Category: judges behaving badly

Amy Coney Barrett and her membership on the board of anti-gay Christian schools

October 22, 2020 • 1:00 pm

We all know that there was nothing that Amy Coney Barrett could have said in her Senate hearings that would have barred her from taking up a Supreme Court seat with the enthusiastic approval of the GOP. And no, I don’t think her expressed religious views should be ignored completely—not if a reasonable person could think that they would affect her rulings as a Justice. If someone really believes that there is a God-given behavior or morality that cannot be violated, can we really trust them to put aside a deeply held religious faith, like Barrett’s, and vote for a law that contravenes God’s will? I think we have enough doubt about Barrett’s behavior and previous statements to call her legal objectivity into question.

But of course it doesn’t matter. She’s ready to warm RBG’s empty chair.

As if we needed another reason to be scared about Barrett and the conservative court rolling back decades of social progress, the Associated Press has a long piece detailing Barrett’s three-year history as a trustee of three private Christian schools with an explicitly anti-gay policy. No gay teachers can teach there, and no kids from same-sex partnerships can learn there.

According to the courts, these policies aren’t illegal, as the schools Barrett supervised were private and religious. But it doesn’t speak well about how she’ll rule in cases involving gay rights, especially because she refused to answer, during the hearings, whether she agreed with the Court’s ruling in Obergefell v Hodges, the case that legalized same-sex marriage. That case was decided 5-4, but would now be decided, based on the Court’s upcoming composition, against same-sex marriage.

Click on the screenshot to read; it’s a long piece but well worth reading.

I’m going to quote instead of paraphrase as I’m busy squabbling with misguided Trump sympathizers and Biden critics in the comments on my previous post, and I also have ducks to feed.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett served for nearly three years on the board of private Christian schools that effectively barred admission to children of same-sex parents and made it plain that openly gay and lesbian teachers weren’t welcome in the classroom.

The policies that discriminated against LGBTQ people and their children were in place for years at Trinity Schools Inc., both before Barrett joined the board in 2015 and during the time she served.

The three schools, in Indiana, Minnesota and Virginia, are affiliated with People of Praise, an insular community rooted in its own interpretation of the Bible, of which Barrett and her husband have been longtime members. At least three of the couple’s seven children have attended the Trinity School at Greenlawn, in South Bend, Indiana.

The AP spoke with more than two dozen people who attended or worked at Trinity Schools, or former members of People of Praise. They said the community’s teachings have been consistent for decades: Homosexuality is an abomination against God, sex should occur only within marriage and marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

Interviewees told the AP that Trinity’s leadership communicated anti-LGBTQ policies and positions in meetings, one-on-one conversations, enrollment agreements, employment agreements, handbooks and written policies — including those in place when Barrett was an active member of the board. Trinity Schools Inc. is a tax-exempt non-profit organization that receives some financial support from government-funded tuition voucher programs, according to its federal tax returns.

The AP tried to dig deeper, but were rebuffed by the White House, while people who know Barrett are also scared:

The AP sent detailed questions for Barrett to the White House press office. Rather than providing direct answers, White House spokesman Judd Deere instead accused AP of attacking the nominee.

“Because Democrats and the media are unable to attack Judge Barrett’s sterling qualifications, they have instead turned to pathetic personal attacks on her children’s Christian school, even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that religious schools are protected by the First Amendment,” Deere said in an email.

Nearly all the people interviewed for this story are gay or said they have gay family members. They used words such as “terrified,” “petrified” and “frightening” to describe the prospect of Barrett on the high court. Some of them know Barrett, have mutual friends with her or even have been in her home dozens of times. They describe her as “nice” or “a kind person,” but told the AP they feared others would suffer if Barrett tries to implement People of Praise’s views on homosexuality on the Supreme Court.

Should we be scared that Barrett will roll back progress when she gets on the Court? You’re damn right we should. If I don’t miss my guess, she will be worse than Thomas and Scalia combined. If you think God hates gays, are you going to go against his will if Obergefell gets re-litigated? (I doubt it will: that decision was so wide-ranging and affected so many people then surely stare decisis will hold.) But as far as future gay rights cases go, fuggedabout it. And that goes for other issues too, including abortion, gun legislation, and so on.

