The Supremes

[tx 3 putt 78735]

 

[DDD Dad 14661]

52 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

[tx 3 putt 78735]

43 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

easterman was also in contact with ………………………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ginni Thomas 

[gmr548 16704]

The “originalists” don’t actually give a shit about being consistent in their logic or application of theory. It’s more about saying whatever is necessary to impose their will. 

Correct. It’s not about the words on the page. It’s about the fact that this country was originally founded as an oligarchy of wealthy, landowning, white, Christian men, and the desire to return something as close to that as possible within modern capitalism.

[gmr548 16704]

One’s allegiance to UT does not necessarily dim over time.

These blown double digit second half leads are testing that theory.

[elfenix 34763]

"In each case, both sides presented a few scraps of historical evidence to support their positions. Judges based their decisions on those scraps without further research, following Thomas’ suggestion that they rely on “the historical record compiled by the parties.” Last Thursday, Judge Carlton Reeves of the Southern District of Mississippi charted a different course: He proposed appointing a historian to help him “identify and sift through authoritative sources on founding-era firearms restrictions” to decide the constitutionality of a federal law barring felons from possessing firearms. His proposal is the first positive development in Second Amendment law since the Bruen revolution. At worst, it will demonstrate the absurdity and impossibility of Thomas’ command. At best, it will restore sanity to an area of jurisprudence that is going completely off the rails."


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/11/federal-judge-clarence-thomas-gun-rights-originalism.html

[Goofyboy 3438]

Correct. It’s not about the words on the page. It’s about the fact that this country was originally founded as an oligarchy of wealthy, landowning, white, Christian men, and the desire to return something as close to that as possible within modern capitalism.

But it was not founded on Judeo-Christian values. Those rich, white guys did not trust or like the church.

[WhatTheBuck 28938]

20 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

Quote

Eastman, an architect of Trump’s last-ditch bid to subvert the 2020 election, once clerked for Thomas and had corresponded with his wife, Virginia, in the weeks before Jan. 6.

Eastman played a central role in pressuring Pence to single-handedly subvert the 2020 election when he presided over the Jan. 6 session of Congress — a legally required proceeding to count electoral votes and certify the election results.

In his conversations with Pence’s staff on Jan. 4 and 5, Eastman suggested that he believed Thomas would likely support their efforts. Eastman’s emails, which he has fought to keep from the select committee, have yielded some of the most potent evidence against Trump’s team — including a March 28 ruling from a federal judge declaring it likely that Trump and Eastman had criminally conspired to subvert the election.

Federal prosecutors have also scrutinized Eastman, who pleaded the Fifth in testimony to the Jan. 6 panel. FBI agents seized Eastman’s cell phone in June as part of a wide-ranging investigation related to efforts by Trump allies to undermine the election results.

Ginni Thomas became the focus of congressional investigators after text message emerged showing her urging Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to continue efforts to keep Trump in power despite losing the 2020 election. She interviewed with the Jan. 6 panel earlier in the fall.

Maybe the Jan 6. Committee should’ve subpoenaed Clarence to come testify too. Could they subpoena testimony from a Supreme Court Justice? Is that allowed?

What if they had and he showed up and pled the fifth?

['stache 22146]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Maybe the Jan 6. Committee should’ve subpoenaed Clarence to come testify too. Could they subpoena testimony from a Supreme Court Justice? Is that allowed?

What if they had and he showed up and pled the fifth?

We make him president?

[SimonBolivar 11067]

16 hours ago, elfenix said:

"In each case, both sides presented a few scraps of historical evidence to support their positions. Judges based their decisions on those scraps without further research, following Thomas’ suggestion that they rely on “the historical record compiled by the parties.” Last Thursday, Judge Carlton Reeves of the Southern District of Mississippi charted a different course: He proposed appointing a historian to help him “identify and sift through authoritative sources on founding-era firearms restrictions” to decide the constitutionality of a federal law barring felons from possessing firearms. His proposal is the first positive development in Second Amendment law since the Bruen revolution. At worst, it will demonstrate the absurdity and impossibility of Thomas’ command. At best, it will restore sanity to an area of jurisprudence that is going completely off the rails."


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/11/federal-judge-clarence-thomas-gun-rights-originalism.html
 

Historians love nothing more to debate amongst themselves but Saul Cornell (tOSU) had a pretty good breakdown of the historiography of the 2nd amendment and historians vs legal scholars. Obviously he is partial to the historian side of the argument but I find it interesting.

 

 

[elfenix 34763]

8 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

Historians love nothing more to debate amongst themselves but Saul Cornell (tOSU) had a pretty good breakdown of the historiography of the 2nd amendment and historians vs legal scholars. Obviously he is partial to the historian side of the argument but I find it interesting.

