Supreme Court Justices

[WiseGirl]

They continue their winning ways. They are a crock of shit. Limiting EPA's powers. What a fucking nightmare they are.

https://people.com/politics/supreme-court-limits-power-of-epa/

[Destiny]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/us/supreme-court-state-legislatures-elections.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/30/supreme-court-federal-elections-state-legislatures/

Having state legislatures overriding state courts in federal elections can't go badly at ALL.

[Alisamer]

Wow, they're not even pretending they aren't out to destroy democracy, are they?

[libgirl2]

On 6/29/2022 at 1:58 PM, Xan said:

I think Thomas is pissed.  He never got over the Anita Hill debacle and now people are complaining about his wife.  I think he'll definitely go after gay rights, contraception, and possibly interracial marriage.  After all, his own marriage would probably be grandfathered in and we know that he's all for claiming rights and climbing up but pulling the ladder up after him.  Once he gets what he wants, he doesn't care if anyone else is affected.

There's something really wrong with having a maniac president enabled to appoint three Supreme Court justices.  And, any way you look at it, they (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett) lied about Roe v. Wade during confirmation hearings.

I think Thomas is unhinged. I think he has lost his mind to the Qs. As for the other three, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett, f-ing liars. SCOTUS has turned into the rulers of this land and they are ruling us back and back. 

[meep]

This is scary. They are undoing any progress this country has made. I fear for what they'll do when October comes. 

[libgirl2]

2 minutes ago, meep said:

This is scary. They are undoing any progress this country has made. I fear for what they'll do when October comes. 

My family on my mother's side is from the Dominican Republic. Now they aren't perfect but what I find interesting is my cousin, who works for the department of natural resources and the environment is constantly posting videos on projects that they are working on to improve the country. Even they seem to be moving with the times. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Supreme Court’s EPA ruling says: We’ll do whatever we want"

Quote

The most consequential Supreme Court term in decades has come to a close, with the completion of a trifecta of transformational decisions, each the fulfillment of a longtime conservative policy dream.

The last of these blockbuster rulings, curtailing the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, has implications far beyond the vital issue of climate change.

And the conservative justices aren’t even done. At the end of this triumphant run, they announced that next term they’ll be hearing a case that could give state-level Republicans sweeping power to control elections.

At a time like this, intellectual engagement with this court’s rulings, as committed as many liberals are to that project, begins to feel beside the point. We could delve into the flaws in the court’s reasoning, or the myriad ways the conservative justices’ alleged devotion to “originalism” and “textualism” has been revealed to be a sham — and many will, including dissenting liberal justices.

But what the court’s conservative majority and the Republicans who cheer their decisions know is that only one thing matters: power.

Conservatives have spent decades amassing it, now they have it, and they’re going to use it in every possible way to create the country they want.

The court has already tossed aside reproductive rights by overturning Roe v. Wade and nullified gun regulations in liberal states — while helping itself to a side dish of further eviscerating the establishment clause.

Now the court has declared, in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, that when Congress passed and later amended the Clean Air Act, it didn’t intend to give the EPA the ability to create regulations pushing power plants to transition to cleaner fuels. Instead, the court ruled, the EPA “claimed to discover an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority,” which it may not do.

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan dismantled the majority’s analysis of the Clean Air Act, demonstrating that the kind of greenhouse gas regulation at issue is exactly what Congress intended when it passed that law, as a plain reading of the text makes clear.

“Some years ago, I remarked that ‘[w]e’re all textualists now,’” Kagan noted. “It seems I was wrong. The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it.”

She concluded:

Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change. And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening. Respectfully, I dissent.

The reason the court’s conservatives appointed themselves the decision-makers on climate policy is simple: They don’t like what the EPA did. No real constitutional or statutory violation was at issue. They simply believe, as part of their conservative ideology, that the government shouldn’t combat climate change, so they’re going to stop the government from doing it.