Barrett’s history—now including her being a trustee of anti-gay religious schools—combined with her previous pronouncements, not only make her unfit as an “objective” justice, but justify having asked her about how her religious views will impact her rulings. She said, as expected, that they won’t, but we all know that was a nudge nudge, wink wink.

 

Supreme court approves execution with a substantial likelihood of causing agony (vote, naturally, was 5-4)

April 7, 2019 • 2:30 pm

This is what we’re in for the foreseeable future: a Supreme Court whose conservative majority, while concerned with preserving the life of every fetus, sends criminals to their deaths with impunity, even when those deaths are horribly painful. As the article below in The Atlantic relates (click on the screenshot), Justice Neil Gorsuch, who heretofore had kept his opinions on capital punishment private, joined the 5-4 Supreme Court majority (5-4 is temporary; it will be 6-3 before too long unless we elect a Democratic President in 2020) in the case of Bucklew v. Precythe, a ruling you can see here. The opinion was in fact written by Gorsuch, with the other four conservative justices (including Kavanaugh) concurring. The dissenters were, of course, Ginsburg, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer.

Russell Bucklew, facing execution in Missouri for murder, rape, assault, escape, and other crimes, appealed because he has a disease called cavernous hemangioma, which in his case produces fragile blood-filled tumors in his head and mouth. He can’t sleep lying down lest he choke on his own blood, and it’s possible, even likely, that a lethal injection, the standard procedure in Missouri, would cause insupportable pain by rupturing his blood vessels.

Courts have ruled that if an inmate challenges the lethal-injection procedure, it’s up to him to suggest an alternative procedure that would be less painful. Bucklew’s lawyers argued that stipulating such alternatives in his particular case would be unconstitutional, as it’s unknown whether any alternative procedure would be less painful than lethal injection. (Bucklew had in fact suggested that death by nitrogen gas inhalation might be less painful than lethal injection, and nitrogen inhalation is indeed authorized as an alternative method of execution in Missouri, though it’s never been used in the U.S.)

But Gorsuch et al. didn’t buy it. In an astounding ruling, they demanded that Bucklew not just specify the use of nitrogen (remember, it’s already approved by the state as an alternative method of execution), but do a lot more. From the ruling:

First, an inmate must show that his proposed alternative method is not just theoretically “‘feasible’” but also “‘readily implemented.’” Glossip, 576 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 12–13). This means the inmate’s proposal must be sufficiently detailed to permit a finding that the State could carry it out “relatively easily and reasonably quickly.” McGehee v. Hutchinson, 854 F. 3d 488, 493 (CA8 2017); Arthur v. Commissioner, Ala. Dept. of Corrections, 840 F. 3d 1268, 1300 (CA11 2016). Mr. Bucklew’s barebones proposal falls well short of that standard. He has presented no evidence on essential questions like how nitrogen gas should be administered (using a gas chamber, a tent, a hood, a mask, or some other delivery device); in what concentration (pure nitrogen or some mixture of gases); how quickly and for how long it should be introduced; or how the State might ensure the safety of the execution team, including protecting them against the risk of gas leaks.

Why is that stuff Bucklew’s responsibility? It’s the State of Missouri’s responsibility, since it approved nitrogen as an approved method of execution! Author Epps also singles out two other barbaric aspects of the majority ruling:

Gorsuch’s opinion has two even more important malignant flaws. For at least 60 years, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” is not limited to the ideas prevalent in the 18th century (when crimes were sometimes punished by hanging, whipping, branding, and even mutilation). Instead, in a 1958 case called Trop v. Dulles, the Court said that “the words of the Amendment are not precise, and … their scope is not static”; instead, it “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” This is a hugely important precedent, invoked dozens of times since then. It has led to such decisions as forbidding execution for rape (employed in the South into the 1960s) and execution of those who commit crimes as children or who become mentally ill while waiting to die. It is nothing less than vital to protecting American society from the growing clamor for barbaric treatment of the powerless.