 

 

i think that's the point though.  there's no one true meaning of something that was drafted in committee and then ratified through the acts of 13 other committees.  conservatives have to pretend otherwise in order to find an individual right to bear arms, otherwise they'd have to justify that through penumbral-type analysis, which they don't want. 

[SimonBolivar 11067]

8 minutes ago, elfenix said:

i think that's the point though.  there's no one true meaning of something that was drafted in committee and then ratified through the acts of 13 other committees.  conservatives have to pretend otherwise in order to find an individual right to bear arms, otherwise they'd have to justify that through penumbral-type analysis, which they don't want. 

Yup, the essay is considered anti-original intent for sure.

['stache 22146]

They refer to themselves for textualists, but completely set aside the part about the militia. Why was that language made part of the amendment if it was meaningless? Just another example of "textualists" and "originalists" picking and choosing when it's important and when it's not to their preferred conclusion. It's the same with their recent Indian law case for Oklahoma. Only Gorsuch has the balls to stick to history and originalism, the others just set it aside, because they don't like Indians having different status, a status that Congress imposed over 100 years ago which hasn't changed, at least not in the way the case was premised.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13741]

• Eastman is in contact with Ginni Thomas
• Eastman proclaims that Clarence Thomas is the best hope

nothing suspicious about any of this. Unfortunately there is no chance you get Ginny and Clarence to ever discuss this private conversations so we are left to assume they're guilty of plotting a conspiracy.

[elfenix 34763]

29 minutes ago, 'stache said:

Only Gorsuch has the balls to stick to history and originalism

gorsuch's texturiginalism is just as full of judgment calls as the others, but he's actually an expert on native american law iirc. 

[Captainant 28592]

1 minute ago, elfenix said:

he's actually an expert on native american law iirc

what's there to be an expert on? Isn't all native american law just "fuck em"?

[elfenix 34763]

6 minutes ago, Captainant said:

what's there to be an expert on? Isn't all native american law just "fuck em"?

yes but you know that us lawyers have to justify our jobs by making a lot of byzantine rules about how, exactly, that occurs. 

[Pods 7637]

4 minutes ago, Captainant said:

what's there to be an expert on? Isn't all native american law just "fuck em"?

More or less, but Congress has to actually pass the law saying "fuck em" and formally take away what was previously promised. In this case, Congress took the land from the tribes, but left the tribes with jurisdiction over crimes committed by natives. 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20950]

How is the Supreme Court anything other than bought and paid for at this point?

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-voting-rights-us-supreme-court-samuel-alito-donald-trump-f0926d7b4a8bbaf7b698ada1a791ab25


 

[Amos Moses 795]

Whether or not they're bought and paid for, they're certainly ideologues and not jurists which is far worse.

[Huckleberry 34726]

On 11/3/2022 at 12:55 PM, 'stache said:

They refer to themselves for textualists, but completely set aside the part about the militia. Why was that language made part of the amendment if it was meaningless? Just another example of "textualists" and "originalists" picking and choosing when it's important and when it's not to their preferred conclusion. It's the same with their recent Indian law case for Oklahoma. Only Gorsuch has the balls to stick to history and originalism, the others just set it aside, because they don't like Indians having different status, a status that Congress imposed over 100 years ago which hasn't changed, at least not in the way the case was premised.

The plain reading of the 2nd does not in any way imply that militia status is necessary to bear arms. The introductory clause merely gives a supporting reason for why the right to bear arms shall never be infringed. It is the equivalent of writing "because reproduction is necessary for the species and therefore nation to continue, the right to get your freak on shall never be infringed." That sentence in no way says that the only time sex is constitutionally protected is if you're doing it to get pregnant. It says that reproduction is the reason that it is always legal. 

That doesn't mean that times haven't changed and weaponry hasn't made that Amendment archaic. But the militia argument is folly. 

[Stilicho 1422]

2 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

The plain reading of the 2nd does not in any way imply that militia status is necessary to bear arms. The introductory clause merely gives a supporting reason for why the right to bear arms shall never be infringed. It is the equivalent of writing "because reproduction is necessary for the species and therefore nation to continue, the right to get your freak on shall never be infringed." That sentence in no way says that the only time sex is constitutionally protected is if you're doing it to get pregnant. It says that reproduction is the reason that it is always legal. 

That doesn't mean that times haven't changed and weaponry hasn't made that Amendment archaic. But the militia argument is folly. 

It was folly, but then again, a lot of it is folly. Lawyers or law professors have a tendency of trying to thread reason through Supreme case law and try to have it make sense (4th Amendment jurisprudence is but one example), but it is much easier when you recognize decisions for what they are:  political statements driven by the makeup of the Court and the context of the case. Too many decisions are simply reverse-engineered to try and keep some semblance of precedent, but they rarely even try now.

