Below is my column on the end of the Supreme Court term and the one outstanding piece of business: an apology to Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch. After this column ran, Gorsuch again voted with the liberal justices on a critical due process issue. He has already carved out a principled legacy on the Court that follows his convictions rather than the predictions of his critics.
Here is the column:
“In our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all.” Those are the words that opened one of the most important decisions of this Supreme Court term, in United States v. Quartavious Davis. In a 5-4 decision, the majority sided with a habitual offender in striking down an ambiguous provision that would allow enhanced penalties for a “crime of violence.”
The author of that sweeping decision in favor of criminal defendant rights was Justice Neil Gorsuch, the first nomination by President Trump to the Supreme Court. I testified at his Senate hearing, favoring his confirmation despite unrelenting attacks on him as a “rubber stamp” and an ideologue. Gorsuch has proven his detractors wrong and, as this term has proven, he has emerged as one of the most consistent and courageous voices on the Supreme Court. Indeed, a number of senators and pundits in Washington owe Gorsuch an apology for their attacks on someone who is building a new legacy that could be one of the most lasting on the Supreme Court.
Gorsuch has been fascinating to watch over the last two years. He has departed repeatedly from the right of the Supreme Court to do what he considers to be the right thing. He remains a conservative justice but, like his predecessor Antonin Scalia, he has shown a sense of his own “true north” judicial compass. In doing so, he has often made both the left and right of the Supreme Court seem shallow and predictable in their rigidity.
Consider the decision last week on double jeopardy in Terance Gamble versus United States. At issue was the ability of prosecutors to try to potentially sentence individuals for the same criminal conduct in state and federal courts. Some of us have argued that the “dual sovereignty” doctrine had effectively gutted the constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy. Six justices lined up behind Justice Samuel Alito to dismiss such concerns. The dissent by Gorsuch said, “A free society does not allow its government to try the same individual for the same crime until it is happy with the result. Unfortunately, the court endorses a colossal exception to this ancient rule against double jeopardy.”
Gorsuch joined Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in dissenting. He also broke from the conservative wing in upholding Native American rights. Indeed, in the last term of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was lionized by liberals upon retirement as a principled swing voter, Gorsuch voted with liberal justices on important decisions on surveillance and sentencing. He also joined in key decisions supporting free speech against the government, including the opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan striking down a statute allowing the government to deny trademark protection to names deemed as “immoral” or “scandalous” by the government. Notably, the partial dissenters to this major victory for free speech were Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer and Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
The decision in Davis, however, was telling since it pitted Gorsuch once again on the opposite side from another Trump nominee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. While Kavanaugh also has broken from the right wing of the Supreme Court on occasion, he has continued his record of consistently siding with prosecutors and police. In his dissent, Kavanaugh advanced the logic that worried some of us before his confirmation. In the face of a detailed and dispassionate analysis by Gorsuch, the dissent by Kavanaugh responded at times with what seemed like a string of empty platitudes.
The respective first lines in the two decisions were the most telling. Where Gorsuch emphasized how vague laws effectively gut due process and the rule of law, Kavanaugh declared, “Crime and firearms form a dangerous mix.” The response by Gorsuch was devastating. After laying out how the “crime of violence” has no clear meaning and leaves citizens at the whim of prosecutors, Gorsuch asked, “What does the dissent have to say about all this?” He noted that Kavanaugh simply cites the fact that the statute was used in “tens of thousands of federal prosecutions” for over 30 years and deemed it “surprising” that it should suddenly be unconstitutional.
However, Gorsuch noted that the government admitted that the original meaning was unconstitutional and was itself offering a “surprising” new interpretation to save it. Gorsuch said Kavanaugh and other conservative justices were trying to save an unconstitutional law by “giving this old law a new meaning by appealing to intuition.” Kavanaugh noted, if “you were to ask John Public whether a particular crime posed a substantial risk of violence, surely he would respond, ‘Well, tell me how it went down. What happened?’” Gorsuch answered this, “Maybe so. But the language in the statute before us is not the language posited in the dissenting push poll.”
