As Democrats ramp up their efforts for the 2024 election, some are dangling an old enticement from 2020: if we win, we can pack the Court. In the last election, President Joe Biden refused to say if he favored packing the Court. Now the chatter has again started in the same quarters that a Democrat retaking the White House would allow the packing of the Court with an immediate liberal majority to force through sweeping court mandates.
Liberals are again stating that the Supreme Court is not fundamentally “broken” because a majority of justices do not share their views on legal questions. In the name of fighting ideological bias, they demand packing the Court with reliable ideological allies from the left.
This convoluted logic was on display in the Washington Monthly in an article on “how to fix the Supreme Court.” It is a must read for anyone interested in following the new rationalizations for destroying the independence of the highest court.
Author Rob Wolfe explains with alarm how a majority of justices now do not share his or Democratic views on various issues. Even though this Republican majority has repeatedly voted against conservative positions and often ruled unanimously, it is not enough for Wolfe. They have to be packed.
Wolfe rattles off extreme proposals matter-of-factly as all viable options:
Anyone concerned about the Supreme Court today should be working to prise that window open further. And to do so, they ought to draw on the robust and inventive debate that is brewing among scholars in law schools, think tanks, and advocacy organizations over how to fix the Court. Some of their ideas are bold structural changes: dividing the Court into rotating panels, stripping it of jurisdiction over certain issues, or controlling its certification process. Others are practical and based on policies already proven to work elsewhere, such as creating a “Congressional Review Act” for Supreme Court decisions, as already exists for executive branch regulations. What these ideas share is a recognition that the rights-giving 20th-century Court that liberals came to respect, even revere, is gone. Today’s progressives now realize that the high court is not an infallible fount of wisdom, and that it is historically more often a conservative force; and with that understanding comes a question that these scholars will help us all to answer: What is the Supreme Court even for?
That last question has been raised by Democratic members like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) who has questioned the need for a Supreme Court.
Once again, packing the Court with reliable liberal votes is being proposed to “save democracy”:
President Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders have not embraced this deeper reform debate, perhaps recognizing that the political moment hasn’t yet arrived. When the survival of democracy depends on each coming election, a little short-term thinking is understandable.
But one day that moment will come, and it may come suddenly: a wave election, a string of Senate vacancies, a scandal of new, earth-shattering magnitude, or a series of decisions as harmful as Dobbs. When that happens, reformers need to have a plan ready to go—a plan that will require broad public consensus about what problems need to be solved … and a detailed road map to achieve those goals through nitty-gritty policy…Being ready means spending years on movement building to bring together academics, policy wonks, and regular Americans, all waiting to grasp that perhaps fleeting and unforeseeable opportunity. Either that, or submit to being governed for another 30, 40, or 50 years by unelected partisans in robes.
However, what is most striking about the Washington Monthly article is how Orwellian the logic becomes once you admit that your are packing a court with ideological allies. The argument is now that packing the Court is unpacking the Court.
The Supreme Court needs to be thought of as a neutral arbiter for political disputes, not just another player in them, the law professors argued—and so fixing it today is a question of restoring that aura of public trust. Right away, that goal disqualified the most talked-about idea at the time: court packing. Supporters of court packing like the political scientist Aaron Belkin argue that the Supreme Court has already been stacked with highly ideological conservatives who gained their seats through norm-breaking political brinksmanship, and so to add, say, six liberal or moderate justices would actually be to unpack it.
The article then adds the voices of the most radical elements of academia who support “resistance” by any means, including targeting and harassing justices.
“I want to suggest that courts are the enemy, and always have been,” Josh Chafetz, a Georgetown Law professor of the “disempowering” school, said on an afternoon panel with Doerfler, Sitaraman, and another Georgetown scholar, Victoria Nourse. In one exchange, Chafetz called for retaliation against the justices as individuals, wondering aloud whether Congress should consider withdrawing funding for law clerks or even “cutting off the Supreme Court’s air conditioning budget.” The quip drew a faint chuckle from the crowd, but Doerfler, deadly serious, interjected: “It should not be a laugh line. This is a political contest, these are the tools of retaliation available, and they should be completely normalized.” What put us here, he said, is the idea that the Court is an “untouchable entity and you’re on the road to authoritarianism if you stand up against it.”