That’s not what they would say, of course. They would claim their convoluted reading of the Clean Air Act discovers the true meaning of the statute. But by sheer coincidence, they often manage to find the limits of laws and the Constitution precisely where their policy preferences begin.

As a bonus, they used their decision to elevate the “major questions doctrine” — which holds that agencies can’t regulate in ways that aren’t explicitly laid out in statutes if what they’re doing is too consequential — into precedent. Yet in practice, everyone knows that the major questions doctrine, being vague and versatile, will be used only to strike down agency regulations the conservatives don’t like; regulations from Republican administrations they find pleasing will be left intact.

Lest anyone think, on the final day of its term, that the court wasn’t champing at the bit to give Republicans even more power, it announced it will be hearing the case of Moore v. Harper. That’s a challenge to the North Carolina Supreme Court’s striking down of an absurdly gerrymandered congressional map on the grounds that it violated the state constitution.

Conservatives are eager to use this case to enshrine the “independent state legislature theory,” which would effectively say that legislatures alone can set rules for how federal elections are carried out, making state constitutions, governors’ vetoes and the decisions of state courts essentially irrelevant.

Why are conservatives attracted to this idea? Is it their textualism, their strict constructionism, their originalism? Please. The reason is simple: At this moment in history, there are multiple states where Republicans have successfully gerrymandered themselves into control of a state legislature despite the fact that the electorate of that state is closely divided.

In these states — including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia — statewide elections for offices such as governor or senator are sometimes won by Democrats and sometimes by Republicans, but the legislature remains firmly in Republican hands no matter what. So if the legislature alone has the power to write election rules, they can make sure Republicans will win, or at least make it more likely.

Were the situation reversed, and there were multiple swing states where Democrats controlled the legislature but the governors were Republicans, you can bet your bottom dollar that conservatives would call the independent state legislature doctrine a vile abomination that must be forever banished from consideration by the courts.

For this Supreme Court majority and the Republicans who created it, this is all about getting their policy goals enacted by whatever means available. It’s about exercising power toward that goal — and toward the goal of amassing and keeping more power. Don’t kid yourself that it’s about anything else.

 

[Ozlsn]

On 6/30/2022 at 1:39 AM, Smash! said:

SCOTUS is hard at work. From People Magazine Supreme Court Rules That States Can Prosecute Non-Native Americans Who Commit Crimes on Tribal Land

This quote stood out to me 

 

My first thought was that they are trying to prevent women from having abortions in clinics on Tribal land.

[Audrey2]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The last of these blockbuster rulings, curtailing the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, has implications far beyond the vital issue of climate change.

Why wouldn't these constitutional originalists want to get the environmental protection agency? Remember these are people who claim to be constitutional originalist. When the Constitution was written we did not know that you don't get your drinking water from a water source that your outhouse drains into. Look how common cholera, typhus and dysentery were.

Make cholera, typhus, and dysentery great again! Or even better, follow Kevenaugh's example and just drink beer! (At the time the drinking water was so bad that everyone drank a weak beer but Kavenaugh realize that it was weak.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Audrey2

[fraurosena]

On 6/29/2022 at 7:50 AM, thoughtful said:

please let go of the stereotype that people in the US shove religion into everything. Most of us don't.

Oh gosh, that is not how I meant my comment at all. I meant people are more religious, believe in a deity, and go to church more regularly than here. Proseletyzing, or even simply talking about one's religion, is much less common-- by comparison -- than over here. Of course I realize that this is an impression I get, that the US is just as large as Australia, and that not everyone is super uber religious in the US. My comment was highly generalized, an simply an impression based on comparison. I would say the same for the difference between my country and east Germany, for example, where chruch going is also way more commonplace. And again, that is highly generalized.

So, please don't take my comments about religiosity too literally or too personally. They are meant as a general observation, or rather impression, nothing more and nothing less than that. 

[GiggleOfGirls]

It’s all terrifying.
 

If anyone has a source with a list and summaries of all the SCOTUS rulings over the past couple weeks, please post it here?