There remain significant cases to decide this Supreme Court term, including on gerrymandering and a controversial citizenship question being added to the census. I cannot predict how those cases will turn out, but I am certain of one thing, which is that Gorsuch deserves an apology. Many liberal advocates lambasted him despite his stellar reputation as an appellate judge. His actual record was irrelevant to them, and it likely will mean little to them that Gorsuch has now shown more flexibility than certain members in the left wing of the Supreme Court.
At the confirmation hearing for Gorsuch, I told the Senate a story about Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes traveling by train to Washington. When the conductor asked for his ticket, Holmes searched high and low for it until the conductor reassured him, “Don’t worry about your ticket. We all know who you are. When you get to your destination, you can find it and just mail it to us.” Holmes responded, “My dear man, the problem is not my ticket. The problem is, where am I going?” It is an uncertainty that many new Supreme Court justices face. However, I told the Senate, “I can say where Gorsuch is going. He will go wherever his conscience takes him, regardless of whether it proves a track to the left or the right.” That is precisely where Gorsuch has ended up. He is moving on his own track.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
So he did not always screw over criminal defendants, good for him. But he rubber stamped gerrymandering and was cool with a census question designed to suppress the count. He is owed nothing and we got what we feared we would get.
Good.
Democratic Party NPCs out in force today.
This is absurd x 9 says: June 29, 2019 at 2:27 PM
“Democratic Party NPCs out in force today.”
TIA x 9 is probably bored the lack of blog-chatter.
From the following Verge article: “By engaging with toxicity, we risk increasing that toxicity.”
“The NPC meme became a story not because it was worth explaining why a bunch of 4chan trolls were comparing liberals to sub-humanoid beings, but because a major social media platform took action to stop a meme that was spreading misinformation. That difference is crucial for both journalists and readers to understand: when memes are explained, they will also be amplified. By engaging with toxicity, we risk increasing that toxicity.”
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/23/17991274/npc-meme-4chan-press-coverage-viral
Predicting…
The Supreme Court owes America an apology; from prison.
Nothing the Supreme Court has decided since 1861 and “Crazy Abe” Lincoln’s “Reign of Terror”
has been constitutional or otherwise conformed with the American thesis. The entire American
welfare state is unconstitutional while the Jolly Justices head out for a ridiculous three-month
vacation. It does not require nine people to do one simple and easy job which is to assure that
actions comport with the “manifest tenor” of the literal words of the Founders in their Constitution
and Bill of Rights, which all actual Americans can readily decipher and comprehend.
This court is nothing but a Supreme Joke of Corruption and Usurpation –
a Second Anti-American Legislative Branch.
Why is there a Lincoln Memorial?
To perpetuate the myth.
“Crazy Abe” Lincoln was used then martyred by the contemporary “deep state” to save the union and to save the profits attendant to the consummation of westward expansion and the birth of a great industrial nation.
Lincoln was a neurotic, given to fits of rage, possessing homosexual tendencies, a confirmed atheist and a racist who cared nothing about slaves and slavery or constitutional law but was zealous and extreme about saving the union. Lincoln was corruptly ensconced with 39.8% of the “popular vote” by the contemporary “deep state” of bankers, industrialists and politicians to do just that, no matter the cost. Lincoln nullified the Constitution, neutralized representative government by fixing elections, voided individual rights and ruled as a terrorizing and murderous totalitarian dictator through executive order, decree and proclamation in order to viciously and brutally suppress freedom and preserve the union.
There was no need for a civil war and the deaths of one million Americans. Slavery was globally ubiquitous but no other country in history resorted to war to end slavery. Abraham Lincoln was employed, assassinated six days after the conclusion of the Civil War and martyred by the contemporary “deep state” to preserve the profits of the union.
“,,,that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
– The Gettysburg Address – the eerie, inconsistent, implausible, bizarre and self-contradictory moment of madness of the perpetrator of the deaths-without-reason of one million Americans – no other country used war to abolish slavery – the words of what could have only been a ruthless, mass-murdering American psycho.
___________________________________
The Butcher, Abraham Lincoln, was let loose on an America full of subdued victims. He was then martyred by the contemporary “deep state” and committed to history as a righteous Christian soldier. In reality, the Butcher, Abraham Lincoln, was a fierce and unmistakable admonition to future “self-governing” American patriots – much as the body of Captain Kidd was gibbeted on the River Thames as a warning to future would-be pirates. The empire will strike back and the “deep state” shall prevail.