It is certainly not “a laugh line,” it is a chilling call for mob rule and political harassment of jurists for not ruling as demanded. Harvard Law Professor Ryan Doerfler wants to show that individual justices are “touchable” by harassing them as individuals when they dare to defy our will. He is not alone in such extremist ideology among the “radical chic” of academia.
I previously criticized Georgetown Law Professor Josh Chafetz who supported more “aggressive” protests targeting justices “when the mob is right.” Such voices are common at Georgetown and other law schools.
The Washington Monthly’s article normalizes such extremist rhetoric and dangerous threats against the justices. It is another example of the license of the age of rage.
𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐞 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐆𝐚𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫-𝐮𝐩 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬
Harvard’s powerful governing body is facing calls to be fired and a full-scale congressional investigation into how it covered up allegations that university president Claudine Gay was a plagiarist, The Post has learned.
By: Isabel Vincent ~ Jan. 9, 2024
https://nypost.com/2024/01/09/news/harvard-facing-probe-over-claudine-gay-cover-up-censorship/
Former RNC Chair Michael Steele: “Trump says ‘And when there’s a [stock market] crash — I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months.’ Trump said he wants you to lose what you earned in the market. Trump wants you to lose your life-savings, your earnings. Why? Because it benefits him.”
He was stating that he hopes the inevitable crash comes before he is in office. He is not desiring it to happen, just that the blame for it will fall on those who are placing all the elements in place for it to happen. Re: unprecedented deficit spending, massive illegal immigration, crushing the energy sector, et.
“He” didnt say anything. Seems this biden sycophant suddenly forgot what hearsay is.
There is no “inevitable” crash.
Because they are called “crashes” because the people saw them coming everytime.
Look up the meaning of “inevitable” for yourself.
If Trump were a normal person, he’d say something like “I think a crash is coming, but I sure hope I’m wrong, as that would harm so many people.” But he has no capacity for empathy, only the capacity to think in terms of what benefits him personally.
And americans had more in their 401k under trump, despite the market gains. So you keep voting for the guy who cares so much about your 401k he tried to print another trillion dollars for college grads in what he knew was contravention of the constitution he swore to protect and defend.
No, the average under Trump was not better than the average under Biden.
You are really dumb. Look at Trump’s quote from the NYTimes above. That is the problem of copying left wing talking points. They are lies and make you sound like an a$$,
“Trump said he wants you . . .”
Except that’s not what he said. And you dishonestly edited his quote.
You are now free to continue with Leftist smears and lies.
I did NOT edit the quote from Steele. Liar.
” . . . the quote from Steele.”
Ever the deceptive and dishonest one.
For those not motivated by the desire to manipulate: The issue is what *Trump* said. And the issue is your smear based on that intent to deceive. When you repeat a dishonest quote, you’re guilty of intellectual dishonesty. When you repeat a smear, you’re guilty of the smear.
Trump said “And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next twelve months.”
Steele said that Trump said “And when there’s a crash — I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months.”
Steel accurately quoted Trump. I added [stock market] before “crash” because that’s what Trump was talking about, as he goes on to say: “I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.” If you think that I should have put “economy” in the brackets instead of “stock market,” since Trump didn’t use the phrase “stock market,” OK, but I think “stock market” is correct in context. Either way, I accurately quoted Steele, and he accurately quoted Trump, and I explicitly noted with brackets that I was the one adding “stock market.”
Leftist Anonymous is a liar. They all are.
“We have an economy that’s so fragile, and the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did,It’s just running off the fumes. And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months, because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.” __Trump
This is a sickness of the left, and the stupidity of anyone who repeats what a Leftist Anonymous says. Not only do Leftists lie, but they lack the capacity to think. They are at the lowest rung of intellectual advancement.
I have always pondered if Scalia was poisoned.
If I were a Supreme Court Justice, I would watch my back. It has been shown that the Biden gang will not provide adequate protection.
According to Trump, Biden could have all of the conservative Justices assassinated and then resign, and he couldn’t be charged because former Presidents have absolute immunity unless they’re first impeached and convicted.
