#amie high court decision

[marianadecarlos]

hewwo ma amie !! i came as stated cus bourbon - habsburg infodump exchange

I would actually want a presentation about mariana de austria ... im a loser who doesnt know much about her ! i read about her when she got to spain and was confused about spanish (that was so real from her) but i dont know more cool stuff about her at all ... so feel free to tell me anything you find remarkable about her !

who is your favourite bourbon ? :3

Thank you for this Question:

Queen Mariana of Austria is known as the Mother of Charles II of Spain and the niece/wife of Philip IV. She was Queen Regent when her husband Philip IV died and ruled on Carlos II's behalf until he was 14. Like Charles II, Queen Mariana was a victim of the classic “decline of Spain” paradigm. She is defined by 19th-century historians as “weak,” “unstable,” and “ignorant” but also “Machiavellian,” “scheming,” “with a German outlook” (meaning foreign), at times “melancholic” because she suffered from migraines, and was overly pious and uninterested in politics because she “dressed as a nun." She was accused of handing power over to her favorites; Jose Everardo Nithard and Fernando de Valenzuela. In reality, She was smart, strategic, strong, decisive, and seemingly tactile. Her favorites played a dominant role in her regency but her strong and decisive personality and her extensive and consistent participation in all aspects of government suggest otherwise. She faced two political crises during her regency the first was in 1669 resolved by her dismissal of Nithard; the second, between 1675 and 1677, ended with Valenzuela’s fall and her exile. There is evidence in state papers to prove that she did not surrender power to them. Speaking of Jose Everardo Nithard, He was Mariana's tutor, friend, and later her confessor. He was made inquisitor General. As for Valenzuela, Known as the palace elf, due to his influence and connections to people in high places. He married a woman who is part the queens valet. He provided Queen Mariana information about gossip and rumors that were circulating in Madrid. Valenzuela got more influencial overtime which created tension between him and the court. He was Mariana's protégé. Their friendship caused controversy and nasty rumors where made about them as a result. The worst one I believe was the rumor of Queen Mariana sleeping with Valenzuela. The fact that people actually believe that rumor makes me angry. Mariana was dressed as a nun because this is the type of dress worn by Habsburg widows. She made a few changes to the garb like having princely folds and lavish materials. Queen Mariana was exposed to the Spanish cultural traditions because Mariana's mother is Philip IV's sister. She was exposed to Italian culture because of two generations of italian empresses. Mariana both observed and participated in court ballets, rituals, and ceremonies; her dance master, Santo Ventura, was highly regarded. Boys received this kind of instruction as well. Leopold I, for example, was an avid consumer and practitioner of theater and music as emperor. At the age of seven, for example, Mariana publicly greeted her parents on their return from the Diet of Regensburg in 1641 by saluting her mother in the Spanish style and her father in Latin. When the fourteen-year-old performed a similar greeting in Trento, this time as queen of Spain, she had had at least seven years of practice. Queen Mariana was educated and spoke Latin, Spanish and German well. Judging by her education and her fleunt spanish, I doubt she struggled speaking spanish. I read somewhere that Queen Mariana as a child loves playing with dolls. She was cheerful, obedient, and lively girl. Her marriage to King Philip IV of Spain was always described as a terrible marriage because King Philip "cheated" on her, their different personalities, and massive age gap. In reality, They had an affectionate relationship and King Philip was loyal throughout their marriage. He described himself as a change man and would give Mariana everything she wanted. They did struggle financially though and at times could get caught in a series of arguments. I mean no marriage is perfect.

Gossip writer Barrioneuvo reports that one day The Queen asked for pastries and commented that she was not served for some days. She was told that the pastry cook would not supply the palace until a large outstanding bill had been paid. She removed a ring from her finger and ordered a servant to exchange it for pastries; Manuelillo de Gante told her to put the ring back on and gave the servant a copper to buy some tarts so that the Queen can finish her dinner.

Queen Mariana was the woman behind Castillio De San Marco, After a pirate attack in June 1668 roused Mariana into action. Queen Mariana was horrified receiving this news because the attack was so brutal. On March 11, 1669, the queen regent issued her decree ordering the viceroy of New Spain to send subsidies to the city. She also added funding for the building of a masonry fortification and additional soldiers. To oversee the project, she sent Don Manuel de Cendoya to St. Augustine as the new royal governor. Her judgement protected and spurred the city’s growth over the following decades. This growth even led to a later governor requesting the same regent queen for a new two-story, coquina Governor’s House in St. Augustine.

Mariana was a good mother-in-law to Marie Louise of Orleans. After the wedding of Marie Louise, Carlos introduced Marie Louise. Marie Louise bowed to her but Queen Mariana grabbed her hands and told her to stand; and said "Call me mother" with a smile.

Mariana in the year 1696 felt pain in her breast turns out she had breast cancer and she tries her best to hide it because she did not want Maria Anna of Nueburg to take over. The pain was unbearable that she asked the doctors to check her breast. When they examined the Queen they found a huge tumor in her breast. Their is no treatment for this and she was offered relics and prayers. When she died.

Reports of miracles attributed to her quickly began to circulate. These miracles and her body’s reported “incorruptibility” three years after her death led to a beatification proceeding in the last years of Carlos’s reign. Mariana’s path to sainthood, however, came to an abrupt end when the new dynasty, the Bourbons, took power. Both the beatification proceedings in 1698 and its abandonment in 1702 were as politically motivated as everything else in her life had been

I won't give too much information on her regency because there is a book about it called Queen, Mother, and Stateswoman Mariana of Austria and the government of Spain by Silvia Z. Mitchell. This book is my source about her and the reason why I made this blog so her side of the story will be known. Other sources are from https://governorshouselibrary.wordpress.com/2022/09/22/mariana-de-austria-the-queen-behind-the-castillo-de-san-marcos/?fbclid=IwY2xjawE5D5UBHUpP8HVhtFboR9ZThC2j5LNDLj531pKjmVxtGQbf7A2yMOo2AuNxqEU3Qw

I like 4 bourbons, Philip V, Luis I, Fernando VI, and Carlos III. If I had to choose one it would be Carlos III because he modernized Spain and imposed great reforms.

Sorry I took so long to reply

[defilerwyrm]

Read the article on cnn.com

Gun-control advocates praised the court’s ruling. “This is a huge victory for survivors and it WILL save lives,” March for Our Lives posted on X. Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, said the case shouldn’t have been heard by the high court in the first place and its decision to take it up “shows just how extreme this court has become.” Advocates for domestic violence survivors have pointed to research that shows the risk of homicide increases by 500% if a gun is present in a domestic violence situation. Amy Sánchez, CEO of the Battered Women’s Justice Project, said in a statement that the group was “encouraged by the court’s decision. “Upholding the restriction on firearm access for abusers ensures that these protective measures remain effective and that survivors are not placed at greater risk,” she said. Ruth Glenn, the president of Survivor Justice Action, an organization that advocates for survivors of domestic violence, told CNN Friday that “today’s ruling only really solidifies that we have more work to do.”

[foreverlogical]

It long had seemed that the “stall” would be the worst thing the Supreme Court could do when it came to Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution. How naive.

Delay there will be. The six justices in the Republican-appointed supermajority held, “A former president is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his ‘conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.’” They added, “There is no immunity for unofficial acts.” Rather than make clear that trying to overthrow the Constitution’s peaceful transfer of power is not an official act, the justices send the whole matter back to trial judge Tanya Chutkan. Expect more consideration, more parsing, more rulings, more appeals. It will all likely end up at the Supreme Court again in a year, if the whole prosecution isn’t shut down entirely.

But damage to our system goes well beyond delay. Trump v. U.S. astounds in its implications. It grants the president the power of a monarch. Richard Nixon defended his conduct in Watergate, telling interviewer David Frost, “When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” Effectively, the Supreme Court’s supermajority has now enshrined that brazen claim.

To be clear, there are reasons to be nervous about prosecuting former chief executives, so some standards make sense. In this case, though, the Court has issued an instruction manual for future lawbreaking presidents: Make sure you conspire only with other government employees. You’ll never be held to account. 