The Lincoln Memorial, indeed, is a memorial to the death of American freedom, the death of the American Constitution and the death of American self-governance. If statues and memorials are to be torn down, the first must be that of the Butcher, Abraham Lincoln.
Any judge, especially a Supreme Court justice, should ignore personal bias when deciding the case before them. The law should not be twisted to satisfy either the right or the left. If the law as written is unsatisfactory, then change the law.
Whenever a judge is described as following True North, it gives me pause. That could mean that they are willing to abandon unbiased legal analysis in order to satisfy their own political beliefs. After all, those beliefs can become someone’s personal compass. Someone’s very conscience can become politicized.
However, in this case, I am happy to hear that Gorsuch is following legal and ethical principles in his own personal compass.
should ignore personal bias when deciding the case before them.
Man is incapable of seeing the Truth. American history has shown as such particularly SCOTUS
Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?
St Augustine
Sermo 241, 2:PL 38,1134.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c1.htm
TURLEY’S FRIEND GORSUCH SIGNS NAKEDLY PARTISAN DISSENT
REGARDING CITIZENSHIP QUESTION
President Trump, irate at a federal district court ruling contrary to his administration’s attempt to stop some migrants from seeking asylum at the border, blasted the judge, Jon S. Tigar, as a biased “Obama judge.” Standing up for the integrity of the federal judiciary, of which he is the titular head, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued an extraordinary statement contradicting Mr. Trump, albeit without naming him. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Mr. Roberts said . “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
Some of Mr. Roberts’s colleagues on the Supreme Court did not get the memo. Or so it would seem from the innuendo Justice Clarence Thomas aimed at U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in an opinion dissenting from the court’s Wednesday ruling that upheld Mr. Furman’s decision to block a Trump administration plan to ask the citizenship of census respondents. Joined by Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch, Mr. Thomas blasted Mr. Furman’s finding — affirmed not only by Mr. Roberts but also four other justices — that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had unlawfully misstated his true reasons for adding the question. Mr. Thomas went well beyond disputing Mr. Furman’s legal reasoning to questioning the district judge’s good faith, accusing him of “transparently” applying “an administration-specific standard.” He portrayed Mr. Furman’s presentation of evidence that Mr. Ross acted on a pretext as akin to “a conspiracy web,” that could be woven by “a judge predisposed to distrust the Secretary or the administration.”
Though couched in the indirect language of a legal opinion and its accompanying specialized notations, this was unmistakably a Trump-like insinuation that Mr. Furman, elevated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, had ruled on his personal preferences rather than the law. Coming from a justice of the nation’s highest court, Mr. Thomas’s sour words regarding a lower-court colleague were not only destructive and unfounded. They were also self-contradictory, given that, elsewhere in the very same opinion, he faulted the court majority for “echoing the din of suspicion and distrust that seems to typify modern discourse.” For Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Gorsuch to join such an opinion was a lapse in self-awareness on their part, given how readily Democratic partisans accuse them of bias in favor of the president who appointed them — Mr. Trump.
Mr. Thomas’s ill-considered language undermined the defense of the judiciary that the chief justice had previously attempted to mount. And to what end? Mr. Thomas and his two colleagues could have made precisely the same legal argument without it. “The law requires a more impartial approach,” Mr. Thomas protested, referring to Mr. Furman’s ruling and the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of it. Actually, that admonition applies to him.
Full article from: “John Roberts Said There Are No Trump Judges Or Obama Judges. Clarence Thomas Didn’t Get The News”
Washington Post Editorial Board, 6/28/19
And Turley think Gorsuch is owed an apology..??? Gorsuch is obviously a stooge for the far-right.
The Nation owes both our Constitutional Centrist oriented President and his first two choices thanks but I’m postitive they won’t get it from Washington DC. Do we need a new Capitol or just need to restock it with American Citizens?
Many times we hear the left say ‘ our turn.’ Since they aren’t Constitutionalists anyway hard to imagine what they mean But on that same subject the first two Trump picks ended up being ‘their turn.’