But the majority opinion pretended that Trop did not exist, instead turning to a repellent discussion of how much it hurt to be hanged in the 18th century (rather a lot, apparently) and whether drowning in your own blood is really all that much worse.

In the next section of the opinion, Gorsuch suggested that the real problem with death-penalty jurisprudence is those pesky people who just won’t get aboard the gurney. The Court’s inconvenient involvement in death cases, he wrote, could be reduced if the federal courts begin “invoking their equitable power to dismiss or curtail suits that are pursued in a ‘dilatory’ fashion or based on ‘speculative’ theories.”

And indeed, you can sense the petulance of these death-mongers in the Court’s opinion, which suggests that it’s indeed time for Bucklew to mount the gurney, even if it results in cruel and unusual punishment:You know my view on capital punishment: I oppose it because it offers no alternative over life in prison, with or without parole: it’s neither a deterrent nor does it allow for rehabilitation or keeping criminals sequestered (compared to jailing them). It’s retributive punishment. And if a convicted person is later found to be innocent, having killed them can’t right the wrong. In this case the execution is doubly wrong, for it’s likely to be cruel and unusual punishment, and yet the Court refuses to even consider means of execution that are less painful.  The majority is without empathy. At long last, gentlemen, have you no decency?

h/t: Ken

In the case of Trump v. Roberts, Trump is right

November 22, 2018 • 9:00 am

John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, has been serving for 13 years, and is a judicial conservative nominated to be Chief Justice by George W. Bush. This week Roberts pushed back against a comment that President Trump made; the story is reported in the New York Times article below (click on screenshot):

The story can be told briefly. Roberts is not prone to making public statements, but made one when Trump suggested that federal courts are politicized. From the Times:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. defended the independence and integrity of the federal judiciary on Wednesday, rebuking President Trump for calling a judge who had ruled against his administration’s asylum policy “an Obama judge.” [JAC: this was not a Supreme Court judge.]

The chief justice said that was a profound misunderstanding of the judicial role.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” he said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

. . . Later in the day Mr. Trump responded to the chief justice’s statementon Twitter. “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’” Mr. Trump wrote, “and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”

Leaving aside the slur that Obama judges aren’t charged with the safety of America, which is bogus, Trump’s claim has some merit. Roberts’ assertion that the court is not politicized, and that the justices’ views have nothing to do with who appointed them, was meant to defend the courts’ integrity. But it’s wrong. Supreme Court judges vote pretty reliably in concordance with their ideological biases.

It’s a palpable fact that the Court is highly politicized, and generally votes predictably—along the lines of the Justices’ judicial ideologies and philosophies. And it is no coincidence that those philosophies align with those of the Presidents who appointed them. What President would appoint a justice who wasn’t on the Prez’s end of the political spectrum?

Here are the present nine justices with a indication of whether they are generally conservative or liberal in their rulings, as well as a note about who appointed them:

John Roberts. Votes conservative, appointed by George W. Bush

Clarence Thomas. Votes conservative, appointed by George H. W. Bush

Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Votes liberal, appointed by  Bill Clinton

Stephen Breyer. Votes liberal, appointed by Bill Clinton

Samuel Alito. Votes conservative, appointed by George W. Bush

Sonia Sotomayor. Votes liberal, appointed by Barack Obama

Elena Kagan. Votes liberal, appointed by Barack Obama

Neil Gorsuch. Has voted conservative (also as a circuit court judge), appointed by Donald Trump

Brett Kavanaugh. No record yet but will, based on his record, certainly vote conservative, appointed by Donald Trump.

Yes, the court is surely politicized, and yes, there are “Obama judges” who vote liberal versus “Trump judges” and “George Bush” judges who vote conservative. This is the case and has nearly always been the case, and Roberts is wrong to pretend it isn’t true.

Nowhere is this politicization clearer than in the case of Bush v. Gore in 2000, when the very Presidency was decided strictly along Left-Right lines. Further, every lawyer I know who argues First-Amendment issues in federal circuit courts knows that those courts, one step below the Supreme Court, are also politicized. Many times progressive lawyers, for instance, try to bring cases before circuit courts known to have a more liberal bent.