I saw my 50-year-old doctor five months ago. He was in good health. He recommended that I have an annual physical exam just to be sure. A week later, he was dead from a symptom-less heart anomaly.
You’ll end up with dementia. Looks like there are symptoms already.
Federalist Co-Chair Leonard Leo Is Puppeteer Of The Court
Princeton Professor Robert P. George, a leader of the conservative legal movement and confidant of the judicial activist Leonard Leo, made the case for overturning Roe v. Wade in an amicus brief a year before the Supreme Court issued its watershed ruling.
Roe, George claimed, had been decided based on “plain historical falsehoods.”
The argument was echoed in dozens of amicus briefs supporting Mississippi’s restrictive abortion law in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The argument, in fact, was featured in an article on the web page of the conservative legal network, the Federalist Society, where Leo is co-chair.
A POLITICO review of tax filings, financial statements and other public documents found that Leo and his network of nonprofit groups are either directly or indirectly connected to a majority of amicus briefs filed on behalf of conservative parties in seven of the highest-profile rulings the court has issued over the past two years.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/03/supreme-court-amicus-briefs-leonard-leo-00127497
…………………………………….
The article tells us Professor Robert George is actually ‘not’ a historian and 6,000 history scholars signed a statement saying George’s argument is historically flawed.
But most disturbing is the fact that a disproportionate share of amicus briefs filed with the court are linked to Leonard Leo!
They had a 70 year majority of ideologues – and Trump ended their free pass. No wonder they hate him so much!
Sounds like insurrection to me.
Tell your children and grandchildren to go and learn a productive trade, something of value to support you and your family, and you won’t need big government. Everyone can’t be a political operative.
“Government does everything for us”
Michelle Obama
Jonathan: Anyone listen to the audio of the DC Court of Appeals oral arguments today? Quite revealing. As to whether there is validity in DJT’s claim of absolute presidential from criminal prosecution, DJT’s lawyer had a hard time dealing with the “SEAL team 6” hypothetical. Judge Pan posed this Q to DJT’s lawyer: Suppose a president were to order a SEAL team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Does that mean a president is immune for that criminal act? DJT’s lawyer responded by claiming that a criminal prosecution could only after an impeachment trial and conviction in the Senate.
None of the members of the three-judge panel were buying that argument. Otherwise, a president could order the assassination of a political opponent just before leaving office, resign before an impeachment and trial, and then not be held criminally liable. That’s not what the Constitution says or something the Framers would have endorsed.
DJT was present for the oral arguments. And, by all indications, he won’t be pleased with the results. In a fundraising email on Monday DJT tried his usual spin. He told his supporters he was “forced” off the campaign trail because he had to attend today’s hearing. On Monday, DJT played golf at his golf club in Virginia. No one “forced” him from campaigning to do that or to attend the oral arguments. The Trumpster caught in yet another lie!
Since there is no statute of limitations on murder, Trumps, first order of business, should be arresting Obama, for droning an American citizen, without Due Process
According to Trump, Presidents have absolute immunity for anything within the outer perimeter of their official duties, unless they’re impeached and convicted first.
So which is it. Arrest Obama or Trump goes free?
False dichotomy.
“uh duh dup duh dup, what about dropping an atomic bomb on San Francisco, could he get away with THAT?”—-Karen, DCCAC super judge
“No ma’am, and the fact that you would ask that question, which has zero to do with the question before you, demonstrates why the question of whether a given presidential act, and not your ridiculous hypothetical, should not be litigated by the successors henchman or 12 eighth grade dropouts.“
—-Trumps lawyer
Dennis, you are making quite an assumption based on no facts about Trump golfing yesterday. Was it with major supporters, or perhaps people who are well connected to a state and could influence the vote count? Even if you had their names, you have no idea what they talked about and what impact those conversations might have on the election. On the other hand, it could be exactly as you implied – an entertaining golf game. Who knows? But you cannot say he is caught in lie based on absolutely nothing.
Well, we know now the whole “trump said they forced him off the trail” is just another leftist DNC email talking point.
Dennis, always late to the party, is the third good little marxist to screech about it here today.
Pathetic, truly
Suppose a president were to order a SEAL team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Does that mean a president is immune for that criminal act?
It depends on the context.