What makes something an official act? “In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives,” the justices ruled. And a jury cannot learn about the other parts of a criminal conspiracy that may involve official acts.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not agree with this last critical point. She said that of course juries can consider the context of a criminal act. Neither Justice Samuel Alito (who flew insurrectionist flags outside his two homes) nor Justice Clarence Thomas (whose wife was on the Ellipse on January 6) recused themselves. They cast the deciding votes to keep from jurors the full story of the attempted overthrow of the Constitution. 

The founders said repeatedly that presidents have no special immunity, as a brief filed by the Brennan Center on behalf of top historians made plain. After all, that was one of the very things about the British monarchy that they hated and against which they rebelled.

Even more directly, this ruling undoes the restrictions on presidential abuse of power put in place by officials and jurists of both parties since the 1970s.

The imperial presidency described an age of growing executive authority and abuse of power. It came crashing to an end during Watergate and after revelations about the misuse of intelligence and law enforcement by Nixon’s predecessors.

The presidential immunity concocted today would have blessed most of Nixon’s crimes. Nixon ordered his White House counsel to pay hush money to burglars in an Oval Office meeting on March 21, 1973. Presumptively an official act? He dangled clemency before E. Howard Hunt, one of the conspirators. Use of the pardon power — entirely immune? He resigned when a tape revealed he had ordered the CIA to go to the FBI to end the investigation of the burglars sent by his campaign committee. “Play it tough,” he told his White House chief of staff. On its face, official.

What about other criminal cases involving high officials? In the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s, numerous officials were charged (including the national security advisor and the defense secretary). Ronald Reagan faced no charges, but not because he was presumed immune. What if he did break the law — would he have escaped accountability? In 2001, federal prosecutors probed whether Bill Clinton sold pardons. They cleared him — but issuing a pardon is surely an official act.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it plainly: “Under [the majority’s] rule, any use of official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt purpose indicated by objective evidence of the most corrupt motives and intent, remains official and immune. Under the majority’s test, if it can be called a test, the category of Presidential action that can be deemed ‘unofficial’ is destined to be vanishingly small.” 

So, yes, all this will delay Trump’s trial. In that sense, he gets what he craved. But the implications are far worse for the structure of American self-government.

It is a massive failure for Chief Justice John Roberts. The other major rulings on presidential accountability for legal wrongdoing have been unanimous. U.S. v. Nixon (limiting executive privilege) was written by the Republican chief justice Nixon appointed, and it was unanimous. Clinton v. Jones (opening the president to civil suit even while in office) was unanimous. Let’s grant that Roberts is an institutionalist. He is presiding over the collapse of public trust in the very institution he purports to revere.

And Trump v. U.S. has enormous implications for the future of the presidency. Remember that utterly bonkers hypothetical from the appeals court argument — that a president could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate an opponent? Sotomayor again: “A hypothetical President who admits to having ordered the assassinations of his political rivals or critics . . . has a fair shot at getting immunity under the majority’s new Presidential accountability model.” 

We read sonorous language in the majority opinion that “the president is not above the law.” But just in time for Independence Day, the Supreme Court brings us closer to having a king again.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lawrence Hurley at NBC News:

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Tucked within a Gothic-style building on campus in this small town is a Catholic institution increasingly exerting conservative influence on the Supreme Court: the University of Notre Dame Law School. The school counts among its former faculty Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who swapped the faux-medieval halls of one institution for the neoclassical marble columns of another in helping form the 6-3 conservative majority on the court. In a trend that started before Barrett’s appointment but has accelerated since, the school is now having success placing both students and professors in prestigious Supreme Court clerkships. The clerks serve one-year terms and play a low-profile but crucial role in advising their bosses on which cases to take up and how to rule on them. They do research, help craft decisions and serve as sounding boards for the justices.

The nation’s elite law schools — particularly Harvard and Yale — have dominated filling clerkships at the Supreme Court and educating the lawyers who went on to be nominated to the court for decades. In the competition for students and prestige, law schools have worked to propel their students into clerk jobs. Conservative criticism of academia, particularly targeting the nation’s elite universities, has grown, presenting an opening for more conservative-minded schools to gain prominence with a more conservative court. Hiring clerks from law schools steeped in the prevailing conservative thinking known as originalism — a philosophy often frowned upon in more liberal-leaning law schools — ensures that the justices who hire them have like-minded aides who have been armed by their professors with novel legal approaches on the most pressing issues. Originalist theories have underpinned some of the court’s biggest rulings in recent years, including the decision that overturned abortion rights landmark Roe v. Wade and others that have controversially expanded the right to own firearms.

The relationship produced by Notre Dame faculty helps seed conservative legal theories. Professors are also involved in crafting litigation that can make its way before the court dealing with causes that are popular on the right, such as those encompassed by the term “religious liberty.” Several Notre Dame professors, for example, filed briefs in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case urging the justices to overturn Roe. One of those briefs, filed by a retired Notre Dame professor, John Finnis, was cited by conservative Justice Samuel Alito in the 2022 ruling. Separately, the school’s religious liberty clinic has cases before the high court, including one pending appeal urging the justices to endorse a taxpayer-funded Catholic charter school in Oklahoma in a direct challenge to the separation of church and state. The exchange goes both ways. Justices, mostly conservatives but at times liberals too, have become frequent visitors and guest lecturers at the school, which prides itself on being a safe space for conservatives. Within the last two years, Barrett and fellow conservative Brett Kavanaugh have both been on campus, as has liberal Justice Elena Kagan.

[...] “Half the American people could be characterized as conservative. Half the legal profession can be characterized as conservative. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with being conservative. It’s normal. It’s normal everywhere except for in the legal academy,” he said.At some other law schools “it is a badge of dishonor” to have any conservatives on the faculty, which does not serve students well, he added. Among the Notre Dame faculty are well-connected conservative husband and wife duo Richard and Nicole Garnett; O. Carter Snead, known for his scholarship opposing abortion rights; and William Kelley, who clerked for the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and served in the administration of President George W. Bush. Several other professors clerked for conservative justices. “I’m happy that we’re one of the few law schools in America that doesn’t openly discriminate against conservatives,” Cole said. He also expressed pride in Barrett’s achievements. He was among a Notre Dame delegation that was present at a celebratory Rose Garden event at the White House when then-President Donald Trump announced her nomination amid the Covid-19 pandemic just before the 2020 election. Opinions vary on just how conservative-leaning the law school is, with current faculty and some students saying it is ideologically diverse and some former professors and students saying there is a clear tilt to the right.

[...]

‘Cream of the crop’

Each of the nine Supreme Court justices hires four clerks a year. It is considered the most prestigious post a recent law school graduate can obtain. “These are considered the cream of the crop, the best in the legal profession,” said Aliza Shatzman, president of the Legal Accountability Project, a group she formed to help improve transparency in the clerkship process amid concerns about workplace bullying and harassment. During the year, the clerks work on all the biggest cases before the court on issues like abortion, guns, voting rights and LGBTQ rights. Once the clerkship is completed, the clerks are in high demand in the legal profession, with big law firms offering eye-popping signing bonuses. Many clerks go on to high-profile careers, whether in corporate law, academia or in some cases politics. Later in their careers, they are often earmarked as potential judicial appointees. Of the current nine justices, six clerked at the court, as have several prominent senators, including Republicans Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

In the coming nine-month term that officially starts on Monday, two recent Notre Dame Law School graduates, Kari Lorentson and Elizabeth Totzke, are both clerking for Barrett. And two law professors from the school, Christian Burset and Patrick Reidy, the latter of whom is a Catholic priest, are clerking for justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, respectively. They are following in the footsteps of four other Notre Dame graduates who clerked at the high court in the last five years, all for conservative justices. Two other Notre Dame professors also clerked at the Supreme Court in recent years, both with Gorsuch, who appears to sometimes favor hiring academics to work for him. In an appearance at Notre Dame last year, Kavanaugh spoke about what he looks for in his clerks. “It’s got to be people who are comfortable with my general approach,” Kavanaugh said. “I have had two spectacular Notre Dame law clerks. They just worked so hard.” Nicole Garnett, a longtime Notre Dame professor who clerked for conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and is a longtime friend of Barrett’s, chairs the school’s clerkship committee. In an interview, she downplayed connections with the conservative justices.

