
       > ...
       > The justices overturned a 2017 Kansas Supreme Court decision
       that had voidedthe convictions of the three restaurant workers,
       finding that a 1986 federal law called the Immigration Reform
       and Control Act did not prevent states from pursuing such
       prosecutions.
       > ...
       > Immigrant rights groups have said that giving states power to
       prosecute employmentfraud would let them take immigration policy
       into their own hands.
       >
       > Thethree men - Ramiro Garcia, Donaldo Morales and Guadalupe
       Ochoa-Lara - were not authorized to work in the United States
       and provided their employers Social Security numbers that were
       not their own.
       >
       > A Social Security number is used to identify people for
       employment and taxpurposes. People who enter the country
       illegally do not get assigned Social Security numbers, which are
       given by the U.S. government to all legal residents.
       --- End Quote ---
       To prohibit people from working is the initiated violence.
       Anyone prohibited from working who gives a fake Social Security
       number (which they hence do not benefit from) in order to work
       is calculably contributing more to the country, and hence have a
       stronger claimto being American, than an equivalent worker who
       uses their own Social Security number. But you think Kavanaugh &
       Co. care?
       And then there's this:
       finance.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-obamacares-constitutionality-223148053.html
       --- Quote ---
       > The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal case on the
       Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare, that
       could potentially invalidate the entire law.
       > ...
       > “There could be essentially total chaos,” Cynthia Cox,
       director for the Program on the Affordable Care Actat the Kaiser
       Family Foundation, told Yahoo Finance. “There’s no replacement
       plan that is ready to go and so essentially what would happen
       next is possibly over a short period of time, or possibly
       immediately, we would start seeing the ACA being unwound. And
       the immediate effect would be that literally tens of millions of
       people could lose coverage and also even more people could have
       other changes to their coverage.”
       --- End Quote ---
       How much longer are we going to tolerate rightist control over
       the Supreme Court?
       ---
       Every extra day Kavanaugh & Co. remain alive, they will allow
       more violence to be initiated:
       www.yahoo.com/news/justices-allow-remain-mexico-asylum-180427788.html
       --- Quote ---
       > WASHINGTON(AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would
       allow the Trump administration to continue enforcing a policy
       that makes asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for U.S. court
       hearings, despite lower court rulings thatthe policy probably is
       illegal.
       > ...
       > The high court action is the latest instance of the justices
       siding with the administration to allow Trump's immigration
       policies to continue after lower courts had moved tohalt them.
       Other cases include the travel ban on visitors from some largely
       Muslim countries, construction of the border wall, and the
       “wealth test" for people seeking green cards.
       > ...
       > “Asylum-seekers face grave danger and irreversible harm every
       day this depraved policy remains in effect.”
       --- End Quote ---
       www.yahoo.com/huffpost/coronavirus-outbreak-mexican-border-203806431.html
       --- Quote ---
       > The U.S. government has advised Americans to wash their hands
       obsessively, avoid close contact with others and stay home as
       much as possible to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the disease
       caused by the novel coronavirus, which has infected more than
       1,000 people in the country. But thousands of migrants seeking
       asylum in the United States can’t follow these instructions
       since the Trump administration has forced themto wait for their
       court dates in overcrowded and unsanitary camps and shelters
       near the border.
       >
       > Without the government’s help, volunteer doctors in Mexican
       border towns told HuffPost they are scrambling to take
       preventative measures to stave off a coronavirus outbreak. But
       if the disease enters these congested environments, it could
       “spread like wildfire” and lead to deaths, said Helen Perry, the
       executive director of the nonprofit Global Response Management
       who has been coordinating medical efforts in Matamoros.
       >
       > “The potential for a devastating outbreak in those
       circumstances is really great,” saidDr. Ranit Mishori, a
       professor of family medicine at Georgetown University, adding
       that these migrants face a perfect storm of factors. “They’re
       marginalized, they have no access to care and they’re so
       vulnerable. People can absolutely die.”
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
       It never stops:
       www.vox.com/2020/3/25/21192320/supreme-court-comcast-decision-civil-rights-mixed-motive-lawsuits
       --- Quote ---
       > Like most of the country, the Supreme Court is in coronavirus
       lockdown, closing its building to the public and postponing oral
       arguments until some future date.