 

I’ve been trying to find one and haven’t been able to yet. I know it’s probably early for anyone to have really been able to read through and analyze all of the horrors, but I strongly suspect that the whole story adds up to far more than the individual pieces do (at least, the parts I know about appear to) and so many rulings aren’t being talked about because the “justices” bowled us over with so many awful rulings all at once. 
 

It’s been so difficult to follow so much 😞

 

And what can any of us even do? Leaving the country is temping (and vaguely possible for my immediate family if we acted quickly, though I don’t see that happening), but I can’t imagine abandoning everyone I know to live here while I leave. If all the decent people with enough money to get out all leave… that would result in the most vulnerable populations having even less support than they currently have. 
 

My historian friends have been warning for over a decade now that we are heading for a civil war. I believed them, but really hoped they’d end up being wrong. 

[Ozlsn]

 

Spoiler

 

It is quite scary how quickly activist judges have taken law back to at least the early 20th century.

[fraurosena]

The only way to actively stop this skewed SCOTUS in its tracks is to enlarge the amount of justices with three to five more, and appoint normal, democracy loving justices. Ensure that the skewed justices are forever in the minority. The question is, how feasible is that to do, and what timeframe would it take? could it be done in time for it to have any meaningful impact?

But honestly, I'm afraid that it's too late for anything to halt the race towards the implosion of the US. I can only hope the unavoidable break up occurs as peacefully as possible. At the moment though, I'm very much afraid it will end in civil war.

[libgirl2]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

The only way to actively stop this skewed SCOTUS in its tracks is to enlarge the amount of justices with three to five more, and appoint normal, democracy loving justices. Ensure that the skewed justices are forever in the minority. The question is, how feasible is that to do, and what timeframe would it take? could it be done in time for it to have any meaningful impact?

But honestly, I'm afraid that it's too late for anything to halt the race towards the implosion of the US. I can only hope the unavoidable break up occurs as peacefully as possible. At the moment though, I'm very much afraid it will end in civil war.

Sadly yes, just look at January 6th. 

[Ozlsn]

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

But honestly, I'm afraid that it's too late for anything to halt the race towards the implosion of the US. I can only hope the unavoidable break up occurs as peacefully as possible. At the moment though, I'm very much afraid it will end in civil war.

Same. I've been concerned about this since the mid-2000s when it became obvious to me how polarised things were becoming, but the accerlation in the last two years has been frightening. I don't know how the US can dissolve peacefully - perhaps federations similar to Russia, but even then you have the issues of who controls the military etc. - and when one side basically wants absolute power across the entire current US you start running out of options very quickly. Which when you consider the size and fire-power of the US military and the likely global impacts is pretty scary.

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

The only way to actively stop this skewed SCOTUS in its tracks is to enlarge the amount of justices with three to five more, and appoint normal, democracy loving justices.

Honestly I would rather do whatever the judicial equivalent of impeachment is and pull the last three off. No wonder Kavanaugh thought he'd need more security, given all the changes he may well do so.

[GreyhoundFan]

[WiseGirl]

The US Second Civil War.

The Guardian "Incipient civil conflict in the United States won’t be formal armies struggling for territory. The techniques of both sides are clarifying. Republican officials will use the supreme court, or whatever other political institutions they control, to push their agenda no matter how unpopular with the American people. Meanwhile, their calls for violence, while never direct, create a climate of rage that solidifies into regular physical assaults on their enemies. The technical term for this process is stochastic terrorism;"

Also The Guardian "The second American civil war is already occurring..."

 

[WiseGirl]

I get that it's an old article and tounge-in-cheek but I'd like Canada to annex us.

It's time for Canada to annex blue America.