Exactly. But notice how the Karen gaslights with the words “criminal act”. These stooges dont get it at all. She is pronouncing it a criminal act with zero due process. None.
His lawyer should have said, yes, if this hypothetical political rival were Soleimani. She wants to ignore the very crux of the argument. Its pathetic
OT
Looks like Fani been Willins to spread that fanny around.
Sec Def Lloyd Austin’s mysterious disappearance was apparently for prostate cancer surgery that had dangerous complications.
There could be another problem. I assume he is thoroughly Covid vaccinated. There are some indications that the recent emergence of very aggressive Turbo Cancers may be due to the vaxx. It could be a concern.
But will we even be allowed to know?
No. Hipaa
Public official. Thats what the fuss was about.
Whatever benefits accrued from taking the ‘vaxx’ (vaccine), preventing Covid was not one of them.
*that much is true.
Dgsnowdenn,,
True. Last week 3 neighbors got Covid, all of them vaccinated and boosted. Crap, experimental shot.
Austin should resign.
DoD states Austin was never under general anesthesia and was fully aware and able to make decisions and handle his job.
That means he intentionally kept all of superiors in the dark, swearing the people closest to him to secrecy. That’s treason and a court martial offense.
Austin needs to make his medical record available to proper congressional committees to verify his story.
The big deal about the austin debacle is that it exposes the cluelessness of this administration – The Sec Def was unavailable and they forgot to think about that – not even letting the person filling in know.
I do nto care about Austin’s medical problems – their his business.
I do not care that he was unavailable – $hit happens.
I do care that like the Afghan withdrawl they took something that could have been dealt with competently or badly and F’d it up.
“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.”
– Mark Twain Quoting British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli
___________________________________________________________________
How many soldiers have been issued Article 15s or stronger penalties for being AWOL and for false and perjurious statements?
Apparently there is a long chain, not only of command, but of lies.
Let’s not forget what Trump’s Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, said about his first-hand knowledge of Trump:
“I do regard him as a threat to our democracy, our institutions, our political culture–all those things that make America great.”
And Trump’s Chief of Staff, General John Kelly: “He’s a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution & the rule of law.”
And Trump’s longest serving National Security advisor, John Bolton: “I have been in those rooms with him when he met with foreign leaders, I believe they think he’s a laughing fool.”
But hey, why listen to the Trump White House advisors who knew Trump best, right?
You act like we don’t have 4 years of Trumps record. According the Supreme Commander of NATO, Trump is 100% Responsible for making NATO stronger than it had been in decades.
That’s just one of his many accomplishments.
I’ll evaluate his record, and ignore the opinions of gasbags. But you do you
Interesting response to demand Austin be fired, then call Trump’s Defense Minister, Chief of Staff & National Security advisor “gasbags.” You clearly don’t judge a leader by the observations of his own hand-picked advisors & confidants who work with him day-in & day-out & know him best.
John Bolton is a rabid neo-con. If he hates Trump, it is an endorsement in my eyes.
You are so correct to point out that Trump was unfortunately naive and inexperienced in his first term, and that he was outwitted and overwhelmed by the communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs), starting with Hillary’s lie of “Russia, Russia, Russia,” which was definitively proven by John Durham to be false and malicious, fraud and deception.
Presumably, that treason will be terminated with extreme prejudice by the next Trump administration.
Didn’t they say it was “elective surgery”? Removing a cancerous prostate does not sound like that!
How could they not notify the WH when Austin later developed complications and went to the ICU? How could the WH not learn that Austin was unavailable? It’s not as if the US military is disengaged at the moment. WHO is in charge?
The narrative is elective treatment. All treatment/surgeries are elective at some level. None of this is anyone’s business, UNTIL Austin screwed the pooch. Now he needs to open up his medical records to verify his story.
THE CONSERVATIVE MAN WHO CREATED AMERICA PRAGMATICALLY SET SIX JUSTICES – THE LIBERAL MAN WHO DESTROYED AMERICA CORRUPTLY SET 10 JUSTICES
“Abraham Lincoln, upset over the Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott and wanting to cement an anti-slavery majority on the Court, added a 10th justice in 1863.”
Why Do 9 Justices Serve on the Supreme Court?