We may be amused or even heartened by this contretemps between two conservatives, and even take Roberts’ side in the dispute, but Trump happens to be more correct than Roberts.

Look at it this way, flailing about randomly, Trump is occasionally going to be right. As the saying goes, “Even a blind pig can find an acorn.”

 

Some last thoughts on Brett Kavanaugh

October 6, 2018 • 1:00 pm

Well, it’s a certainty that Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed today as a Supreme Court Justice, and the only thing more depressing is the thought that Donald Trump might be reelected in 2020. But let’s not dwell on that.

Today is supposedly my day off, so posting will be light; I call your attention instead to two articles. The first one is the New York Times’s editorial on Kavanaugh that, of course, mourns his impending nomination. Despite my claim that the paper is becoming increasingly Authoritarian Leftist, it still publishes some good stuff, and this editorial is one of them. Click on the screenshot below to read it:

I’ve given my opinion before, which is that Kavanaugh, even without the accusations of sexual assault, was a man unqualified to be on the court because of his extreme opinions (of course, that’s true of people like Scalia and Thomas as well).

After his appearance before the Judiciary Committee, my opinion was strengthened in four ways. First, although it’s a real judgment call, I think he was guilty of sexual malfeasance. Second, even if he wasn’t, he showed himself to be a liberal-hating hothead who, in my view, doesn’t have the temperament to be a Justice (also true of Clarence Thomas). Third, Kavanaugh’s disdain for the Left, which has surely been exacerbated after his grilling by the Committee, makes it a certainty that he’ll vote against every progressive case that comes before the Court. He is not a man of measured and thoughtful opinion. Finally, even if the sexual assault charges can’t be decided with certainty or even near certainty, other facts suggest that Kavanaugh perjured himself repeatedly. That’s a crime, and I wish they could impeach him for it. That, however, is unlikely to happen.

Kavanaugh’s appointment is just one more disaster that afflicts us in this Presidency. It is not a good time for the Left, and, vis-à-vis the judicary, won’t be until after I’m dead.

Here’s an excerpt from the Times:

The Court has had a majority of Republican-appointed justices for nearly half a century, of course, and its credibility has endured, despite controversial decisions like Bush v. Gore, which handed the White House to a Republican president. But the elevation of Judge Kavanaugh represents something new.

The nation is now facing the possibility of three or four decades with a justice credibly accused of sexual assault, one who may well be the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, or at least make it so hard for a woman to exercise her constitutional right to make her own medical decisions that the ruling is effectively nullified. Thirty to 40 years with a justice whose honesty was tested and found wanting. A justice so injudicious in his manner that thousands of law professors, and a retired Supreme Court justice, opposed his confirmation. A judge is supposed to set personal feelings aside and approach even the most sensitive and emotional matters with a cool disposition and an open mind; Judge Kavanaugh revealed to the country that he was incapable of that.

In saner times, such behavior from a nominee would have sent reasonable Republicans running for the exits. But in the end, only Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had the courage of her convictions. She can go home knowing that she did the right thing.

What can we do? Well, we can whine and seek “self-care,” as HuffPo suggests today. But the first duty we have as liberals is to fricking VOTE in November.

I’m pretty sure that most readers here won’t need that advice, but maybe you can man the phones or help people get to the polls. I’ll be out of the country on election day, but I’ve made sure I got a ballot by mail, and I’ve already sent it in.  Perhaps there’s just a small chance that Democrats will win the House of Representatives. That can stop the worst excesses of Trump, but he retains the power to veto any legislation a Democratic Congress passes (even if it’s also passed by a Republican Senate, which is unlikely). At worst a Republican Congress, President, and Judiciary, at best a stalemate.

VOTE!

Did the Kavanaugh hearings help Trump?

October 2, 2018 • 1:00 pm

As I’ve written before, my feeling, based on what I know and the testimony I heard, is that Brett Kavanaugh was guilty of sexual assault or malfeasance. Now I think he’s guilty not just of lying about that, but lying about many things, and that is perjury and disqualifies him from the Supreme Court. But I would have voted against him because of his extreme ideology before any of the accusations surfaced.