“I think that drawing any conclusions about Supreme Court clerkships is probably a category error because it’s such a needle-in-a-haystack, lightning-strike kind of thing,” she said.In 2023, Notre Dame was ranked fourth in the country at placing students in clerkships at all levels of the court system. Overall, Notre Dame ranked 20th in the most recent U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. The traditional elite law schools dominate Supreme Court clerkships, with many justices hiring clerks from the same law schools they themselves attended and maintaining close links with faculty members. About two-thirds of clerks come from five schools: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia and the University of Chicago. Barrett, who graduated from Notre Dame Law School, is the only member of the current court not to have a law degree from Harvard or Yale. Within that context, Notre Dame is scrapping with other law schools for the remaining clerkships and has performed well. In the last five years, more graduates of Notre Dame Law School have been clerking at the high court than from many other high-ranking law schools, including Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Another conservative-aligned law school that is making inroads is George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School in Virginia, which has also placed some graduates in Supreme Court clerkships. While Supreme Court clerkships are the most sought-after, similar roles with federal appeals court judges are also important, in part because many people who later obtain clerkships at the high court have previously worked for a lower court judge. Notre Dame is making inroads on that front too. Of the most recent graduating class of 187 students, about 20% moved on to clerkships of some type.

The University of Notre Dame’s Law School has gotten increasing prominence in recent years, as the courts have gotten more conservative, especially the Supreme Court.

[knottahooker]

The Supreme Court on Thursday left intact a decades-old law that prioritizes the placement of Native American children with Native families or tribes in child custody proceedings, rejecting challenges brought by several adoptive parents.

The law was passed in 1978 to protect tribal sovereignty after Congress documented the alarmingly high number of children with Native American ancestry being placed with non-Native families or institutions in state child welfare and private adoption proceedings.

The 7-2 decision backs the law passed in the wake of decades of hostility on the part of the federal government when it comes to child custody issues and traditional values of Indian tribes.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, said Congress did not exceed its authority in passing the law.

“In a long line of cases we have characterized Congress’ power to legislate with respect to the Indian tribes as plenary and exclusive,” she wrote.

“Congress’s power to legislate with respect to Indians is well established and broad,” Barrett wrote, but acknowledged that the court’s precedent in the area has been “unwieldy.”

She noted that in general, Congress lacks a general power over domestic relations, but that the Constitution does not erect a “firewall around family law.”

She was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The case pitted the interest of Native American tribes, who said their existence as sovereign nations was on the line, against non-Native couples seeking to foster or adopt children with Native ancestry.

The opinion, which is a defeat for the couples who challenged the law, upheld a lower court’s ruling that the law is consistent with Congress’ authority.

President Joe Biden praised Thursday’s decision.

“Today’s decision from the Supreme Court keeps in place a vital protection for tribal sovereignty and Native children,” Biden said in a statement.

“Our Nation’s painful history looms large over today’s decision,” Biden added. “In the not-so-distant past, Native children were stolen from the arms of the people who loved them. They were sent to boarding schools or to be raised by non-Indian families – all with the aim of erasing who they are as Native people and tribal citizens. These were acts of unspeakable cruelty that affected generations of Native children and threatened the very survival of Tribal Nations. The Indian Child Welfare Act was our Nation’s promise: never again.”

(The article is longer, click the link to read the complete work.)

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Supreme Court upholds repatriation provision in sweeping 2017 tax law | The Hill

The Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision Thursday upheld a provision in then-President Trump’s sweeping 2017 tax bill while sidestepping a far-reaching question about Congress’s broader taxing authority.

The high court avoided weighing in on what constitutes “income” that the federal government can tax under the 16th Amendment, which has implications for large swaths of the U.S. tax code and could also foreclose the possibility of a wealth tax.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, did not delve into whether the 16th Amendment imposes a realization requirement. Instead, he resolved a couple’s challenge to the law’s mandatory repatriation tax on narrow grounds.

“So the precise and narrow question that the Court addresses today is whether Congress may attribute an entity’s realized and undistributed income to the entity’s shareholders or partners, and then tax the shareholders or partners on their portions of that income,” Kavanaugh wrote.

“This Court’s longstanding precedents, reflected in and reinforced by Congress’s longstanding practice, establish that the answer is yes.”

Kavanaugh’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberals.

Though the majority sidestepped the broader constitutional question, the four other conservative justices did address it, all expressing that they believe the 16th Amendment does impose a realization requirement.

“The Moores are correct. Sixteenth Amendment ‘incomes’ include only income realized by the taxpayer,” Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, agreed with their two fellow conservatives, rejecting the government’s argument that the amendment authorizes Congress to tax unrealized income without apportionment among the states.

“The answer is straightforward: No,” Barrett wrote.

But Barrett and Alito still voted to uphold the tax alongside the majority, writing that the couple had not met their burden after conceding a key point during oral arguments.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joined the majority in upholding the tax, wrote separately to cast doubts about a realization requirement.

“I have no doubt that future Congresses will pass, and future Presidents will sign, taxes that outrage one group or another—taxes that strike some as demanding too much, others as asking too little. There may even be impositions that, as a matter of policy, all can agree are wrongheaded,” Jackson wrote.

“However, Pollock teaches us that this Court’s role in such disputes should be limited,” she added, referring to a key precedent implicated in the case.

Charles and Kathleen Moore brought their challenge to the Supreme Court after paying roughly $15,000 in taxes under the provision in Republicans’ 2017 law.

The mandatory repatriation tax imposed a one-time tax on Americans who owned shares in foreign corporations, even if the corporation hadn’t distributed any earnings to the taxpayer.

The Moores had invested in KisanKraft, an Indian company that sells farm equipment. But the couple claimed they never received any distributions or payments from the company, meaning they did not realize any income the federal government was authorized to tax.

Under the 16th Amendment, Congress can levy taxes “on incomes, from whatever source derived.” Otherwise, all other direct taxes must be apportioned among the states.

The Supreme Court’s decision leaves unresolved whether income must be realized for it to fall under the Amendment’s carveout.

Instead, the justices sided against the Moores by finding the income in their situation was realized. KisanKraft realized the income, the court ruled, and Congress fairly attributed the income to the couple.

Alito previously rejected calls to recuse from the case after he sat down for two interviews with an attorney who represents the couple.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

But the true shock of their piece lies in fact that none of it is shocking: Samuel Alito came to the court wishing to overturn Roe and lied about that fact at his confirmation hearings; Neil Gorsuch didn’t even bother to read the draft opinion authored by Alito before he agreed to put his name to it, or else secretly viewed a draft before it was circulated to other justices; Amy Coney Barrett has someone in her chambers who wants us to see her as a tormented and complicated woman, even as she refused to do anything but rubber-stamp an opinion that would confirm to the world that she was a token, partisan, politics-haired appointment. And Brett Kavanaugh? He is precisely as absurdly self-important, scheming, untrustworthy, and ineffectual as we all knew him to be.

One could add a note here about Clarence Thomas’ former clerk, who devised the whole case as a bait-and-switch to kill Roe at the same time he was palling around with Clarence and Ginni Thomas at a West Virginia resort. But really, why? The point is not that any part of this meticulously reported piece will surprise anyone who has watched the high court stagger deeper and deeper into disgrace and moral irrelevance. The point is that every single thing described by the New York Times is now deemed ordinary, lawful, acceptable, and accepted at the highest court of the land.

