The US Supreme Court

[Tero]

No special treatnent for minority voters, because there is no racism anymore:
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/1 ... ey-barrett

[laklak]

there is no racism anymore:

Finally. Took long enough, eh?

[L'Emmerdeur]

Radical leftist Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan enabled voting fraud in Montana!!!

The Trump campaign and Montana Republicans attempted in court to prevent the mailing of ballots to the registered voters of Montana. A US district court judge had thrown out their suit. The judge cited the fictional nature of the campaign's claim that voting by mail creates an imminent threat of voting fraud. The Republicans appealed the ruling and petitioned both the district court and the US Supreme Court to grant an emergency injunction to stop the mailing. The injunctions were denied. Both the district court judge and Elana Kagan were appointed by President Obama.

'Final effort fails to block Montana’s mailed ballots'

A final effort to block most Montana counties from mailing general election ballots to active voters was denied Thursday, a day before the ballots are to be mailed.

Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan rejected a request for an emergency injunction filed by Republican state House candidate Joe Lamm of Livingston, the Ravalli County Republican Central Committee and Republican voters.

They wanted to block a Sept. 30 ruling by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen that upheld a decision by Gov. Steve Bullock to give counties the option to hold the Nov. 3 election mostly by mail due to the pandemic.

[L'Emmerdeur]

An examination of the question of 'court packing' in the US. The article uses examples of legislation affecting the size of state supreme courts in the recent past. Curiously, in this context it has been a tactic employed exclusively by Republican-controlled legislatures.

'Packing and Unpacking State Courts'

While scholars and politicians continue to debate whether Republicans unpacked the Supreme Court in 2016, and whether Democrats should pack the Court if they take the Oval Office and the Senate in 2020, they should not overlook the clear instances of court packing that have recently taken place. As [discussed above], there were attempts in more than 20 percent of all states in the last decade to alter the size of the state supreme court, with two of them successful. What could this state of play mean for the federal courts?

There are different ways to interpret the data [from the states]. The most straightforward interpretation, it would seem, is that the norm against court packing might be more vulnerable than some have thought—at least as it concerns the state courts. After all, if court packing and unpacking were considered strictly verboten, one would not expect to see over twenty different bills to pack and unpack the highest court in eleven different states.

One response to this interpretative claim is that while there were indeed numerous attempts to pack or unpack the courts, only two of those attempts were actually successful. In this way, one could argue, the story of [recent attempts at court packing and unpacking in the states] is a cautionary tale and simply reinforces the message that the elected branches would be wise to save their political capital. There may be credence to this response, but it is worth noting that when proposed bills did not succeed in the first instance, they were often attempted again.

[Sean Hayden]

Republicans have sent their own voters mail-in ballots for years.

They have no business having authority over even the smallest matters. They are rotten.

[JimC]

Republicans have sent their own voters mail-in ballots for years.

They have no business having authority over even the smallest matters. They are rotten.

No politicians should have any authority over the details of electoral processes. Otherwise, the corruption is inevitable...

[Sean Hayden]

If you know that Republicans have always sent mail-in ballots to their voters, and now they've asked a court to stop it, then why listen to a court that agrees to try to stop you?

I don't get it man. I mean, fuck you, I'm sending them. --right?

[Sean Hayden]

..bunch of Socratic weenies man.

[Tero]

Court won't go along with Trump on abortion pill:

The court's decision came Thursday night on a 6-to-2 vote that rejected an emergency appeal from the Trump administration.

The challenge to the FDA regulation was brought by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists after the the agency relaxed similar regulations for other drugs--including opioids--in order to limit patients' exposure to Covid-19 during the pandemic, but refused to relax the same rule for those with prescriptions for abortions with pills in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/08/92192188 ... tion-pills

[L'Emmerdeur]

Another piece on court packing.

'"Pack" the Supreme Court? Absolutely 100% yes — it's the only way to save democracy'

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the nomination of a polar opposite replacement, only one response that makes any sense: Expand the Supreme Court. The only real question is by how much. There are other responses that can do some good — perhaps even more good. But without court expansion, the existing court can, and almost certainly will, strike them down.

Yes, some call it an extreme step. But there's a more extreme step: Simply ignore the court's decisions — as some Republicans argued in the 1850s, in response to the Dred Scott decision. More to the point, this is an extreme situation that demands extreme responses. As Boston College law professor Kent Greenfield tweeted on Sept. 21:

Some #SCOTUS facts:

15 of the last 19 appointments were made by GOP Presidents. (16/20 if #Trump gets another.)

The last year a majority of the justices were Dem appointees: 1969. Meanwhile, the GOP won the popular vote in the presidential election once in 30 years (2004).

It's also been more than 20 years since Republicans represented a majority of voters in the Senate, making the condition of minority rule even more extreme. It's also self-reinforcing: As Greg Sargent notes, a 6-3 conservative majority could strike down a new version of HR 1, the pro-democracy reforms that House Democrats passed in 2019, including wildly popular nonpartisan redistricting commissions.

The same fate awaits virtually everything else Democrats have campaigned on, as The Nation's justice correspondent, Elie Mystal, argued last February in an article bluntly titled, "If We Don't Reform the Supreme Court, Nothing Else Will Matter":

Not a single significant policy or initiative proposed by the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination is likely to survive a Supreme Court review. Nothing on guns, nothing on climate, nothing on health care — nothing survives the conservative majority on today's court.

[Brian Peacock]

So it seems that Mrs Amy Coney Barrett is a member of a secretive religious sect called "The People Of Praise" - a fundamentalist Christian group on the model of the JWs or Scientology, with all that that entials. All mention of her membership and/or participation has recently been removed from the group's website.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion ... istianity/

[L'Emmerdeur]

The horrible Democrat mob is attacking the woman for her religious beliefs! They're shameless.

[Tero]

It may be too late to stop Obamacare sign ups and coverage for 2021, but judge will kill Obamacare first thing:

No, the only thing that can stop Barrett's nomination now is if we make a vote to confirm her so toxic that senators worry about dooming the Republican Party if they go through with it.

That requires strict message discipline focused on the issue that will hurt her chances the most: the fact that she will likely be the deciding vote on the Supreme Court in the case to overturn the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic that has already killed more than 210,000 people in the United States.

Of all the reasons to oppose her, this is by far the most powerful.

Recent polling commissioned by the health care advocacy group Protect Our Care concluded that the majority of voters chose health care or the coronavirus as one of the two most important issues in their votes for president and Congress in November. Furthermore, the study found that the Affordable Care Act is widely popular. (Full disclosure: I work for Protect Our Care.)

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/a ... cna1242888

[Brian Peacock]

Surely rescinding the ACA is a political matter, not a constitutional one?

[Tero]

The legal angle is that Trump canceled the requirement to buy insutance when he cut taxes. The argument is that by canceling that part of Obamacare they canceled the entire law.