Is the testimony against Kavanaugh by Christine Ford and others absolutely damning, showing beyond a reasonable doubt? No, they don’t. We can’t be even 95% certain that Ford was correct. (I think we can be more certain that he lied about various things).  But do the data make it seem more likely than not that Kavanaugh is temperamentally and ideologically unsuited for the Court? Yes, that’s my judgment. Your mileage will vary. And, as I predicted, I don’t think he’ll make it to the Senate’s voting stage, but if he does, he won’t be approved. Again, I may well be wrong.

No matter what happens, though, I felt that the hearings were an embarrassment for nearly everyone: Democrats, Republicans, and Kavanaugh (Ford at least behaved with decorum). And I have no idea how either the approval or rejection of Kavanaugh will play out in the midterm elections.

But Seth Mandel, in the Atlantic article published yesterday (click on screenshot below), thinks that they’re helping Trump.

I’m not sure I agree, for if the judge is approved it’s going to turn many women on the fence against the GOP, and bring to the polls all those liberal women who didn’t vote in 2016. But let us hear what Mandel has to say. First, note that, like me, he’s against Kavanaugh’s confirmation:

I find Ford’s allegation to be credible, her behavior admirable, her bravery undeniable. But I also understand that there simply isn’t enough corroborating evidence to justify the certainty we’re seeing on either side, and that the 11th-hour leaking of the allegation—Senator Dianne Feinstein had Ford’s letter in her possession through the entire process—reeked of “October surprise” politics. Still, I have advocated consistently that Kavanaugh’s nomination be withdrawn. [JAC: I can’t say that my opinion of Feinstein has been burnished by her behavior at the hearings.]

. . . Christine Blasey Ford has acted honorably, with grace and care far beyond what we should in good conscience demand of a victim of sexual assault. But instead of having her warning quietly passed along, she was forced to offer her story in a grotesque spectacle, against her clear intentions. I have said multiple times that the White House should not advance Kavanaugh’s nomination any further. But those who carefully considered Thursday’s testimonies and concluded they could not in good faith reject his heartfelt denial are not rape apologists. Tarring them as such is a deliberate act to erase the distinctions between Trump and his critics on the right, and to then blame that erasure on the targets of a smear campaign.

Rape apologists? Yes, that’s what the Women’s March said about every Republican who voted to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination. That’s a bit strong, and I wouldn’t characterize every Republican member of the panel in that way—especially Jeff Flake, who made the Republicans get the FBI to investigate. Yet he, too was smeared, and unfairly (click on screenshot below to see the March’s whole thread):

What we are seeing, I think, is a clash of completely polarized ideologies that uses Kavanaugh as an fulcrum. It’s the polarization itself that is the big problem in our country, and it’s largely, but not completely, because of the Republicans and Donald Trump. What should we, as liberals, do? What Mandel doesn’t think we should do is engage in smear campaigns. (My own bête noire is the mantra “Believe survivors”, which is tautological, begs the question in the correct sense of that term, and also contravenes the basic principles of fairness. What we should be saying is: “We will take the claims of accusers very seriously and investigate them thoroughly if the accusers wish it.)

We have two choices. Since the Republicans and Trump are odious, almost beyond belief in their mendacity and stupidity, we could demonize them and lash out at them, which is what we saw last week. The other choice is to TRY to find some common ground, and, in the process, at least behave according to our own principles, and with decency. We should not accost our opponents in restaurants and harass them mercilessly, nor should we call people like Jeff Flake a “rape apologist”. What good do these things do?

You might say, “Well, nothing we can do will put even a dent in Republican truculence, so we might as well use their playbook.” I’m not at that point, and doubt I’ll ever be. It’s uncivil and accomplishes nothing. At least being a bit more conciliatory has a chance of working. That doesn’t mean being sympathetic to Kavanaugh, but simply being civil to our opponents and trying our best to convert them. And that’s what Mandel has to say. He ends his piece like this:

In contemporary American politics, persuasion is increasingly abandoned in favor of disqualification. The goal of partisans is often to convince their own side why they must not even listen to the other side.