The gist of the report confirms what we all suspected: There was never any real doubt about the outcome of Dobbs. During their confirmation hearings, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett presented themselves as open-minded on abortion, and generally respectful of precedent protecting women’s reproductive autonomy. Once on the court, all three were eager to light that precedent on fire. The only question was one of pacing and optics: Just how quickly, the conservatives wondered, could they overturn Roe v. Wade without delegitimizing the court and cementing their own status as partisan hacks? We learn now that Kavanaugh successfully lobbied the conservatives to conceal their decision to take up Dobbs from the public, waiting until May of 2021 to announce a vote that took place in the preceeding January. The purpose of this delay was to put distance between the announcement and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. Kavanaugh did not want the public to think RBG’s passing was the sole reason why the court would now overturn Roe. But it absolutely was.

We learn, too, that Alito shared his draft of Dobbs with several fellow conservative justices without the knowledge of the others, locking in their votes behind closed doors. We learn that Kavanaugh pretended to waffle on his commitment to reversing Roe, when all signs indicate that he was gunning for abortion from day one. It is clear that Scott Stewart, the former Thomas clerk who defended Mississippi’s abortion ban, transformed the case from an incremental attack on Roe to a full-on assault, after attending a reunion with Thomas. We learn that every major aspect of Dobbs was preordained once Barrett replaced Ginsburg: Five Republican-appointed justices wanted to abolish the constitutional right to abortion; they disagreed exclusively over how it would look and how best to deceive and mollify the American public; they fretted about how fast they could rewrite the law without revealing the fundamentally partisan nature of their ruling.

It’s no accident that this week, too, that yet more blockbuster reporting from ProPublica revealed that the body built to police Supreme Court conduct, the Judicial Conference, has been the government equivalent of one of those inflatable air dancers that flops around outside a carwash. Faced with decades of evidence of ethics breaches by Thomas, the Judicial Conference has waved its inflatable arms around, flopped and flapped, accomplished nothing, and then covered it up. When billionaires and oligarchs seek to buy shares in a conservative justice, the only thing standing in their way is the same enterprise pointing you to the $4900 beige Ford Pinto.

So while there is a lot to say about the Times revelations, let’s be perfectly clear about this: Every aspect of Dobbs departed from the court’s norms and tradition. Granting certiorari because the composition of the court has changed; allowing a party to radically change its position after cert has been granted; pre-gaming opinion drafts so justices can sign off within minutes; refusing to change material errors in a leaked draft? It’s all legal! It’s all constitutional! It’s how the court rolls! And if any of this surprises or upsets you, be advised there’s nothing you can do about it.

We all read The Brethren. We aren’t children. We fully expect logrolling, horse-trading, behind-the-scenes maneuvering, and outcome-driven decision-making from justices, who attempt to hide from us the fact that they are mere politicians, they’re just poor. We are told by the Supreme Court’s defenders that no such thing as crass political maneuvering could ever happen at the sacred temple on One First Street. We are assured that the robed oracles merely read briefs, take votes, and render judgments in good-faith, largely as a result of the noise-canceling originalist headphones they wear once they are sworn into office. The New York Times piece is stunning and unsurprising: The only thing that is worth tracking is that this maneuvering is now so publicly known ,reported in the Times like the fundamentally political story that it so obviously is. The sources who leaked this information, possibly including a justice, evidently believed it was important for Americans to know what went down here.

With each new peek behind the curtain, this fantasy becomes more difficult to buy into, even for those desperate to believe. It turns out that the justices—at least five of them on the right—are functionally indistinguishable from cynical partisan lawmakers making deals in the Senate cloakroom. It turns out that abortion rights vanished in America because five conservatives barely tried to hide the fact that they could do that, simply because they could do that. And it turns out that they’re increasingly bad at covering their tracks.

[tearsinthemist]

John Roberts’ Secret Trump Memo Revealed in Huge SCOTUS Leak

Corbin Bolies

Sun, September 15, 2024 at 9:33 AM CDT·3 min read

1.3k

The Supreme Court was hit by a flurry of damaging new leaks Sunday as a series of confidential memos written by the chief justice were revealed by The New York Times.

The court’s Chief Justice John Roberts was clear to his fellow justices in February: He wanted the court to take up a case weighing Donald Trump’s right to presidential immunity—and he seemed inclined to protect the former president.

“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently,” Roberts wrote to his Supreme Court peers, according to a private memo obtained by the Times. He was referencing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to allow the case to move forward.

Roberts took an unusual level of involvement in this and other cases that ultimately benefited Trump, according to the Times—his handling of the cases surprised even some other justices on the high court, across ideological lines. As president, Trump appointed three of the members of its current conservative supermajority.

I Saw the Grim Brutality of a Conservative Supreme Court Close Up

Such was the case in March that debated whether Colorado, or any state, had the authority to remove an official from a federal ballot. Roberts persuaded the other justices to make their opinion—that states could not unilaterally drop a federal candidate from the ballot—unsigned to authoritatively signal their unanimity, according to the Times.

The judges agreed, until the conservatives sought to include an additional proposition that mandated anyone seeking to enforce the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionist candidates get congressional approval. Four justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett—thought that idea went too far, and wrote concurrences in disagreement. Roberts himself wrote the majority opinion.

Roberts also took charge of the court’s ruling that declared the government went too far in charging those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

He had initially assigned the case to Samuel Alito but abruptly took it over himself days after the Times revealed Alito’s wife Martha-Ann hung an upside-down U.S. flag—an emblem of the “Stop the Steal” movement, and propagated by some Jan. 6 rioters—outside his home, according to the Times. It was unclear whether the two episodes were linked; none of the justices answered the Times’ questions

Michael Ian Black: Can We Stop Acting Shocked About Alito Family Shenanigans?

The switch, however, was unusual among court standards. Such instances usually only occur when a decision changes, experts told the Times.

Thus came the Trump ruling. The conservatives had voted to grant Trump, and all presidents, expansive immunity for “official” acts during their tenure. But Roberts again took the case for himself, prompting some at the court to wonder whether he may have taken on too much. He got pushback from justices both liberal (Sotomayor) and conservative (Barrett), though the opinion made it through in July, providing Trump with a clear win.

The clear loser? Judge Tanya Chutkan, who must decide how the ruling applies to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s still-pending case against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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[wherewhereare]

U.S., states sue to ‘break up’ Ticketmaster parent Live Nation© Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The landmark case — joined by 30 state and district attorneys general — could dramatically reshape an ecosystem that has long sparked outrage from artists and fans alike, whose frustrations erupted in 2022 when high fees and site outages disrupted early sales for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour.

Live Nation is an entertainment titan: It is a concert promoter, artist manager, venue owner and ticket seller and reseller, constituting a sprawling empire that its executives publicly herald as the “largest live entertainment company in the world.” Last year alone, Live Nation produced more than 50,000 concerts and other musical events, and it sold more than 620 million tickets globally, the company boasted to investors in April.

But the U.S. government contends that the company’s vast power and reach have also afforded it unfair advantages over competitors, allowing Live Nation to evolve into an illegal and harmful “monopolist” — with the power to box out rivals, reduce consumer choices and raise ticket prices.

“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement, later adding: “It is time to break up Live Nation.”

State and federal officials allege that Live Nation threatens to retaliate against performance venues unless they agree to use the company’s Ticketmaster service. Otherwise, these venue operators risk losing access to popular performances and tours — an unfavorable ultimatum, according to the government, that has allowed Ticketmaster to lock up more than 70 percent of sales at major concert venues.

State and federal antitrust watchdogs contend these arrangements ultimately have restricted artists, arrested the growth of competing ticketing services and cost audience members, who are forced to pay high, mandatory ticketing fees. In response, they asked a federal judge in New York to order structural changes to Live Nation, which could effectively force the company to break up.

A long, arduous court battle is now likely to follow, one that will see the Justice Department argue for unwinding a merger that the agency itself approved more than a decade ago.

“It’s also clear that we are another casualty of this administration’s decision to turn over antitrust enforcement to a populist urge that simply rejects how antitrust law works,” he added.

The lawsuit marks only the latest federal antitrust case initiated under President Biden, who came to office promising to crack down on corporate power and profiteering. Over the past three years, federal watchdogs have sued major technology companies including Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google for allegedly anticompetitive practices, and they have blocked major mergers involving airlines, biotech firms and grocery chains.

