The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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gounion
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The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

Post by gounion »

How far will they go? I think we need a thread just on this. Of course, it's likely that our conservatives won't come near this thread, but that's fine, that just shows they support where it's going. Besides the likelihood that they'll knock down Roe v. Wade, the Federalist Society has been training far-right ideologues that will attack anything they see as "socialism", as well as gay and trans rights. They want to roll this country back to 1776. If it wasn't acceptable then, it shouldn't be acceptable now. I made a post here about the dangers to Social Security and Medicare. Lots more coming.
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carmenjonze
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

Post by carmenjonze »

gounion wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 10:33 am How far will they go? I think we need a thread just on this. Of course, it's likely that our conservatives won't come near this thread, but that's fine, that just shows they support where it's going. Besides the likelihood that they'll knock down Roe v. Wade, the Federalist Society has been training far-right ideologues that will attack anything they see as "socialism", as well as gay and trans rights. They want to roll this country back to 1776. If it wasn't acceptable then, it shouldn't be acceptable now. I made a post here about the dangers to Social Security and Medicare. Lots more coming.
They support it and plan to benefit from it.

Like the supremacists that came before them, they are dependent on the government to hold others back so they can thrive.
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gounion
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

Post by gounion »

What do originalists want? Let's take a look at the head of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo:
Last week, the Washington Post published a profile of Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo, focusing in part on a speech he gave to the Council for National Policy in which he warmly predicted the Supreme Court would soon return to the pre–New Deal era of “limited, constitutional government.” Leo believes, in other words, that the court’s view of the Constitution was better off 85 years ago than it is today.

“I think we stand at the threshold of an exciting moment in our republic,” Leo told the council at a closed-door meeting in February, audio of which was obtained by the Post. “This is really, I think, at least in recent memory, a newfound embrace of limited constitutional government in our country. I don’t think this has really happened since probably before the New Deal.”

*snip*

As Leo knows, constitutional law was very different in the 1930s from what it is today. And in a word, it sucked.

In the 1930s, the courts were fully complicit in maintaining the country as a thoroughgoing ethnocracy, governed openly for the benefit of white men. Public schools in 21 states were racially segregated by law. “Separate but equal” schools had been affirmed by the Supreme Court as late as 1927, in a unanimous decision allowing Mississippi to kick a Chinese American girl out of her local “white” school for being a member of the “yellow” race. The outlawing of segregation is settled law in our country, and nobody would dare dream of returning to those antiquated judicial interpretations, you might say? Several of Trump’s judicial nominees have conspicuously, outrageously, refused to say whether they thought Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal school segregation in 1954, was correctly decided.

In the 1930s, through a combination of discriminatory literacy tests, poll taxes, “good character” requirements, and straight-up violence, less than 1 percent of black people in the Deep South—where they represented more than a third of the population—were registered to vote. The Supreme Court had blessed these intimidation practices for decades, ever since a 1903 decision in which the court said it couldn’t do anything about Alabama’s self-described effort “to establish white supremacy in this state” by refusing to register black voters. Discriminatory voting practices of this sort weren’t banned until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most significant provision of which was gutted six years ago in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts (whom Leo also helped elevate to the court).

In the 1930s, women had no constitutional right to equality. They could legally be kept off juries, given different work hours, paid less money, and imprisoned for using birth control. It would be another four decades before the Supreme Court struck down even a single law for discriminating against women. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch—again, both products of Leo’s vetting—recently dissented from the court’s temporary blocking of a Louisiana law that would have left the entire state with just a single doctor able to perform abortions.

In the first half of the 20th century, the police could beat confessions out of arrestees. Poor defendants had no right to a lawyer. Evidence could be illegally seized and used in prosecutions. In 1944, for example, South Carolina executed a 14-year-old black boy named George Stinney for the murders of two white girls. He was questioned alone, without his parents or a lawyer present, and convicted by an all-white jury after a two-hour trial and 10 minutes of deliberation. He wasn’t allowed to appeal. He had to sit on books to fit into the headpiece of the electric chair. Only in 2014, 70 years too late, did a circuit court judge vacate the 14-year-old Stinney’s murder conviction. The Stinney case tells you all you need to know about criminal justice in the age Leo wants to bring back.