The result is the eradication of principle from public life. Republicans’ treatment of Merrick Garland—Barack Obama’s nominee who was not even granted a hearing, let alone a vote—was atrocious. Along with others on the right, I said so at the time. But the sheer number of times liberals raise Garland as an answer to the Democrats’ procedural perversions is astonishing—as if what matters is not Kavanaugh’s guilt or innocence, but the satisfaction of partisan bloodlust.

One of the tragedies in all this is that leftists have identified those on the right who have been and are prepared to be their allies—Never Trumpers and others—and prioritized such people for destruction. I have said multiple times that the White House should not advance Kavanaugh’s nomination any further. But those who disagree with me, on principle, are not rape apologists. And labeling them so sends an unmistakable message: You would be a fool to reach across the aisle and work with Democrats to rein in the excesses of your colleagues.

This is what enabling Trump looks like: torpedoing efforts that could incentivize constraining his worst instincts. Such people consider themselves the “resistance” to the president. In reality, they are painting the country Trump. The rest of us can only hope they fail.

The sentences in bold ring true to me. Yes, many Republicans are mendacious and acting not out of principle but out of a misguided adherence to a warped ideology. But not all of them. On my part, I think we have to rein in the hysteria and demonization, while at the same time searching for the truth. I know politics isn’t science, but in science we convince our opponents with the facts, not by calling them jerks. Since nobody knows the facts in the Kavanaugh case, we must make the best judgment we can and recognize that at least some of our opponents are honorable people.

h/t: Grania

Kavanaugh is toast

September 27, 2018 • 5:23 pm

Even without the accusations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh, I would of course have called for a vote against him, as he’s a far right-wing  %)((*&^@ who will tilt the Supreme Court in the wrong direction for decades to come. But after hearing the testimony of Christine Ford and much of the testimony from Kavanaugh today, my feeling is that yes, he’s guilty and lying about it, which means he committed perjury and is absolutely disqualified from the Court. I was also appalled by his demeanor, which seemed unhinged, aggressive, and rambling. That’s reason #3: he is entitled, angry, and lacks the decorum and objectivity of a Justice.

Of course he has a right to be angry if he’s innocent, although I don’t think he is.  But he could have comported himself with a bit more decorum; he did himself no favors today.

None of us know where the truth lies, of course, and an FBI investigation is unlikely to tell us more than we know now. But in fact I already knew enough before the testimony even began today. All I can say is that I hope some Republicans feel a bit like I do, and vote against the man.

That said, let us entertain no hopes that if Kavanaugh goes, as I think he will, Trump will appoint somebody less Rightish. That’s not in the cards. All he’ll do is mandate a more thorough investigation of any Roe-opposing candidate waiting in the wings.

And if Ford is telling the truth, as I think she is, then I feel bad for her and can understand why she wanted to testify against the entitled, beer-swilling git who swaggered about in prep school. Yes, the alleged crime happened several decades ago, but if he’s lying about it now, he’s a perjurer.

But of course you may feel differently. None of us know what really happened; all we can do is say how we feel about the conflicting testimony. And I am consoled by knowing that I would have voted against Kavanaugh from the very first week he was nominated.

There’s nothing to be happy about here, for another conservative loon is just offstage. Correction: I’d be a little bit pleased if some Republicans saw the light.

Woman who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault comes forward

September 16, 2018 • 2:30 pm

Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice would be a disaster for many years to come, ensuring a firmly conservative court for the future—perhaps even the overturning of decisions like Roe v. Wade. But then again, this would be the case for any of Trump’s nominees. I, for one, would prefer more of a centrist, but who can expect that in this age of right-wing American despotism?