“Maybe it took people by surprise, but the president said [the government] wanted to do something on this, and they have,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the top lawmaker on the chamber’s antitrust panel. She added that Washington never should have allowed Live Nation to acquire Ticketmaster in the first place.

“However you look at it,” she said, “that’s a monopoly.”

Nearly 15 years ago, it was Washington’s blessing that paved the way for Live Nation to expand its corporate footprint: The Justice Department in 2010 gave the green light for the company to purchase Ticketmaster, combining what was already the largest concert promoter with the most prominent ticketing platform.

The deal created a powerhouse that could manage every part of a performance: It could plan and execute the logistics around an artist’s tour, handle all of their initial sales through Ticketmaster and stage some of the shows at Live Nation’s venues, including the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles and the Brooklyn Bowl in New York.

In a bid to preserve competition, the Obama administration approved the merger only on a conditional basis. It required Live Nation to divest some of its business, and it prohibited the combined company from retaliating against venues that opted to use other ticketing platforms. At the time, federal officials said their consent decree would pave the way “for strong competitors to Ticketmaster, allowing concert venues to have more and better choices for their ticketing needs.”

But the legally binding agreement didn’t quell broad opposition from concert venue owners and artists, who grumbled in the years to follow about the ease with which Live Nation allegedly flouted federal restrictions. The accusations are laid bare in the government’s roughly 120-page complaint, filed Thursday in a federal court in New York.

“With this vast scope of power comes influence. Live Nation and its wholly owned subsidiary, Ticketmaster, have used that power and influence to insert themselves at the center and the edges of virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem," the complaint alleges. "This has given Live Nation and Ticketmaster the opportunity to freeze innovation and bend the industry to their own benefit.”

The state and federal lawsuit also charges that Live Nation gobbled up some of its rivals — and struck anti-competitive arrangements with others — in a bid to further establish Ticketmaster as a dominant sales platform. It offers the example of Oak View Group, described by the government as a “competitor-turned-partner” with which Live Nation brokered a deal to avoid competing with each other over artists and tours.

“The live music industry in America is broken because Live Nation-Ticketmaster has an illegal monopoly,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who leads the antitrust office, said in a statement. “Our antitrust lawsuit seeks to break up the Live-Nation-Ticketmaster monopoly, which will restore competition to the benefit of fans and artists alike.”

In response, Live Nation said in a blog post that its integration had actually helped concertgoers and artists alike, since it resulted in “better prices and better services than they would receive if these complementary businesses were separated.”

The Justice Department launched its latest Live Nation investigation in 2022, two years after the agency under President Donald Trump found that the company had “repeatedly” broken its promises to antitrust enforcers. As a federal lawsuit became imminent this spring, competition experts urged the Biden administration to remedy its predecessors’ mistakes by unwinding a company that they said had leveraged its dominance to the detriment of rivals.

“It’s clear what the DOJ has tried previously … has not worked,” said Sumit Sharma, a senior researcher at Consumer Reports. “Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s market share has remained the same.”

The first word of the federal probe arrived on the heels of another fiasco — a surge of demand for Taylor Swift presale tickets in 2022 that crashed Ticketmaster and left countless fans unable to buy seats for her 2023 tour. The widely documented incident put a fresh spotlight on the company, its dominance in ticketing and the fees that it charges consumers.

Policymakers around the country soon unleashed a battery of legislative proposals meant to crack down on abuse in ticketing and better highlight the fees that customers face before they reach the checkout page. On Capitol Hill, Klobuchar summoned Joe Berchtold, the president of Live Nation, for a lengthy grilling over his company’s business practices.

“We hear people say that ticketing markets are less competitive today than they were at the time of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger,” Berchtold said in his testimony. “That is simply not true.”

But the company’s critics and competitors swiped at Live Nation for issuing ultimatums to concert halls and sports venues that could not afford to lose the company’s business. Jack Groetzinger, the chief executive of SeatGeek, a competing platform, said the fears of retaliation had allowed Live Nation to grow unchecked: He estimated that Ticketmaster came to amass a market share exceeding 70 percent in primary ticket sales, especially for professional basketball, hockey and football games.

“Major venues in the United States know that if they move their primary ticketing business from Ticketmaster to a competitor, they risk losing the substantial revenue they earn from Live Nation concerts,” Groetzinger said.

The heightened scrutiny promoted Live Nation to scale up its political operation dramatically in recent years: The company spent $2.3 million to influence Washington policymakers in 2023, more than double the year prior, according to OpenSecrets, a money-in-politics watchdog.

Live Nation has continued its spending spree into 2024, helping to host a party around the annual White House correspondents�� dinner — a swanky performance that touted the company’s bona fides on cocktail napkins.

“We’ve seen an uptick in their lobbying spending,” acknowledged Morgan Harper, the director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, a left-leaning group that has advocated for Live Nation to be broken up. “It’s not surprising an entity like Live Nation, whose business model has allowed them to engage in anti-competitive conduct, would be bringing to bear all the resources it has.”

[mariacallous]

On June 8, 2016, Phoukeo Dej-Oudom asked a family violence commissioner at Clark County Family Court in Las Vegas to grant a restraining order against her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Jason.

“Throughout the marriage, the children’s lives as well as mine have been threatened,” the 35-year-old woman wrote. “Guns have been pulled out and pointed to our heads multiple times.”

Commissioner Amy Mastin denied the application. The court later issued a statement saying that the threats Dej-Oudom described didn’t meet statutory requirements for a restraining order because they took place years before, outside the state of Nevada — despite the fact that the application also described recent threatening phone calls and text messages, storming into her place of work and vows to abscond with their three children.

Three weeks later, police found Dej-Oudom’s dead body near a pharmacy parking lot with a gunshot wound to the head. Several hours later, police entered an apartment where they found the bodies of their three children, age 9, 14, and 15, along with that of Jason Dej-Oudom, the shooter.

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in United States v. Zackey Rahimi — a landmark case that will decide whether it’s constitutional to strip gun rights from people under protection orders for domestic violence.

But the conservative court’s decision in that closely watched case will also impact the country’s ability to prevent mass shootings, potentially upending both federal and state laws designed to keep firearms out of the hands of people like Jason Dej-Oudom at moments when their intimate partners and families are at their most vulnerable.

While high-casualty shootings at public places attract major media attention and notoriety, researchers say most mass shootings look much more like Dej-Oudom’s — crimes of passion carried out against family members, after a long history of non-fatal violence.

The perpetrator is almost always a man. The primary victim is usually an intimate partner and almost always a woman. The other victims are generally family members, typically children, who may be either targets of the violence or just bystanders. Researchers sometimes refer to the phenomenon as “familicide.”

At least 54% of mass shootings in the decade between 2009 and 2018 involved domestic violence, according to data collected by the Gun Violence Archive and analyzed by Everytown for Gun Safety, a reform group.

“Many people equate mass shootings with random acts of violence, but our analysis shows that most mass shootings aren’t at all random,” said Everytown’s senior director of research, Sarah Burd-Sharps. “Nearly half of mass shooters shoot a current or former intimate partner or family member as part of their rampage.”

About half of all domestic violence victims don’t report the incidents they experience to police, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Those who do seek legal help to protect themselves, however, find that the rules for disarming a suspected domestic abuser are complex, vary widely across jurisdictions and have historically allowed some perpetrators to slip through glaring loopholes.

Possessing a firearm after a conviction for a domestic violence offense or while subject to a protective order for domestic violence are both felonies under federal law. But although federal law currently bars people subject to protection orders for domestic abuse from possessing guns, the state courts that issue those orders don’t always confiscate firearms from abusers.

“They tell them, ‘you can’t have a gun’ — but nobody checks,” said April Zeoli, a scholar at the University of Michigan who studies the impact of state laws on gun safety. “They really get to keep the gun by default. It’s like the honor system.”