Constitutionalists need at least one more preferably two to protect Our Constitutional Republic from the socialists extremists even two like our newest Justices from the anonymous supporters of the socialist extremists be they national, international or progressive
So far, on balance the counter revolution against those types is going well.
” He remains a conservative justice but, like his predecessor Antonin Scalia, he has shown a sense of his own “true north” judicial compass. In doing so, he has often made both the left and right of the Supreme Court seem shallow and predictable in their rigidity.”
It strikes me that Justice Kennedy is the better analogy Turley. Not Scalia.
TURLEY WROTE THIS ON FLIGHT TO BUENO’S AIRES.
Neil Gorsuch is possibly among Turley’s friends back in Washington. That’s okay. Stimulating company for advanced legal minds.
But yesterday’s decision granting SCOTUS approval of gerrymandering is the most dubious of rulings. It willfully invites both political parties to use district maps as weapons of suppression. I don’t want either party doing that. Maps shouldn’t be weaponized.
Yesterday’s ruling also calls into question the constitutionality of Independent Commissions regarding district maps. It appears the court is saying those commissions have no legitimacy. Meaning the public has no say on district maps. It’s not our decision!
Man out west, I have not read enough about the gerrymandering decision to know how accurate your comments are regarding commissions, but if true, that is highly disturbing and unforgivable. In either case, the two remedies available to citizens of good will of both parties is to advocate for packing the court to break the illegitimate GOP majority (that won’t go well with Republicans of good will), or a difficult movement for a federal constitutional amendment. If commissions are not in danger, those constitutional amendments could be on the state level.
This is one of the more serious problems in our government today, with far reaching consequences, including the breaking of voters’ trust that we have representative government. We don’t under this practice. As an example – and of course the case dealt with North Carolina and Maryland – Florida is a large purple state that went for Obama twice and Clinton once, W twice and then Trump. The state legislature is as one party as it gets, with something like 70-30% representation, and the congressional delegation about the same.
Beyond the virtual gag order on the minority party in state government, elections are about the primaries, with increasing polarization and hardening of boundaries and with little motivation to compromise, which is the lifeblood of functioning democracies. Our democracy is dying and this f…d up court majority – at heart, with a few replacements, the same one that brought us Citizen’s United – is performing the coup d’ gras.
Trump is reshaping the traditionally non political DC 4th celebration to include a speech by him and VIP area at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. Allan, Kurtz, Karen, Tom, and all the orange cult kids will be thrilled to hear inspiring and patriotic words from Dear Leader.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/trump-plans-ticketed-access-area-for-vips-friends-and-family-at-july-4-celebration/2019/06/28/005fd56a-99a4-11e9-8d0a-5edd7e2025b1_story.html?utm_term=.0db34c6d09df
I don’t pay much attention to DC celebrations, but as long a JanF./ Anon/ anon1……any of those aliases will do….keeps up on those vital “Society Page” news issues, I guess we can all stay informed that way.
Since I didn’t vote for Trump, not sure why the jackass with 3 aliases spouts stupid slogans like “orange cultist”. Can’t say it’s surprising to to see someone like JanF/ anon1/anon spout stupid slogans, but not sure how he/ she figures it scores points.
Many of us not in the DC area watch 4th celebrations from DC and the Boston Pops on PBS. They are both now national events which have avoided politics and cults of personalities celebrations for narcissists like Fatso.
Trump jokes around with the guy responsible for murdering 38 Russian journalists. Our president is a traitor.
“Trump also bonded with Putin over a scorn for journalists.
“Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.”
“We also have,” Putin answered, in English. “It’s the same.””
Former President Barack Obama seems to believe he still speaks for the United States. It’s off-putting, could possibly undermine foreign policy, and it’s time he knocked it off.
While other former presidents return to their hometown, write their memoir, oversee construction of their library, and leave the running of the government to their successor, Obama does it differently.
He chose to remain in Washington, D.C., the seat of federal power, rather than go back to either Chicago or Hawaii.
Although he came out with a book titled, “Obama: An Intimate Portrait,” it’s hardly a memoir — it’s more of a collection of photographs with his own descriptions so he could claim authorship.