Scalia spent decades bitching about non-enumerated rights and the Due Process clause... until he needed something other than originalism to anchor his holding in Heller. Kavanaugh explicitly ignored settled Indian Law for five centuries and latched on to a single-line of cases that arose out of western state jurisdiction battles. No one in the field ascribed to the McBratney line of cases the authority that Kavanaugh has. Gorsuch, who actually seems to give a shit about Indian issues, at least called him out on that. Then he goes onto the same sort of slanted reasoning / record twisting to get to the decision he wants in the Kennedy case, overturning decades of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in the process.

TLDR: the Court is a mess. It's just a political stamp from the majority at the time.  

[safe sex 12042]

Can I get an example of the Court being a rubber stamp for the majority when the majority has been liberal? 

[Stilicho 1422]

4 minutes ago, trauma babe said:

Can I get an example of the Court being a rubber stamp for the majority when the majority has been liberal? 

Court hasn't really had a liberal majority since the 1960s. 

[safe sex 12042]

Exactly

[Stilicho 1422]

Just now, trauma babe said:

Exactly

Another reason why, if we gain outright control of the Senate, someone needs to have a serious conversation with Justice Sotamayor. Getting to a liberal majority without relying on octogenarians is a fucking chore unless we can get enough support to expand the Court. 

[Bama Chick 28596]

An 80 year old white dude pressing two women in their 60s - one Jewish and one Hispanic - to retire would certainly be……a choice.

[gmr548 16704]

An 80 year old white dude pressing two women in their 60s - one Jewish and one Hispanic - to retire would certainly be……a choice.

Yeah, have to be honest, even if I understand the strategic thought, trying to push Sotomayor out is going to be a bad look to a lot of important groups: women, Latinos, progressives, in no particular order. Especially when they could have just expanded the court but chose not to.

They’re between a rock and a hard place with regard to the court and it’s partially (mostly?) self inflicted.

[Stilicho 1422]

18 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

An 80 year old white dude pressing two women in their 60s - one Jewish and one Hispanic - to retire would certainly be……a choice.

Not much of one, no. But realities sort of are what they are if you end game is to speed up a liberal Court swing. It would be less problematic all the way around if we could legislate more effectively or, and I know this will surprise everyone, if the lower courts and certain state courts weren't packed full of loyalist crazy fucks. We're boxed in at certain spots and nothing short of time or some sort of cataclysm / revolution / rapture is going to get us out of this mess.

[wildcat09 29599]

20 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

An 80 year old white dude pressing two women in their 60s - one Jewish and one Hispanic - to retire would certainly be……a choice.

Roe is dead because RBG refused to retire. 

I fucking love Sotomayor and Kagan is mostly solid. They both bring unique and important perspectives, but the unfortunate truth is they’re stuck in a minority position where that really doesn’t matter,  and it’d be best to replace them both with much younger justices while the opportunity is there. It’d also be best to expand the shit out of the court, but that seems much less likely.

[Stilicho 1422]

2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Roe is dead because RBG refused to retire. 

I fucking love Sotomayor and Kagan is mostly solid. They both bring unique and important perspectives, but the unfortunate truth is they’re stuck in a minority position where that really doesn’t matter,  and it’d be best to replace them both with much younger justices while the opportunity is there. It’d also be best to expand the shit out of the court, but that seems much less likely.

At some point, legitimate Court reform and expansion should be on the table. Give each circuit a Justice and keep it that way.

[Horn Dog 10184]

2 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

The plain reading of the 2nd does not in any way imply that militia status is necessary to bear arms. The introductory clause merely gives a supporting reason for why the right to bear arms shall never be infringed. It is the equivalent of writing "because reproduction is necessary for the species and therefore nation to continue, the right to get your freak on shall never be infringed." That sentence in no way says that the only time sex is constitutionally protected is if you're doing it to get pregnant. It says that reproduction is the reason that it is always legal. 

That doesn't mean that times haven't changed and weaponry hasn't made that Amendment archaic. But the militia argument is folly. 

I would argue that the militia preemble was placed to specifically show that reasonable restrictions on this right are allowed.  The entire idea of any right "shall never be infringed" is nonsensical.  Obviously any right is subject to restrictions that ensure the well being of society at large.   In your example, the need for reproduction frames the broad right to get freaky can't be restricted as to the purpose of procreation or other benefits to our society (including non-procreational companionship and societal stability ).   It would not imply that getting freaky with babies, rape, and sex in public places was completely unrestricted.   Only an idiot would interpret it to mean that.  The problem is our founding fathers assumed there would be a little common sense and context in interpreting the rights the granted and never thought our elected leaders would take the words to their most ridiculous extremes.  