Last week reports surfaced that, while at prep school (a private high school) in Maryland, Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted a woman in front of a witness, a far more serious accusation than the verbal harassment reported by Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings. But until today it seemed, because the woman didn’t come forward and details weren’t fully known, that this wouldn’t derail Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Today, however, the Washington Post names the woman, now a professor in California who has decided to come forward. Click on the screenshot to read the article:

It’s hard to decide what to think about this. On one hand, one has to ask why the woman would make the allegation if it weren’t true. But of course there are false reports. But her therapist from years ago has a record of her describing the incident, as does her husband, who also remembers Kavanaugh’s name. And the woman has passed a lie-detector test.

On the other hand, the supposed witness says he doesn’t recall the event (which of course Kavanaugh denies), and 65 women from the school have signed a letter testifying to Kavanaugh’s respectful treatment of women. The witness, however, is saying “no comment” now, whereas before he denied he saw any sexual assault. And of course plenty of assailants can behave properly to other women at their school.

This is one of those cases in which if the allegations are true, it’s a no-brainer: Kavanaugh is unsuited to the Court, or to be a judge in any court. The difficulty is in determining if the allegations are true. After all, it’s a he-said she-said business at the moment, and without more proof I’m not sure how this should weigh in Kavanaugh’s nomination.

I have no opinion on the matter yet save this: I think this will probably force Kavanaugh to withdraw his nomination (which Trump will furiously defend), and I won’t be sorry if that happens.

p.s. I forgot to add that the woman who has accused Kavanaugh, Christine Ford, should surely be given a chance to testify before the Senate committee vetting his nomination.

Alabama embarrasses itself again: Chief Justice says First Amendment applies only to Christians

May 5, 2014 • 5:44 am

Just when I think Southern legislators and judges can’t make themselves look any more stupid, someone comes along to prove me wrong. In this case it’s the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore.  You probably remember that a judge refused to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom wall and also had a pre-session prayer every day. That was Moore. He lost the prayer issue after the state (at the behest of the ACLU and others) filed a lawsuit, but somehow the Ten Commandments remained.

Later, as Chief Justice (an elected position, and Moore is, of course, a Republican), he had a large stone Ten Commandments monument erected in the rotunda of the Supreme Court building in 2001.  He again faced lawsuits over violating the First Amendment, lost in a series of appeals, but vowed to keep the monument anyway. (That, by the way, is an important judge refusing to adhere to the law.) The other judges overruled him, and the monument was removed in 2004.  Here’s the monument before it was deep-sixed:

482px-Roy_Moore's_Ten_Commandments_monument

Moore also tried to uphold the antiquated Alabama statute against homosexual behavior. He lost that one when the U.S. Supreme Court declared such statutes illegal. In 2003, Moore was removed from office for his religiously-motivated intransigence, but it’s a testimony to the right-winginess of Alabama that he was again re-elected Chief Justice in 2012.

And now he’s back in the news, spreading his religious fervor. According to The Raw Story, Moore, in a recent speech, declared that the First Amendment applied (get this) only to Christians (see video below)!

Speaking at the Pastor for Life Luncheon, which was sponsored by Pro-Life Mississippi, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment only applies to Christians because “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures” who created us.

“They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”

He then noted that he loves talking to lawyers, because he is a lawyer who went to “a secular law school,” so he knows that “in the law, [talking about God] just isn’t politically correct.” He claimed that this is why America has “lost its way,” and that he would be publishing a pamphlet “this week, maybe next” that contained copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, thereby proving that all the people “who found this nation — black, white, all people, all religions, all faiths” knew that America was “about God.”

Chief Justice Moore later defined “life” via Blackstone’s Law — a book that American lawyers have “sadly forgotten” — as beginning when “the baby kicks.” “Today,” he said, “our courts say it’s not alive ’til the head comes out.”

“Now,” he continued, “if technology’s supposed to increase our knowledge, how did we become so stupid?” Discussing Thomas Jefferson’s use of “life” in the Declaration of Independence, he said that “when [Jefferson] put ‘life’ in there, it was in the womb — we know it begins at conception. Why aren’t we going the right way instead of the wrong way?”

He later said the “pursuit of happiness” meant following God’s law, because “you can’t be happy unless you follow God’s law, and if you follow God’s law, you can’t help but be happy.”