He’s not working on his presidential library, because there isn’t one. He chose instead to establish an Obama Presidential Center, described as “a place where young people from around the world can meet,” a sort of glorified Starbucks. The presidential papers will be housed elsewhere.
But what’s particularly galling, Obama doesn’t appear to have left the affairs of state to his successor. He instead galivants around the globe meeting heads of state, sometimes either immediately before or after Trump does. What’s that all about?
The most recent example was last week, when Obama flew to Germany for a closed-door meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel for what the press described as a “routine private encounter with a former international peer.”
This isn’t the first time the former president met the German chancellor. He did so three months after ostensibly handing the reins of power to President Donald Trump. Obama arrived in Berlin on the very day that Trump met with NATO leaders in Brussels. The reason was reportedly to engage in a discussion on democracy. Seriously?
While Obama was discussing democracy with Merkel, Trump was in Brussels telling Germany, and other NATO member nations, to start paying their fair share of defense spending.
During both Obama-Merkel meetings, Great Britain was working on a framework to exit the European Union, something to which Merkel is adamantly opposed. During the second meeting, Trump was also working out trade agreements with the UK in anticipation of its departure from the EU.
As 2017 was coming to a close, Obama met with the leaders of India and China. His supporters back home thought nothing of it.
“Barack Obama is the great explainer to the rest of the world of what the heck is going on in America,” said Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University presidential historian. America needs explaining now?
Those meetings came at a time when Trump was negotiating trade agreements with both countries — particularly China. Those talks are continuing.
Trump campaigned for the presidency, in part, on renegotiating international trade deals in which he believed the United States came out the loser. One in particular was NAFTA, entered into with Mexico and Canada.
So while the Trump White House was working on what eventually became the USMCA, Obama shared a private dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, reportedly to discuss how to get young leaders engaged in politics.
Possibly meaning nothing, Trump was days away from turning 71 at the time of the meeting.
Obama promised during his first presidential campaign that he would willingly meet with world dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un without preconditions. He never dd.
Trump, however, had two meetings with Kim, in which both China and South Korea played a pivotal role.
As noted above, Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He also met with South Korea’s Moon Jae-in.
Trump’s initial National Security Adviser, former Army General Michael Flynn, was threatened with a Logan Act charge for meeting the Russian ambassador as a Trump transition team member. The Logan Act is a 220-year-old law that prohibits Americans from unauthorized negotiations with foreign governments. It’s never resulted in a single conviction.
But while Flynn worked as a member of the transition team, Obama’s meetings are as a private citizen. No one’s suggesting he interfered with U.S. foreign policy, but the optics he’s creating are horrible.
Presidents often find a worthwhile activity to fill their days after leaving office.
With Jimmy Carter it was providing housing for the poor.
George H.W. Bush palled around with Bill Clinton to aid people stricken by natural disasters around the world.
George W. Bush’s cause was and still is disabled veterans.
Fairly or unfairly, Obama was often criticized for spending too much time on the golf course while in office. Maybe it’s time he returned to the links and gave thought to what he wants to do with the rest of his life — something other than private meetings with world leaders.
Michael Dorstewitz 10 April 2019
Estovir, how did Obama come into this discussion??
In a typical trolling lie, insecure Fatso in a statement from Seoul claimed Obama “begged” to meet with his lover Lil Kim.
“Trump is lying. I was there for all 8 years. Obama never sought a meeting with Kim Jong Un. Foreign policy isn’t reality television it’s reality.”
Ben Rhodes
F..k Goresuch. If he had an ounce of dignity he would have refused the offer of a seat that didn’t belong to Trump and the GOP to offer him. He is illegitimate and so is the court since it does not represent the appointments of our elected presidents.
Any self-respecting jurist would never have accepted the appointment to such a high office from a lowlife like Trump. Be warned, Trumpism will be regarded one day not unlike McCarthyism. When he is publicly disgraced as the conman he has always been, you’ll not be able to wash off his stench. You always will reak from this excrement.
A number of people have been cashing in on phony claims of “McCarthyism” for years……while practising their own version of McCarthyism.
That stunt is common as dirt. As far as suspending appointments to the Supreme Court because some are still whining about the results of an election over 2 1/2 years ago, I don’t see that happening.