[Huckleberry 34726]

You are having to twist and infer intent in order to support your position. I merely read the words as written. The scope of my reply was the textualism context that was the point of the post I replied to.

I don't necessarily disagree with you in the overall context (including originalism), but there is zero valid argument that a plain reading of the text required a militia for the right to be protected. 

[Horn Dog 10184]

13 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

You are having to twist and infer intent in order to support your position. I merely read the words as written. The scope of my reply was the textualism context that was the point of the post I replied to.

I don't necessarily disagree with you in the overall context (including originalism), but there is zero valid argument that a plain reading of the text required a militia for the right to be protected. 

Yes I agree with you that plain reading of the text does not require a militia.  I am simply stating that it does imply that there is context for this right and therefore reasonable restrictions within that context are allowed.  I think we are basically saying the same thing. 

[Bookman 4768]

1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

Roe is dead because RBG refused to retire.

Roe is dead because Trump was elected and he did what he said he'd do.

[Satchel 6983]

8 minutes ago, Bookman said:

Roe is dead because Trump was elected and he did what he said he'd do.

And Supreme Court candidates did what they said they would not do.

[Bookman 4768]

14 minutes ago, Satchel said:

And Supreme Court candidates did what they said they would not do.

They never said that. Lawyers are very good at lying.

[washparkhorn 9974]

[tx 3 putt 78735]

 

[WhatTheBuck 28938]

On 11/11/2022 at 3:03 PM, Bookman said:

Roe is dead because Trump was elected and he did what he said he'd do.

And because Mitch McConnell is a hypocritical, Constitution-trampling seat-thief. 

[tx 3 putt 78735]

Alito was the leak 😂😂😂😂😂😂

lock his ass up 😂😂😂😂

[HenryJames 67451]

Alito needs to be impeached.

[lemonlime 5503]

Also, and I said this on the abortion thread, and after the past 6 years we've all gotten used to destruction of rule of law, but the NY Times story really buries the lede.  Alito was wined an dined by wealthy evangelical antiabortion activists, and then authored a radical decision tossing 50 years of stare decisis, doing exactly what those activists who paid him (in food, vacations, and donations to historical societies) wanted.  This should result in the end of Alito's career, and should be an impeachable offense.  But we'll all forget about it when the next scandal comes along in five minutes.  Hell, it wasn't even the lede in the NYT story.

[tx 3 putt 78735]

Thomas snd Alito have been compromised for some time 

[tx 3 putt 78735]

 

[chainsaw 10306]

I can answer that: The NYT is a conservative wolf in latte liberal sheep's clothing.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13636]

Alito is probably the original source for the Dobbs leak. 

[tx 3 putt 78735]

4 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

Alito is probably the original source for the Dobbs leak. 

[Satchel 6983]

On 11/11/2022 at 2:28 PM, Bookman said:

They never said that. Lawyers are very good at lying.

Well then, they lawyer lied:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/us/politics/alito-kennedy-abortion.html

“I am a believer in precedents,” Judge Alito said, in a recollection the senator recorded and had transcribed in his diary. “People would find I adhere to that.”

In the same conversation, the judge edged further in his assurances on Roe than he did in public. “I recognize there is a right to privacy,” he said, referring to the constitutional foundation of the decision. “I think it’s settled.”

But Mr. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and longtime supporter of abortion rights, remained dubious that November day that he could trust the conservative judge not to overturn the ruling. He brought up a memo that Judge Alito had written as a lawyer in the Reagan administration Justice Department in 1985, which boasted of his opposition to Roe…

Judge Alito assured Mr. Kennedy that he should not put much stock in the memo. He had been seeking a promotion and wrote what he thought his bosses wanted to hear. “I was a younger person,” Judge Alito said. “I’ve matured a lot.”

The answer did not assuage Mr. Kennedy, who went on to vote against Judge Alito’s confirmation. If the judge could configure his beliefs to get that 1985 promotion, Mr. Kennedy asked in a notation in his diary, how might he dissemble to clinch a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court?

[Satchel 6983]

This is the most compromised SC in 50 years. Both Alito and Thomas should be impeached:

In a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and in interviews with The New York Times, the Rev. Rob Schenck said he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced. He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show, and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that was the winning party in the case.

Both court decisions were triumphs for conservatives and the religious right. Both majority opinions were written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. But the leak of the draft opinion overturning the constitutional right to abortion was disclosed in the news media by Politico, setting off a national uproar. With Hobby Lobby, according to Mr. Schenck, the outcome was shared with only a handful of advocates.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/us/supreme-court-leak-abortion-roe-wade.html