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#Post#: 22--------------------------------------------------
Court packing
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-s
o-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nomination must be withdrawn, and he must be impeached.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. [/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-p
artisan-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.[/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.'[/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.[/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.[/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.[/quote]
---
news.yahoo.com/elizabeth-warren-plan-brett-kavanaugh-130000893.h
tml
[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.”[/quote]
---
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMPVwAxPmfI
---
It never fails:
news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-blocks-trump-financial-233735724.ht
ml
[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.[/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-1627501
24.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.[/quote]
---
www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-push-weaken-court-caught-11005202
5.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.”[/quote]
#Post#: 23--------------------------------------------------
Re: Court packing
By: 90sRetroFan Date: June 30, 2020, 11:43 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
OLD CONTENT contd.
---
www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/immigration-judges-admit-trump-reason-11
4533279.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.”[/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.[/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.[/quote]
now has a perfect example to accompany it thanks to Kavanaugh &
Co.:
www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-denies-mexican-familys-15231998
9.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.[/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-2154
17364.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.[/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.[/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.htm
l
[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.[/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-constitutionalit
y-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.”[/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.”[/quote]
www.yahoo.com/huffpost/coronavirus-outbreak-mexican-border-20380
6431.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.”[/quote]
---
It never stops:
www.vox.com/2020/3/25/21192320/supreme-court-comcast-decision-ci
vil-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.[/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.[/quote]
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYplv_K0f20
---
www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-eases-path-deport-141514006.htm
l
[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.[/quote]
This happened not because of gun crime, but because of Second
Amendment passivity.
#Post#: 24--------------------------------------------------
Re: Court packing
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.[/quote]
---
www.yahoo.com/news/were-going-fill-republicans-ready-083044204.h
tml
[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.”[/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.[/quote]
#Post#: 25--------------------------------------------------
Re: Court packing
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.[/quote]
#Post#: 268--------------------------------------------------
Re: Court packing
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.[/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
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.[/quote]
Still no application of Second Amendment.....
#Post#: 1149--------------------------------------------------
Re: Court packing
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 13, 2020, 11:21 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYkeoOitar8
#Post#: 1214--------------------------------------------------
Re: Court packing
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.’”[/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.[/quote]
#Post#: 1231--------------------------------------------------
Re: Court packing
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 20, 2020, 2:00 am
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaTJ4nBZIec
#Post#: 1251--------------------------------------------------
Re: Court packing
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 21, 2020, 11:00 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYH0-ncaTwE
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