       >
       > Yet even as the justices seek shelter from a pandemic, they
       still managed to hand down five opinions on Monday. One of them,
       in the case Comcast Corp. v. National Association of African
       American Media, is a blow for the civil rights community — and a
       potential harbinger for civil rights cases to come.
       >
       > The case involves a dispute between the cable TV company
       Comcast and a business that alleged the telecommunications
       conglomerate refused to carry its channels because it disfavored
       “100% African American-owned media companies.”
       > ...
       > The thrust of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion in Comcast is
       that discrimination plaintiffs typically have the burden of
       proving that they would not have experienced adverse
       consequences if thedefendant were not motivated by racism or
       some other impermissible motive. Indeed, Gorsuch goes even
       further than that, arguing that all plaintiffs typically must
       “establish causation” in order to prevail. As ageneral rule, “a
       plaintiff must first plead and then prove that its injury would
       not have occurred ‘but for’ the defendant’s unlawful conduct.”
       > ...
       > What’s different about the current Supreme Court is that it is
       especially likely to overrule past decisions — and in narrow
       partisan votes — for ideological reasons. According to
       Washington University political scientist James Spriggs, “about
       71% of overulings are 5-4 under [Chief Justice John] Roberts,
       compared with about 31% under [Chief Justice William]
       Rehnquist,” Roberts’s predecessor. The trend is likely to
       accelerate now that the relatively moderate conservative Justice
       Anthony Kennedy’s been replaced by the staunchly conservative
       Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
       Trump threatens to adjourn U.S. Congress
       --- Quote ---
       > President Donald Trump threatened to use his authority to
       adjourn both chambers of Congress in order to pave the way for
       recess appointments of his nominees for federal judgeships and
       other government positions.
       --- End Quote ---
  HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYplv_K0f20
       ---
       www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-eases-path-deport-141514006.html
       --- Quote ---
       > (Reuters)- The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier
       for federal authorities to deport certain immigrants who have
       committed crimes in a victory for President Donald Trump's
       administration.
       >
       > The court ruled 5-4 to uphold a lower court decision that
       found a legal permanent resident from Jamaica named Andre
       Martello Barton ineligible to have hisdeportation canceled under
       a U.S. law that lets some longtime legal residents avoid
       expulsion. The conservative justices were in the majority, with
       the liberal justices dissenting.
       >
       > Barton, a 42-year-old car repair shop manager and father of
       four, was targeted fordeportation after criminal convictions in
       Georgia for drug and gun crimes.
       >
       > The decision could affect thousands of immigrants with
       criminal convictions - many for minor offenses - who reside
       legally in the United States. There are more than 13 million
       legal U.S. permanent residents, also known as "green card"
       holders, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
       >
       > Glenn Fogle, an attorney for Barton, called the ruling
       "extremely disappointing" and expressed concern for his client,
       who has already been sent back to Jamaica.
       >
       > "My heart goes out to Mr. Barton and his family as he is now
       effectively barred from ever rejoining them in the United
       States," Fogle said.
       --- End Quote ---
       This happened not because of gun crime, but because of Second
       Amendment passivity.
       #Post#: 24--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: June 30, 2020, 11:43 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       OLD CONTENT contd.
       us.yahoo.com/news/mcconnell-move-quickly-confirming-38-225025282.html
       --- Quote ---
       > When the U.S. Senate returns from a lengthy absence next week,
       one of its first orders of business will be advancing the
       nomination of a 38-year-old ally of Majority Leader Mitch
       McConnell to the second highest court in the land.
       >
       > According to two Democratic aides, Senate Judiciary Committee
       Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is expected toschedule a
       committee hearing for May 6 for Justin Walker, a federal judge
       in Kentucky whom President Trump has nominated to the
       influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
       >
       > McConnellannounced on Monday that the Senate would return to
       session on May 4 for its first full week of legislative business
       after the CARES Act passed in late March. And he has not been
       shy about his desire to start confirming judges as soon as his
       chamber is back in session.
       >
       > “I haven’t seen anything that would discourage me from doing
       that. And as soon as we get back in session, we’ll start
       confirming judges again,” hetold Hugh Hewitt in a recent
       interview.