And for decades, federal law limited its definition of domestic violence to include people who were married, cohabiting or had children together. Offenses committed by dating partners didn’t count as “domestic violence” for the purposes of stripping gun rights — an outdated definition now widely known as the “boyfriend loophole.” LGBTQ+ relationships have often fallen outside the scope of the federal government’s definition of domestic violence as well.

Last year’s bipartisan Safer Communities Act revised the federal government’s definition of domestic violence to include dating partners.

But some of the biggest research-backed progress in limiting domestic-violence-related firearm deaths has come at the state level, according to Zeoli. And many states have yet to pass aggressive laws limiting firearm access to domestic abusers, let alone expand the legal definition of domestic violence to include dating partners.

There are two broad categories of restraining orders to protect people from domestic violence ― temporary “ex parte” restraining orders that don’t require a judge to sign off, and longer-lasting protective orders issued by a court.

The federal law forbidding domestic abusers from possessing guns does not apply to ex parte orders. Many states do not strip gun rights based on those orders either.

“When women are in the most danger of domestic violence is when they’re trying to leave an abusive relationship,” said Liza Gold, a psychiatrist at Georgetown University School of Medicine and editor of the book “Gun Violence and Mental Illness.” “And when they’re trying to do that, the first thing that happens is they try to get a restraining order, and it’s usually a temporary one. So it’s leaving out the most vulnerable group.”

States that have passed laws to strip gun rights from abusers based on ex parte orders saw a 13% drop in intimate partner homicides, according to a 2018 study co-authored by Zeoli. Including dating partners in those laws was associated with the same percentage decrease in intimate partner homicides.

Researchers also saw a drop of 12% when laws included a provision forcing the offender to give up their firearms. The biggest drop of all, at 23%, occurred after states passed laws barring gun access to people convicted of nonspecific violent misdemeanors.

Muddling The Path To Reform

Results like those point researchers and reform advocates toward an obvious path to reform: Make it easier to disarm abusers.

“The most important public policy implication of this research is we need laws that protect survivors of domestic abuse,” Burd-Sharps of Everytown said. “These laws that decrease access to guns for domestic abusers can also decrease mass shootings.”

But the movement to strengthen protections for victims and survivors of domestic violence is facing a challenge bordering on the existential following the Supreme Court’s bombshell gun rights ruling in New York State Pistol Assn v. Bruen last year.

Writing for the 6-3 conservative majority, Justice Clarence Thomas set a new standard for assessing the constitutionality of gun restrictions. Courts would no longer balance the individual Second Amendment right to bear arms against government interest in protecting public safety.

Instead, the only constitutional gun restrictions under the new standard are those that can trace their origins to a similar law that dates back to somewhere between 1791, when the Bill of Rights passed, and the end of the Civil War.

The ruling opened the door to challenges against dozens of longstanding gun regulations, including state-level assault weapons bans, age restrictions on handgun purchases and a ban on “ghost” guns.

Last year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered one of the most surprising decisions, ruling that the federal law barring people subject to protection orders for domestic violence from possessing guns amounted to an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court agreed to review the decision this summer and will hold oral arguments on Nov. 7.

The decision outraged reformers partly because the defendant, Zackey Rahimi, so clearly exhibits the traits that make it dangerous to allow domestic abusers easy access to guns.

The protective order that barred him from contact with his former girlfriend or their young child informed him that it would be a federal crime to possess guns, but contained no forfeiture provision.

He went on to fire guns at people in public at least six times while under the order, according to court filings and police records obtained by HuffPost.

He allegedly fired repeatedly at a woman he lured into a parking lot, sprayed a house with bullets from an AR-15 over social media comments, shot at two drivers in separate road rage incidents, and fired into the air in a residential neighborhood in front of children and outside a Whataburger after it declined a friend’s credit card.

Unless the Supreme Court rules otherwise, Rahimi can now theoretically possess firearms. In practice, however, he’s locked up at Green Bay Jail in Fort Worth and faces a total of five indictments in the state of Texas: three for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, one for recklessly discharging a firearm and one for possession of fentanyl.

A decision in his favor would confirm that Thomas’ at times vague ruling was just as radical as many champions hoped and most reformers feared. It would reverse decades of lawmaking to shield people from domestic violence that reformers still view as incomplete.

But some legal scholars say the Rahimi case is more likely to mark the first time that the Supreme Court sets limits on the Bruen ruling and its chaotic implementation by lower courts.

“Gun violence is preventable,” Zeoli said. “We have some laws that research suggests reduce intimate partner homicide, and potentially other types of gun violence. Hopefully we will continue to have those laws. We will see how the Supreme Court rules.”

[bllsbailey]

Biden caters to 'far-left' dark money groups with Supreme Court 'gimmick,' critics say

President Biden’s push to impose radical changes to the Supreme Court caters to the left-wing base of the Democrat party from an administration that was once billed as a "moderate," critics argue.

On Monday, Biden and Vice President Harris, who is now running at the top of the presidential ticket for Democrats in November, backed drastic measures for Congress to adopt, including term limits, ethics rules and a constitutional amendment to limit presidential immunity.

Biden, in an op-ed published in the Washington Post, said he has "great respect for our institutions and separation of powers" but "what is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach."

The move marks a nearly 180-degree pivot for Biden, who had generally bucked plans even from within his own party to make such changes to the high court. 

President Biden walks down the steps of Air Force One at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on July 17, 2024. (Susan Walsh/AP)

During the early years of his political career in the Senate, Biden called President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plans to place term limits on older justices and packing the court "a bonehead idea." Packing the court, or court packing, is a term for increasing the number of justices on a court.

On the campaign trail in 2020, he resisted calls to expand the size of the court, saying that it would undermine its credibility.

With Monday’s announcement, Biden hasn’t said he wants to pack the court. But on his way out the Oval Office door, he’s endorsing plans from the most radical wing of his party.

"The far-left calls to destroy the Supreme Court were answered first by a candidate desperate to save his failing campaign," said Carrie Severino, president of Judicial Crisis Network.

President Biden speaks at a campaign event at Pullman Yards in Atlanta on March 9, 2024. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)

"Now they will be championed by a candidate who needs to cater to dark money groups in the Arabella Advisors network like Demand Justice, Fix the Court and a host of other pop-up groups funded by liberal billionaires," she added.

Arabella Advisors is a dark money fund that feeds various left-wing causes. Notably, Harris’ communications director, Brian Fallon, is the former head of Demand Justice, which is an Arabella-funded group that advocates for court packing.

Fix the Court, another Arabella-connected group, pushes for term limits for Justices.

"[Biden is] trying to gin up his base with this gimmick," said GOP strategist Matt Gorman.

"The idea that Joe Biden would advocate for term limits is laughable. The left can’t stand that they don’t control the court, so they’ll do whatever they can to take it by legislative force," he said.

The ideological swing of the high court shifted when former President Trump appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The conservative block is certainly not always in a lockstep vote, but Democrats in Congress and in the White House have nevertheless claimed that about the Republican-appointed majority.

"President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris want to end-run the Constitution and destroy the Supreme Court because they can't control it," said Severino.

"Biden and Harris are declaring war on the separation of powers with this announcement," she added.

The Harris campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded, "As he stands up for the rule of law and the integrity of the Supreme Court, President Biden is grateful for the support these proposals are receiving from bipartisan legal experts, members of Congress, and large majorities of the American people. 

'DANGEROUS' DEMOCRAT JUDICIAL ETHICS BILL WOULD ALLOW ANY 'JACKALOON' TO DEMAND A RECUSAL, SEN. KENNEDY SAYS

"Now, congressional Republicans have a choice to make: will they safeguard conflicts of interests on our nation’s highest court and help presidents remain above the law, or will they side with Joe Biden, conservative former judges, and their own constituents to protect principals that should override any partisanship?" said Bates. 

Notably, the Supreme Court last year adopted a new code of conduct after months of scrutiny from Democrats in Congress. 

"For the most part, these rules and principles are not new: The Court has long had the equivalent of common law ethics rules, that is, a body of rules derived from a variety of sources, including statutory provisions, the code that applies to other members of the federal judiciary, ethics advisory opinions issued by the Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct, and historic practice," a statement signed by all the justices said.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

"The absence of a Code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct," it said. 