The 1930s was of course the decade of the Great Depression, when unemployment hit 25 percent and most Americans lived in poverty. The post–New Deal court decisions Leo wishes to repudiate are the ones that gave the government the power to enact minimum wage laws, to create unemployment insurance and Social Security, to provide health insurance to the aged and destitute, and to give workers collective bargaining rights. In the 1930s, those too old to work and too poor not to could often expect a quick but painful death. This is the human toll of “limited government.”
Bludogdem
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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The biggest disappointment experienced by repub Presidents is their Supreme Court appointments.
gounion
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

Post by gounion »

Bludogdem wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 4:30 pm The biggest disappointment experienced by repub Presidents is their Supreme Court appointments.
Talk about trying to have it both ways. I thought no one wanted to change anything, no one wanted to roll back Supreme Court decisions.
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Bostock v Clayton County

SC ruled 6-3 that Title VII protects sexual orientation

There were 2 dissents. Alito/Thomas and Kavanaugh. Nothing in the dissents suggested sexual orientation should not be protected. Kavanaugh expressed satisfaction that sexual orientation at the end of the day was protected but his dissent pointed to the failure of congress to properly legislate the that protection by amending Title VII. Alito went off on a procedural slippery slope thing that also dissed congress.
gounion
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Bludogdem wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 7:21 pm Bostock v Clayton County

SC ruled 6-3 that Title VII protects sexual orientation

There were 2 dissents. Alito/Thomas and Kavanaugh. Nothing in the dissents suggested sexual orientation should not be protected. Kavanaugh expressed satisfaction that sexual orientation at the end of the day was protected but his dissent pointed to the failure of congress to properly legislate the that protection by amending Title VII. Alito went off on a procedural slippery slope thing that also dissed congress.
Let’s just remember that Clarance Thomas voted to keep sodomy illegal.
gounion
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Bludogdem wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 7:21 pm Bostock v Clayton County

SC ruled 6-3 that Title VII protects sexual orientation

There were 2 dissents. Alito/Thomas and Kavanaugh. Nothing in the dissents suggested sexual orientation should not be protected. Kavanaugh expressed satisfaction that sexual orientation at the end of the day was protected but his dissent pointed to the failure of congress to properly legislate the that protection by amending Title VII. Alito went off on a procedural slippery slope thing that also dissed congress.
The gay marriage case was Obergefell v. Hodges, and it was 5-4, with Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito.

So they only need two of the new judges to overturn the case.
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carmenjonze
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

Post by carmenjonze »

Bludogdem wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 7:21 pm Bostock v Clayton County

SC ruled 6-3 that Title VII protects sexual orientation

There were 2 dissents. Alito/Thomas and Kavanaugh. Nothing in the dissents suggested sexual orientation should not be protected. Kavanaugh expressed satisfaction that sexual orientation at the end of the day was protected but his dissent pointed to the failure of congress to properly legislate the that protection by amending Title VII. Alito went off on a procedural slippery slope thing that also dissed congress.
What's your point, straight man?
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gounion
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

Post by gounion »

Bludogdem wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 4:30 pm The biggest disappointment experienced by repub Presidents is their Supreme Court appointments.
Please explain how you think they are disappointments.
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

Post by Bludogdem »

carmenjonze wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 2:27 am What's your point, straight man?
Positive result in an LGBTQ case.
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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gounion wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 9:42 am Please explain how you think they are disappointments.
“Could a right-wing judge flip now that they are in office? Well, there's a lot of precedent for that, mostly of right-wing judges flipping to liberal. Warren was the biggest surprise of all, and Eisenhower called his nomination "the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made".

What's interesting is that a liberal justice almost never switches.

The right has been disappointed over and over with judges that don't vote as they want once they're on the court. That's why the Federalist Society was formed - to build a solid bench of justices that were far-right ideologues, and would be far less likely to flip.

Some folks are wondering about Kavanaugh. A few are wondering about Gorsuch. a right-wing judge flip now that they are in office? Well, there's a lot of precedent for that, mostly of right-wing judges flipping to liberal. Warren was the biggest surprise of all, and Eisenhower called his nomination "the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made".

What's interesting is that a liberal justice almost never switches.

The right has been disappointed over and over with judges that don't vote as they want once they're on the court. That's why the Federalist Society was formed - to build a solid bench of justices that were far-right ideologues, and would be far less likely to flip.