       > ...
       > Walker is a McConnellprotégé who has close ties to Supreme
       Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh andplayed a high-profile role
       defending him during his contentious confirmation hearings.
       > ...
       > Walker’s lack of experience and partisan background has earned
       him “not qualified” ratings from the American Bar Association
       and the opposition of Democrats, who see his nomination as a
       thinly veiled attempt to place young ideological allies in key
       judicial positions.
       >
       > “If Graham/McConnell go forward with this, it would show that
       Senate Rs are rushing the Senate back to confirm an unqualified,
       anti-health care judge instead of responding to the pandemic and
       conducting oversight,” said a Senate Democratic aide.
       >
       > McConnelland Kavanaugh attended Walker’s swearing-in on March
       13 in Louisville. There, the majority leader and Walker, his
       former intern, praised each other effusively in public remarks.
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
       www.yahoo.com/news/were-going-fill-republicans-ready-083044204.html
       --- Quote ---
       > 'We're going to fill it': Republicans ready for any Supreme
       Court vacancy
       > ...
       > Whileno one says they expect a Supreme Court vacancy, GOP
       senators also acknowledge it’s plausible that Trump could find
       himself with a third nominee. And one thing is clear: Most
       Republicans have no qualms about approving a Supreme Court pick
       from a president in their own party, evenif it is an election
       year.
       >
       > In 2016, Senate Majority Leader MitchMcConnell (R-Ky.) said
       voters should decide in the election which president should
       choose the next Supreme Court justice because the Senate and
       White House were controlled by different parties. And in the
       Trump era, he’s repeatedly asserted that he would fill a vacancy
       in 2020.
       >
       > McConnell and his allies argue the situation is different
       because Republicans control both the White House and the Senate.
       They say that makes the situation far different than when Obama
       was presidentand McConnell refused to even hold a hearing for
       Merrick Garland.
       >
       > Democratsacknowledge they could get run over in the next eight
       months. Supreme Court nominees can now be confirmed by a bare
       majority after McConnell changed the rules in 2017 to overcome a
       Democratic filibuster of Neil Gorsuch, Antonin Scalia’s
       successor.
       >
       > “They’re not troubled by inconsistencies,” said Sen. Tim Kaine
       (D-Va.). “It would be completely inconsistent with everything
       that was said [in 2016]. But we knew when they were saying it
       they didn’t mean it. We knew that was a situational answer.”
       --- End Quote ---
       ---
  HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BpT5Hhlaco
       ---
       us.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-oks-governments-quick-151005465.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Supreme Court OKs government's quick removal of immigrants who
       cross border illegally
       >
       > The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the government's power to
       arrest, question and quickly remove immigrants who are caught
       crossing the border illegally.
       >
       > In a victory for the Trump administration, the justices
       rejected the claim that immigrants who seek asylum have a
       rightto a full federal court review through a writ of habeas
       corpus, even iftheir claims are judged to be not credible.
       > ...
       > "Today's decisionhandcuffs the judiciary’s ability to perform
       its constitutional duty tosafeguard individual liberty and
       dismantles a critical component of theseparation of powers. It
       will leave significant exercises of executive discretion
       unchecked [and] increases the risk of erroneous immigration
       decisions that contravene governing statutes and treaties,"
       Sotomayor wrote.
       >
       > ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the case, said he was
       disappointed.
       >
       > “Thisruling fails to live up to the Constitution’s bedrock
       principle that individuals deprived of their liberty have their
       day in court, and this includes asylum seekers. This decision
       means that some people facing flawed deportation orders can be
       forcibly removed with no judicial oversight, putting their lives
       in grave danger," he said.
       --- End Quote ---
       #Post#: 25--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: June 30, 2020, 11:44 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoqBSvJgGYM
       Also:
  HTML https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-supreme-court-spurns-environmental-134639974.html
       --- Quote ---
       > WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday
       declined to hear a challenge by four environmental groups to the
       authority of President Donald Trump's administration to build
       his promised wall along the border with Mexico.