[worldofwardcraft]

Immunocompromised.

July 8,2024

In the past couple of years, the six corrupt Federalist Society hacks on the Extreme Court (pictured above, believing they alone get to make the laws) have issued a string of atrocious decisions that run roughshod over past precedents, the Constitution, legal reasoning and just plain common sense. These absurd rulings have included allowing abortion to be made illegal again after 50 years, making bribery of elected officials lawful, permitting homelessness to be criminalized, and declaring that all government regulations must be approved by them.

But the most appalling decision was last week's 6-3 (as usual) determination in the fittingly titled case of Donald Trump v. United States that granted presidents immunity from criminal prosecution for anything they say is an "official act." Thus, just like that, these judicial jugheads upended the rule of law and turned the American presidency into a virtual monarchy.

Yet, every one of these Republican-appointed GOP loyalists swore (and lied) under oath during their respective Senate confirmation hearings that they would do no such thing:

Chief Justice John Roberts - “No one is above the law under our system and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law.” (2005)

Justice Samuel Alito - “No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law.” (2006)

Justice Neil Gorsuch - “Nobody is above the law in this country, and that includes the president of the United States.” (2017)

Justice Brett Kavanaugh - "Under the Constitution, the president is not above the law. No one is above the law…The president remains subject to the law." (2018)

Justice Amy Coney Barrett - "No man is above the law." (2020)

Plus, in the documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words, the most corruptly biased Supreme Court justice in history declared, “We are judges, not advocates. The referee in the game should not be a participant in the game.”

In granting immunity for criminal acts perpetrated by presidents, the Court opened the door for lifelong scofflaw Donald Trump to evade accountability both for his past crimes and any future ones (if reelected). However, the Founding Fathers actually did consider the possibility of a felonious president. Here's Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe:

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 69 that former presidents would be “liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.” But what did he know?

He certainly couldn't have known that someday ethically compromised Supreme Court justices would shamelessly lie to Congress and then decide it was constitutionally okey-dokey for a president to be a crook.

[thetwistedrope]

except for ketanji, who was the only justice to dissent. i think that bares repeating.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the ruling, said the union's actions had not only destroyed the concrete but had also "posed a risk of foreseeable, aggravated and imminent harm to Glacier's trucks."

"Because the union took affirmative steps to endanger Glacier's property rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk, the NLRA does not arguably protect its conduct," Barrett wrote.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a 27-page dissent, wrote that the ruling "is likely to cause considerable confusion among the lower courts" about how preemption under the National Labor Relations Act should apply in future cases and "risks erosion of the right to strike."

Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien said the Supreme Court had "again voted in favor of corporations over working people."

"The ability to strike has been on the books for nearly 100 years," O'Brien said, "and it's no coincidence that this ruling is coming at a time when workers across the country are fed up and exercising their rights more and more."

The union, Teamsters Local Union No. 174, had claimed the strike not only was arguably protected under federal labor law but the resulting loss of concrete did not satisfy the high bar to override federal preemption. While the Supreme Court has found that labor unions can be sued in state court for violent or threatening conduct, the union had argued, this narrow exception should not be expanded to permit property damage claims brought under state law.

President Joe Biden's administration had urged the justices to reverse the lower court's decision, allowing Glacier Northwest's lawsuit to proceed.

(x)

but unfriendly reminder that dems are not your friends. and people shouting "vote blue no matter who" are blatantly ignoring how much of our legal system is not up for vote, and how most of the candidates available are not actually interested in helping the american people.

So working is not a voluntary exchange of labor for money. That's just a bullshit excuse that's only used when it's convenient for capitalists.

These assholes miss the "good old days" when workers were legally considered property.

[foreverlogical]

Well-known political expert, author, journalist, and CEO David Rothkopf is blasting conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court after their disastrous rulings last week, warning the Court is now a “threat to democracy” and suggesting some justices should be “considered” for impeachment.

Rothkopf, also a national security and foreign policy commentator, is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the author at least seven books, including American Resistance.

“Watching debates about Supreme Court here and elsewhere is the latest study in GOP efforts to normalize the unconscionable, the corrupt, and the contra-constitutional. This is a court in which a majority of those on the right took their seats under questionable circumstances,” Rothkopf said at the start of a lengthy thread on Twitter.

“Of them, a cloud of corruption hangs over Thomas & Alito. Kavanaugh took [his] seat despite allegations against him that were not properly investigated. Questions surround his payoff of personal debts. Gorsuch’s ascension is also clouded by questions surrounding Kennedy’s departure,” he says.

READ MORE: ‘Treacherous March of Normalization’: ABC News Slammed for ‘Puff Piece’ Profile on Moms for Liberty

Justice Clarence Thomas has been under fire for months over his relationship with billionaire GOP donor and businessman Harlan Crow, who reportedly has had business before the high court. The far-right wing justice and his wife, Ginni Thomas, (who has been accused of working to undermine the 2020 presidential election results,) may have received gifts totaling over $1 million in luxury vacations, travel, food, lodging, and clothing. Experts say Thomas was required to disclose portions of those gifts and that he did not.

Justice Samuel Alito is also the beneficiary of luxury travel, including a fishing trip to Alaska courtesy of another billionaire, and a trip to Rome during which he delivered a highly-criticized speech just days after delivering his opinion striking down Roe v. Wade. That trip was reportedly paid for by a religious liberty organization whose leader reportedly bought Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Indiana home.

Indeed, Rothkopf also skewers Justice Barrett, or at least her confirmation.

“Barrett received her seat in a rush to judgment that was unlike any we have ever seen and completely contrary to the way the GOP Senate treated prior Dem nominees (Garland). In the time since the majority took over, they have cast aside one core principle after another,” he observes.

READ MORE: ‘Tyranny’: Legal Expert Says Ruling in Favor of Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination Makes It ‘Impossible’ to Respect Supreme Court

“Stare decisis went out the window. (Precedents were ignored without any sound justification.) Promises to honor past decisions as established law (like Roe) proved worthless. Past claims that the right valued originalism and condemned judicial activism were wholly ignored,” Rothkopf charges.

“When precedent went against them, absurd arguments drawing on ancient and irrelevant legal decisions were used to supersede the clear intent of the framers and decades, sometimes centuries of legal precedent.”

Last week, he says, we saw “a decision on affirmative action that ignored precedent, reality, and justice and contained, in its carve-out for military academies, a sub-decision that refuted the logic of the main opinion. In the case of reversing the Biden student loan decision,” Rothkopf writes, “a brand new doctrine was presented out of whole cloth. The decision regarding the ‘right’ of a website designer to refuse to do work for a ‘gay’ couple was based on both a lie and a hypothetical, should never have been taken on as a case and was grossly wrong on the law,” he adds.

Rothkopf appears to believe the conservative justices will not stop.

“These judges are acting with impunity because they believe a GOP controlled Senate will never challenge them and that a fundamental flaw in the way the Constitution grants power to underpopulated states assures that the document that was created to evolve never will,” he writes.

And he suggests some of the Supreme Court’s justices might need to be impeached.

“They also know that Senate rules essentially mean they can act with impunity despite their wholesale corruption and the fact that several of them should, in all likelihood, be seriously considered for impeachment.”

READ MORE: Sotomayor Slams ‘Embarrassing’ SCOTUS Anti-LGBTQ Decision That Marks ‘Gays and Lesbians for Second-Class Status’

Pointing to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, he adds: “This is, as [she] has said a constitutional crisis. This is an illegitimate, rogue institution that is seeking to reverse decades of progress and impose the will of a white, wealthy, Christian, male, straight minority on the majority of Americans.”

“This is a moment that calls for action on the part of Democrats in power to use their ability to call Senate hearings and to challenge this extremist cluster of judicial terrorists wherever possible. But more than that, it demands absolutely clarity from the voting public,” he says.

Rothkopf warns conservatives in the Court are poised to do even more damage to democracy and the American people.