[thoughtful]

On 7/1/2022 at 2:33 AM, fraurosena said:

Oh gosh, that is not how I meant my comment at all. I meant people are more religious, believe in a deity, and go to church more regularly than here. Proseletyzing, or even simply talking about one's religion, is much less common-- by comparison -- than over here. Of course I realize that this is an impression I get, that the US is just as large as Australia, and that not everyone is super uber religious in the US. My comment was highly generalized, an simply an impression based on comparison. I would say the same for the difference between my country and east Germany, for example, where chruch going is also way more commonplace. And again, that is highly generalized.

So, please don't take my comments about religiosity too literally or too personally. They are meant as a general observation, or rather impression, nothing more and nothing less than that. 

Here's an old line - "96% of generalizations are wrong." 😁 It's related to one my mother and I often say; "I've told you a million times to stop exaggerating."

The US is about a third larger, has 300 million more people in it, and, I'm pretty sure, is more diverse than Australia.

Your comment was highly generalized - that was my point. And it was not the first time you've posted generalizations about the US or Americans. It's hard to do this without sounding like I am attacking you - I'm not. But I have a strong memory of thinking "she couldn't mean that the way it sounds - she's a nice person" after a sizable number of your posts, and I felt I needed to speak up.

Here's a recent one:

Besides just being tired of non-US folks falling for the stereotypes, and having my own feelings hurt by it, I also want to reassure you that the stereotypes are not universal, because I would like to think that your heart is in the right place and you care about most of us over here.

If you are picturing a country full of church-going white people tsk-tsking like the fundies we discuss here over anyone who isn't just like them, you are, as I said, falling for their image of what the US should be, not what it is.

When I went looking for the post above, I scrolled through the gun violence thread. It was full of opinions from people in the US, being specific about politicians who are part of the problem, and policies, funding, etc., that they think need to be changed. That's not just because we're rare liberals on FJ - that's true of many USers  - the vast majority, if polls are to be believed.

Being born in this country, or living in it now, is no more a reason to be suspect than being black or gay or in any other group that we all would leap to defend if anyone said "They all _________" (insert bad thing here). But that's what it feels like, to me, when non-US folks do the "it's such an American thing" bit.

And it seems like people in the US are then expected to be ashamed of just being from here, and some post accordingly.

If you mean a specific area of the government, say so - otherwise it insults all of us. There's nothing about geography that makes people evil, or hyper-religious, or anything else. I don't remember ever generalizing about any country when I've heard horrible news coming out about it. Horrors come from regimes and politics and greed and culture and groups that have an ugly history and lots of other things - it's complex. It's even more complex in a country that has a huge, diverse population.

This disgusting Supreme Court is a crisis, it is monstrous, maybe there was more that those of us who aren't insane could have done over the years. I'm certainly not sitting here thinking "Oh my whole country is so progressive and liberal - this will pass!"  Some of us have been worried about the Supreme Court every time a Republican has been president - in my case, going back to Nixon.

I've gotten an education about how much of society was built on a racist structure. I've been worried about women getting complacent about rights, right-wing nuts destroying us, and the earth being destroyed by climate change. I am often frightened by what is done in the name of religion.

But there is nothing inherently, universally "American" about any of those bad things. I worry about lots of places in the world having those problems.

I know whatever craziness happens here is frightening to the whole world, just because the US is so large and powerful. But I don't see people posting "That's so Chinese" or "Russians are all like that" about those large and scary powers. We know the leaders, and, again, lots of complicated factions, are to blame for problems.

You said the judges in your country would never do anything like what the US SC has done. I think of you as being more politically savvy than I am, so that surprised me a bit, and seemed like another smug-sounding statement.

I think that nobody, anywhere, should ever think that way. Maybe your current crop of judges wouldn't, maybe the current government and laws protect you.  But shitty people like those who have been working to take the US down could be plotting anywhere, and that could include the Netherlands.

And I say all of this because I do hope your heart is in the right place, and because I don't want to see any decent people lose what they have due to the "it can't happen here, our culture isn't like that" mistake.

And I would like to see the generalizations stop - they absolutely come off as insults.