“It’s all about God,” he continued. “We’ve made ‘life’ a decision taken by man,” he said, and “taken ‘liberty,’ and converted it to ‘licentiousness. We’ve taken ‘pursuit of happiness,’ and reduced it to materialism.”

What a litany of fail!

I’m appalled that such a man can mouth such idiocy.  And I’m even more appalled that Alabamans, knowing his views and actions, chose to re-elect him. Of course the state harbors sensible citizens (I know a few), but, sweet Ceiling Cat, they should get the hell out of there and let the state secede!

Now if the First Amendment (freedom of speech and of religion) applies only to Christians, then it has no purpose at all, for nobody else is given those freedoms. What does it mean if only one religion has the right to proselytize and to speak without censorship? One might as well declare Alabama—and, if Moore had his way, the U.S.—a theocracy. He should be removed from office again, simply on the grounds that he openly opposes the U.S. Constitution.

Here’s a report showing the loon spouting his stuff:

The Supreme Court screws up again

April 3, 2014 • 7:07 am

Count on it: when you see a 5-4 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, it means—except for rare exceptions like the “Obamacare” vote—very bad news for liberals.

And it happened again yesterday, with the court voting to eliminate the cap on the total amount of money individuals could contribute to all federal candidates in an election. The five-vote majority included all of the usual conservative suspects: Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion), Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy. Thomas wrote his own concurring opinion, and you can see the full court decision in McCutcheon et al. v. Federal Election Commission, with Breyer’s withering dissent—co-signed by Sotomayor, Ginsberg, and Kagan—here.

As the New York Times reports:

Wednesday’s decision did not affect familiar base limits on contributions from individuals to candidates, currently $2,600 per candidate in primary and general elections. But it said that overall limits of $48,600 by individuals every two years for contributions to all federal candidates violated the First Amendment, as did separate aggregate limits on contributions to political party committees, currently $74,600.

. . . Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for four justices in the controlling opinion, said the overall limits could not survive First Amendment scrutiny. “There is no right in our democracy more basic,” he wrote, “than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.”

In a dissent from the bench, Justice Stephen G. Breyer called the majority opinion a disturbing development that raised the overall contribution ceiling to “the number infinity.”

“If the court in Citizens United opened a door,” he said, “today’s decision may well open a floodgate.” [JAC: In the “Citizens United” case, the Court ruled that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money on election campaigns.]

In his written opinion, Justice Breyer said Wednesday’s decision would allow “a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate’s campaign.” He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The ruling was on First Amendment grounds, with individual political contributions considered by the majority as a form of “free speech”.  That’s a bizarre twist, because it isn’t immediately obvious that such donations constitute “speech”, just as it doesn’t seem obvious that corporations are people, another path the court has broken. (The previous donation caps were also also allowed in the name of “political speech,” but the limits were set low to prevent corruption.)

Although the $2,600 per candidate limit looks small, it’s deceptive. The total amount of spending per federal campaign cycle is now $3.6 million per individual, and you can put all of that, if you wish, toward a single candidate simply by directing it to that candidate through special fund-raising committees. The donations, in effect, get laundered.

The problem, of course, is that—at least in America—money talks, and money has a huge influence on the outcome of elections. That’s why candidates engage in a frenzy of fundraising, and why the sizes of candidates’ warchests are regularly reported.  You can, in fact, buy elections in this country through advertising (often negative) and other forms of promotion.

This shouldn’t happen in a democracy. Those having more money should not be allowed to unduly influence the political process. Chief Justice Roberts claimed that the Court’s brief was not to level the playing field, but that in fact is what we need. Nobody, be they liberal or conservative (like the Koch brothers), should be able to disproportionately influence an election merely because they’re rich. If one needs spending caps, then they must be sensible ones, affordable by the average American.

As Justice Breyer said in his dissent:

The anticorruption interest that drives Congress to regulate campaign contributions is a far broader, more important interest than the plurality acknowledges. . . It is an interest in maintaining the integrity of our public governmental institutions.

Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard.

Welcome to the plutocracy.