       >
       > The justices turned away an appeal by the groups of a federal
       judge's ruling that rejected their claims that the
       administration had unlawfully undertaken border wall projects in
       Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas harmful to plant and
       animal life. The groups had argued that the 1996 law under which
       the administration is building the wall gave too much power to
       the executive branch in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
       >
       > The groups that sued are the Center for Biological Diversity,
       the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife and the
       Southwest Environmental Center. They said the wall construction
       efforts would harm plants, wildlife habitats and endangered
       species including the jaguar, Mexican gray wolf and bighorn
       sheep.
       --- End Quote ---
       #Post#: 268--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: July 12, 2020, 12:25 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-supreme-court-just-set-a-time-bomb-to-explode-under-president-biden
       --- Quote ---
       > The court’s majority in Trump v. Mazars granted the judiciary
       broad new leeway to decide whether congressional subpoenas
       against the president will be enforced. The court’s majority
       found that rigorous judicial oversight is required to ensure
       that Congress does not harass or overburden presidents with
       politically motivated demands for information.
       >
       > The result may be a time bomb set to go off under a President
       Biden, as a judiciary packed with Trump appointees now has broad
       new discretion to involve itself in fights between future
       presidents and Congress, potentially undermining effective
       congressional oversight of the executive branch.
       --- End Quote ---
       But at least more leftists are paying attention to the
       importance of the courts:
  HTML https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-conservatives-hijacked-supreme-court-071503191.html
       #Post#: 633--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: August 1, 2020, 1:31 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.foxnews.com/politics/supreme-court-denies-request-to-halt-construction-of-the-border-wall
       --- Quote ---
       > The Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote has denied a request to halt
       construction of President Trump’s border wall over environmental
       concerns.
       >
       > A number of groups, including the ACLU and Sierra Club, had
       asked the high court to get involved again after the justices
       last year cleared the way for the administration to use military
       funds for construction while the case played out in the courts.
       >
       > A federal appeals court had ruled against the administration
       last month, but the justices, for now, have given another
       temporary victory to the administration.
       --- End Quote ---
       Still no application of Second Amendment.....
       #Post#: 1149--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: September 13, 2020, 11:21 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYkeoOitar8
       #Post#: 1214--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: September 18, 2020, 11:14 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       As if we didn't have enough drama already:
  HTML https://news.yahoo.com/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-has-died-supreme-court-says-234042604.html
       --- Quote ---
       > Trump will now have the opportunity to nominate his third
       Supreme Court Justice. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
       made clear he intended for the Senate to fill Ginsburg’s seat
       while Trump was still president.
       >
       > “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of
       the United States Senate,” McConnell said in a statement Friday.
       >
       > In February, McConnell vowed that if a Supreme Court seat
       opened up this year, “we would fill it.”
       >
       > In 2016, McConnell refused to bring up President Barack
       Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, for a vote to fill the seat
       left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, with the
       justification that “this nomination ought to be made by the
       president we’re in the process of electing this year.”
       > ...
       > In a speech in 2018, McConnell recounted that “one of my
       proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I
       said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court
       vacancy.’”
       --- End Quote ---
       Hypocrisy at its finest. This is the enemy we are dealing with.
       Still think we can deal with them without using firearms?
       At least in Hong Kong the courts are improving:
  HTML https://www.yahoo.com/news/foreign-judge-quits-hong-kongs-074731867.html
       --- Quote ---
       > HONG KONG/SYDNEY, Sept 18 (Reuters) - One of the 14 foreign
       judges on Hong Kong's highest court said he had resigned due to
       concerns over a sweeping new national security law imposed by
       Beijing on the former British colony, Australia's national
       broadcaster reported on Friday.
       >
       > The office of the city's leader Carrie Lam confirmed the
       resignation of Australian judge James Spigelman but did not give
       a reason.
       >
       > Spigelman, the former Chief Justice of New South Wales, is the
       first senior judge to resign and publicly criticise the law,
       passed by China's parliament.
       >
       > The Polish-born jurist told the ABC that he resigned for
       reasons "related to the content of the national security
       legislation" but did not elaborate further.
       >
       > Spigelman did not immediately respond to a request from
       Reuters for comment.
       --- End Quote ---
       #Post#: 1231--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: September 20, 2020, 2:00 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaTJ4nBZIec
       #Post#: 1251--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Court packing
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: September 21, 2020, 11:00 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYH0-ncaTwE
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