“Elections have consequences” . And the far left can not always count on getting more True Believers like Ginsburg, Sotomeyer, Kagan, and Breyer on the bench.
The GOP has not been as successful in appointing Court justices purely aligned with their political idealogy. Compare and contrast the 4 True Believers named above with a Router, a Kennedy, an O’Conner, and maybe a Roberts.
I don’t think a “moderate” SCOTUS appointment by a Democratic president has happened in the past 50 years.
There is no such room for an Al Gore on the Court.
The Supreme Court owes America an apology; from prison.
Nothing the Supreme Court has decided since 1861 and “Crazy Abe” Lincoln’s “Reign of Terror” has been constitutional or otherwise
comported with the American thesis. The entire American welfare state is unconstitutional while the Jolly Justices head out for a
ridiculous three-month vacation. Nine people to do one simple and easy job: Assure that actions comport with the “manifest tenor” of
the literal words of the Founders in their Constitution and Bill of Rights, which all actual Americans can readily decipher and comprehend.
This court is nothing but a Supreme Joke of Corruption and Usurpation – a Second Anti-American Legislative Branch.
Like you we too are happy about the wonderful Justices president Trump has elevated to SCOTUS. This is all the more reason why he needs to be re-elected in 2020 so that he can elevate more individuals of impeccable character like US Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett
https://law.nd.edu/directory/amy-barrett/
Overturn Roe v. Wade now
It’s time to increase the number of SCOTUS justices. Fairness demands it. Right-wingers will work hard to prevent it happening. More = democracy. Less = rule by the few.
It’s important to name the malicious smear mongers. It’s Democrats and liberals who constantly traffic in malicious lies, corrupt smears, and demeaning of those they disagree with politically. Their hatred is shameless in their quest to regain power. We have watched 2 years of their hate-filled rhetoric and lies about Kavanaugh, Covington Catholic, Gorsuch, Carter Page, Gen. Flynn, Sarah Sanders, and almost everyone in the Trump administration. We have watched their violence at baseball fields, in restaurants, on college campuses, against people wearing hats, and at conservatives’ homes (Tucker, Rand Paul, etc) . The facts are that Democrats (even those on SCOTUS) vote/think as a block, with little thought and based on party lines and RARELY cross over the prescribed ideology – kind of like the bleating sheep of Orwell’s Animal Farm. It’s time for the SCOTUS liberals to start opening their minds instead of constantly voting as a block to undermine the will of the American people.
Honestly, it’s also time for you Dr. Turley to acknowledge the maliciousness and hate of the Left.
It’s important to name the malicious smear mongers. It’s Republicans and conservatives who constantly traffic in malicious lies, corrupt smears, and demeaning of those they disagree with politically. Their hatred is shameless in their quest to hold power. We have watched 2 years of their hate-filled rhetoric and lies about Obama, Hillary, Mueller, the FBI, the CIA, an American judge with Mexican ancestry, Mexicans generally, Muslims, Pelosi, Reality, and almost everyone in the previous administration. We have watched their violence at Charlottesville, in restaurants, in churches, in mosques, in synagogues, on college campuses, against gays and minorities, and elsewhere (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_threats_against_Barack_Obama). The facts are that Republicans (even those on SCOTUS) vote/think as a block, with little thought and based on party lines and RARELY cross over the prescribed ideology – kind of like the bleating sheep of Orwell’s Animal Farm. It’s time for the SCOTUS conservatives to start opening their minds instead of constantly voting as a block to undermine the will of the American people.
Your words just described the Democrat Party, CNN, MSNBC and Hollywood, precisely.
the habitual firearms offender law was a problematic and a bad one and I’m glad it’s struck down. this was a good opinion by Gorsuch indeed
the Quartavious Davis surveillance was very troubling. glad that one got handled properly too.
https://www.eff.org/cases/united-states-v-davis
double jeopardy needed some life breathed into it too. good things, thank you to Prof Turley for explaining.
‘However, I told the Senate, “I can say where Gorsuch is going. He will go wherever his conscience takes him, regardless of whether it proves a track to the left or the right.” That is precisely where Gorsuch has ended up. He is moving on his own track.’
…and it’s precisely what we need right now.
Thanks, Jonathan.