[Xan]

Oh, wow.  I hate having to weigh in on this.  I love both of you, @thoughtful and @fraurosena, and think you both add so much to our conversations.  I think we're all guilty of generalizations from time to time but we have good hearts and mean nothing insulting by it.  Frankly, I think seeing mass shootings as an American thing is pretty valid.  We've been unable and/or unwilling to enact laws to slow down gun sales and the rest of the world notices.

From time to time, people make generalizations about American Southerners being stupid rightwingers and, being a liberal Southerner, it might get under my skin.  I understand it though.  More of the South is red than is blue.  And none of us is careful with our speech 100% of the time.

I love you both.  Backing away now...

[GreyhoundFan]

Reich wingers are still freaking out because justice beer bong had to exit a Morton's via a back door to avoid peaceful protestors. He never even saw the protestors. As usual, Secretary Pete spoke intelligently on the subject.

 

"Buttigieg says officials like Kavanaugh ‘should expect’ public protest"

Quote

Two days after Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh fled abortion rights protesters at a Morton’s steakhouse in D.C., Chasten Buttigieg — husband of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — tweeted his assessment of the incident.

“Sounds like he just wanted some privacy to make his own dining decisions,” Chasten Buttigieg wrote, alluding to Kavanaugh’s recent vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court decision that had guaranteed abortion access on the basis of Americans’ right to privacy.

The tweet drew criticism from some conservatives, including former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who decried what he called an endorsement of “the use of mob intimidation tactics” as “wildly irresponsible.” But Pete Buttigieg defended his husband’s remarks during a Sunday interview with Fox News’s Mike Emanuel.

“Any public figure should always, always be free from violence, intimidation and harassment but should never be free from criticism or people exercising their First Amendment rights,” Buttigieg said in a “Fox News Sunday” appearance.

He added that officials “should expect” public protests — especially after “an important right that the majority of Americans support was taken away.”

“As long as I’ve been alive, settled case law in the United States has been that the Constitution protected the right to privacy,” Buttigieg said. “And that has now been thrown out the window by justices, including Justice Kavanaugh, who as I recall swore up and down in front of God and everyone, including the United States Congress, that they were going to leave settled case law alone.”

After a draft of the opinion to overturn Roe leaked in May, some abortion rights supporters began protesting outside of conservative justices’ homes. With frustration mounting over abortion restrictions at the state level, advocacy groups like ShutDownDC have called for more public displays of dissatisfaction — offering service industry workers up to $250 for sightings of the justices who voted to overturn Roe.

On Wednesday, while a crowd was gathering outside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home, ShutDownDC said it had received a tip that the justice had “snuck out for a swanky DC dinner.” Its Twitter account then offered to share his location with its nearly 25,000 followers.

As protesters gathered outside Morton’s, the justice managed to leave through the back exit without eating dessert, according to Politico. The incident was soon condemned by the restaurant, which told the news outlet that “politics, regardless of your side or views, should not trample the freedom at play of the right to congregate and eat dinner.”

That statement landed Morton’s in hot water. Since last week, the restaurant’s Facebook page has been flooded by negative ratings, and its Yelp page no longer allows posts because of “increased public attention … which often means people come to this page to post their views on the news.” Some have made calls to boycott the restaurant across TikTok and Twitter, and thousands have reportedly made phony reservations.

In the Fox News interview Sunday, Pete Buttigieg — who has also been the target of protests over the years — denounced violence or harassment against officials but said that people have the right to challenge those leaders in public.

“Protesting peacefully outside in a public space — sure. Look, I can’t even tell you the number of spaces, venues, and scenarios where I’ve been protested,” he said.

The transportation secretary also compared the Morton’s protest — during which “the justice never even came into contact with these protesters, reportedly didn’t see or hear them” — to the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, in which a mob “very nearly succeeded in preventing the peaceful transfer of power.”

“I think common sense can tell the difference,” Buttigieg quipped.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[libgirl2]

On 7/11/2022 at 11:39 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

Yea, I have to admit, it would be very tempting.