Some folks are wondering about Kavanaugh. A few are wondering about Gorsuch. “

Your words.
Last edited by Bludogdem on Sat Oct 30, 2021 1:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
gounion
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Bludogdem wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 1:01 pm “Could a right-wing judge flip now that they are in office? Well, there's a lot of precedent for that, mostly of right-wing judges flipping to liberal. Warren was the biggest surprise of all, and Eisenhower called his nomination "the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made".

What's interesting is that a liberal justice almost never switches.

The right has been disappointed over and over with judges that don't vote as they want once they're on the court. That's why the Federalist Society was formed - to build a solid bench of justices that were far-right ideologues, and would be far less likely to flip.

Some folks are wondering about Kavanaugh. A few are wondering about Gorsuch. a right-wing judge flip now that they are in office? Well, there's a lot of precedent for that, mostly of right-wing judges flipping to liberal. Warren was the biggest surprise of all, and Eisenhower called his nomination "the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made".

What's interesting is that a liberal justice almost never switches.

The right has been disappointed over and over with judges that don't vote as they want once they're on the court. That's why the Federalist Society was formed - to build a solid bench of justices that were far-right ideologues, and would be far less likely to flip.

Some folks are wondering about Kavanaugh. A few are wondering about Gorsuch. “
Did you mess this post up? You should never use other's words without a quote box.
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carmenjonze
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Bludogdem wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 12:56 pm Positive result in an LGBTQ case.
Talk to me when it’s your rights that were just earned a year ago and are already in danger.
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~ Ida B. Wells
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gounion
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

Post by gounion »

Bludogdem wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 1:01 pm Your words.
In the future, please put quotes into quote boxes, instead of editing your post and saying "your words".

So, yes, the plan is for the GOP to rebuild our nation by the Supreme Court by legislating from the bench. That's the whole reason for the Federalist Society.
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Libertas
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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gounion wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 3:04 pm In the future, please put quotes into quote boxes, instead of editing your post and saying "your words".

So, yes, the plan is for the GOP to rebuild our nation by the Supreme Court by legislating from the bench. That's the whole reason for the Federalist Society.
Plus now they get to do it by refusing to certify any election they lose. I sure hope the rest of us are prepared for that.
I sigh in your general direction.
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

Post by Glennfs »

gounion wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 3:04 pm In the future, please put quotes into quote boxes, instead of editing your post and saying "your words".

So, yes, the plan is for the GOP to rebuild our nation by the Supreme Court by legislating from the bench. That's the whole reason for the Federalist Society.
Except up to now they haven't done so. Plus I believe all of the Republican appointees were also rated well qualified by the ABA
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gounion
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Glennfs wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 2:25 pm Except up to now they haven't done so. Plus I believe all of the Republican appointees were also rated well qualified by the ABA
You would be wrong.
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Libertas wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 3:39 pm Plus now they get to do it by refusing to certify any election they lose. I sure hope the rest of us are prepared for that.
The Supreme Court would stop that. Read the 12th amendment. Congress has no granted power in the 12 amendment. The Electoral Count Act in relation to Congressional activities related to counting is unconstitutional.

The president of the senate counts the electoral votes. Nothing in there says that Congress can object. Rather simple.
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Glennfs wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 2:25 pm Except up to now they haven't done so. Plus I believe all of the Republican appointees were also rated well qualified by the ABA
Thomas was simply “Qualified “.
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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When GOP RED STATE officials refuse to certify House and Senate races they lose, because they are now MAGA...this is our future.
I sigh in your general direction.
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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gounion wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 2:45 pm You would be wrong.
So one was only recommended as qualified well egg on my face as I thought they were all recommended as qualified or better
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Libertas wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 9:42 pm When GOP RED STATE officials refuse to certify House and Senate races they lose, because they are now MAGA...this is our future.
When did that happen
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carmenjonze
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Bludogdem wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:29 pm Thomas was simply “Qualified “.
The qualification was being a combination anti-Civil Rights, Black, openly sexist, and frothing-at-the-mouth conservative. In any old order, doesn't matter, just so the cons own the libs.
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gounion
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Re: The clear and present danger of a far-right Supreme Court

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Glennfs wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 10:35 pm So one was only recommended as qualified well egg on my face as I thought they were all recommended as qualified or better
10 of Trump's judicial nominees were rated not qualified.
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