“Unless Democrats win the presidency, hold and increase their majority in the Senate and retake the House, this tiny band of malevolent and dangerous actors will gut many of the most important provisions of the past century and a half of American law.”

“They will destroy lives and put millions of others at risk. Next year’s election must be in part, about this threat to democracy even as it is also about the threat posed by GOP presidential candidates. Stop. Consider the consequences.”

He warns minority Americans will continue to see their civil rights “stripped” away.

“Consider the basic rights that will be stripped away from women, people of color, our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, voters, and all who believe in the ideals that have guided American leaders as we have struggled to perfect our nation,” he says. “The only people who can save us are you and your fellow voters. The only way to do so is to mobilize, be active, donate to candidates and remain committed to defending our country against the threat posed by the MAGA GOP in our legislature and our judiciary. Starting right now.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ian Millhiser at Vox:

Thursday’s argument in Trump v. United States was a disaster for Special Counsel Jack Smith, and for anyone who believes that the president of the United States should be subject to prosecution if they commit a crime. At least five of the Court’s Republicans seemed eager to, at the very least, permit Trump to delay his federal criminal trial for attempting to steal the 2020 election until after this November’s election. And the one GOP appointee who seemed to hedge the most, Chief Justice John Roberts, also seemed to think that Trump enjoys at least some immunity from criminal prosecution. Much of the Court’s Republican majority, moreover, seemed eager not simply to delay Trump’s trial until after the election, but to give him extraordinarily broad immunity from criminal prosecution should he be elected once again. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, argued that when a president exercises his official powers, he cannot be charged under any federal criminal statute at all, unless that statute contains explicit language saying that it applies to the president.

As Michael Dreeben, the lawyer arguing on behalf of Smith’s prosecution team, told the Court, only two federal laws meet this standard. So Kavanaugh’s rule would amount to near complete immunity for anything a president did while exercising their executive authority. Justice Samuel Alito, meanwhile, played his traditional role as the Court’s most dyspeptic advocate for whatever position the Republican Party prefers. At one point, Alito even argued that permitting Trump to be prosecuted for attempting to overthrow the 2020 presidential election would “lead us into a cycle that destabilizes ... our democracy,” because future presidents who lose elections would mimic Trump’s criminal behavior in order to remain in office and avoid being prosecuted by their successor. In fairness, not all of the justices, or even all of the Republican justices, engaged in such dizzying feats of reverse logic. Roberts did express some concern that Trump lawyer John Sauer’s arguments could prevent the president from being prosecuted if he took a bribe.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, meanwhile, pointed to the fact that Sauer drew a distinction between prosecuting a president for “official” behavior (which Sauer said is not allowed), and prosecuting a president for his “private” conduct (which Sauer conceded is permitted). Barrett also argued that many of the charges against Trump, such as his work with private lawyers and political consultants to overthrow the 2020 election, qualify as private conduct and thus could still be prosecuted. Still, many of the Republican justices, including Barrett, indicated that the case would have to be returned to the trial court to determine which of the allegations against Trump qualify as “official” and which qualify as “private.” Barrett also indicated that Trump could then appeal the trial court’s ruling, meaning that his actual criminal trial would be delayed for many more months as that issue makes its way through the appeals courts.

In that world, the likelihood that Trump will be tried, and a verdict reached, before the November election is approximately zero percent. The Court’s decision in the Trump case, in other words, is likely to raise the stakes of this already impossibly high-stakes election considerably. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned, the risk inherent in giving presidents immunity from the criminal law is that someone like Trump “would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon.” It’s unclear if the Court is going to go so far as to definitively rule that the president of the United States is allowed to do crimes. But they appear likely to make it impossible for the criminal justice system to actually do anything about Trump’s attempt to overthrow the election — at least before Trump could be elected president again.

Gleaning off of yesterday's oral arguments at SCOTUS on the Trump v. United States immunity case, it appears that the radical right-wing black robed tyrants will give Donald Trump a win in some fashion.

The out-of-control radical right-wing majority on SCOTUS is yet another argument to expand the court to dilute their anti-American influence on the court.

See Also:

HuffPost: Supreme Court Conservatives Likely To Give Trump What He Wants In Immunity Case: Further Delay

Salon: SCOTUS majority abandons conservative principles to mount bizarre defense of Trump’s immunity claim

[dankusner]

Uvalde police block comments on Facebook page 

Many residents say it violates free speech

The Uvalde Police Department has faced widespread criticism for its delayed response to the gunman who entered Robb Elementary School and killed 19 children and two teachers on May 24, 2022.

That criticism extended to social media, where public outcry led to the department’s decision to disable comments on its Facebook page that previously allowed public engagement.

'The Uvalde Police Department Facebook Page is an informational page only and does not allow comments,' the department’s page reads.

A similar note appears on the city of Uvalde’s Facebook page.

Additionally, beneath each post, a disclaimer from the social media platform states, 'Uvalde Police Department limited who can comment on this post.'

Many residents assert that prohibiting comments is a violation of free speech covered under the First Amendment, but this interpretation might not be accurate.

Man sues the city of Uvalde, Uvalde Police Department for restricting comments

New York resident Michael W. Palmer sued the city and the Uvalde Police Department for $500,000 in April for their restriction on comments on their Facebook pages, according to the Uvalde Leader-News.

The lawsuit comes after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in March clarified that public officials’ online accounts might fall under state action criteria if they wield state authority and establish such authority on their posts, even if it’s on their personal accounts.

Although the ruling did not specifically outline protocols for governmental agencies, the lawsuit alleges that the city of Uvalde and Uvalde Police Department’s restrictions on Facebook comments do not comply with the recent high court’s decision because government officials run the page.

'The city does not have a lawful right to block users comments or even the users, since the Facebook Page(s), is considered ran by government officials,' the lawsuit reads.

A decision has not yet been made.

What did the Supreme Court ruling say about government official’s social media accounts?

In Lindke v. Freed, James Freed, the city manager of Port Huron, Mich., posted about the COVID-19 pandemic on his personal Facebook page.

Facebook user Kevin Lindke responded, expressing his displeasure with the city’s response to the pandemic.

Initially, Freed deleted the comments but later blocked Lindke from commenting.

Because Freed identified himself as the city manager on his Facebook page, Lindke sued Freed, alleging that his First Amendment rights were violated, as he believed the page constituted a public forum.

In the Supreme Court opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asserted that many government officials use social media for personal communication, and in cases in which officials have distinctly separated their personal social media posts and accounts from official business, they retain their rights as private citizens and have the capability to block users and comments.

'A close look is definitely necessary in the context of a public official using social media.

There are approximately 20 million state and local government employees across the Nation, with an extraordinarily wide range of job descriptions – from Governors, mayors, and police chiefs to teachers, healthcare professionals, and transportation workers,' she wrote. 'Many use social media for personal communication, official communication, or both – and the line between the two is often blurred.'

She wrote that such officials 'may look like they are always on the clock' and it could be 'tempting to characterize every encounter as part of the job,' but they are 'also private citizens with their own constitutional rights.'

But Freed’s page was not designated either 'personal' or 'official,' and he often posted information related to his job.

In the official ruling, the Supreme Court established new guidelines and unanimously held that 'A public official who prevents someone from commenting on the official’s social-media page engages in state action under §1983 only if the official both (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf on a particular matter, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when speaking in the relevant social-media posts.'

What official government pages can and cannot do

Information from the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana website suggests the issue is more nuanced than the lawsuit alleges.

According to the ACLU, official government pages cannot:

Prevent people from joining a public conversation on the social media account because of their views on the topics at hand.

Block critical voices from asking for government services through the social media account because of those critical viewpoints.

Prevent people from being able to see social media posts that publicly announce government information or policy because of their viewpoints.

But the organization states that the associated page can limit other kinds of interactions, and that includes restricting all comments or deleting comments not relevant to the post.

'An official can also preclude all comments or in certain circumstances limit discussions to certain subjects,' the website states. 'In other words, government officials may have no obligation to open the social media account up for public comment, but if they do, they cannot discriminate as to which view s get to be expressed in those comments