The Constitution doesn’t specify how many justices should serve on the Court—in fact, that number fluctuated until 1869. Only since 1869 have there consistently been nine justices appointed to the Supreme Court. Before that, Congress routinely changed the number of justices to achieve its own partisan political goals, resulting in as few as five Supreme Court justices required by law under John Adams to as many as 10 under Abraham Lincoln. The U.S. Constitution is silent about how many justices should sit on the Supreme Court. In fact, the office of Chief Justice only exists because it’s mentioned in the Constitution under Senate rules for impeachment proceedings (“When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside…”). It’s Congress, not the Constitution, that decides the size of the Supreme Court, which it did for the first time under the Judiciary Act of 1789. When George Washington signed the Act into law, he set the number of Supreme Court justices at six. Why six? Because Supreme Court justices in those days were also appointed to sit on federal circuit courts, of which there were 13 in 1789. Each circuit court would be presided over by three judges: one district court judge from the state and two Supreme Court justices. “The justices had to spend almost the entire year traveling,” says Maeva Marcus, a research professor at the George Washington University Law School and director of its Institute for Constitutional History. “And the traveling conditions were horrendous.” To limit the geographical area traveled by the justices, the Judiciary Act of 1789 divided the circuit courts into three regions: Eastern, Middle and Southern. The reason that the first Supreme Court had six justices was simple—so that two of them could preside in each of the three regions. Marcus said that no one at the time quibbled about the fact that six is an even number, which leaves open the possibility of 3-3 split decisions. “They never even thought about it, because all the judges were Federalists and they didn’t foresee great disagreement,” says Marcus. “Plus, you didn’t always have all six justices appearing at the Supreme Court for health and travel reasons.”
– Dave Roos, History
Out of ideological fanaticism, the democrat ‘elite’ are determined to present dissident Americans with a binary choice; ‘life’ on their knees or death on their feet. They assume that is those on the right who shall have to make that choice.
It’s not what you don’t know, that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know, that isn’t so… that gets you in trouble. G Britain
Dobbs Decision Opened Waves Of Litigation
Mylissa Farmer’s pregnancy was doomed. But no one would help her end it.
Over the course of a few days in August 2022, Farmer visited two hospitals in Missouri and Kansas, where doctors agreed that because the 41-year-old’s water had broken just 18 weeks into her pregnancy, there was no chance that she would give birth to a healthy baby. Continuing the pregnancy could risk Farmer’s health and life – yet the doctors could not act.
Farmer’s account is detailed in a legal complaint she filed against the hospitals, arguing that they broke a federal law that requires hospitals to treat patients in medical emergencies. In a first-of-its-kind investigation, the US government sided with Farmer and declared that the two hospitals had broken the law.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/09/emergency-abortion-supreme-court-case-emtala-idaho.
……………………………………
With Dobbs, this court arrogantly presumed to correct a ‘flawed decision’ (Roe). Instead the the Dobbs decision is one of the most flawed since Dred Scott.
3 generations of working professionals advanced in their careers knowing Roe as law. But Dobbs threw 50 years of precedent to the wind; creating vast pockets of unsettled law.
So now the courts are working overtime to answer all the questions raised by Dobbs. How stupid!!
The Burger court of 1973 knew exactly what it was doing when it decided Roe. This current court should have left well enough alone. We can’t have a patchwork of different abortion laws in every state. Too many metro regions span across state lines.
Dobbs was not issued in an effort to curtail litigation. It was an exercise in constitutional interpretation. Like the rest of the Left, you treat the Supreme Court as yet another political branch of government, which it is not. In the arena of constitutional interpretation, Roe was an abomination, as even pro-choice legal scholars agreed. Dobbs did correct its error by returning the issue to the States where it always belonged. No amount of sob stories can change that fact.
We can’t have a patchwork of different abortion laws in every state. Too many metro regions span across state lines.
That is the most ignorant statement I’ve seen on this comment board, which is saying something.
A Message To Liberals From Tom/Estovir
You said you were leaving. You lied. Again. Your post will be gone soon, but you post it anyway.
Begone, fool. This is a privately owned blog. The owner has made it clear he does not want you here. But like the spoiled little nincompoop marxist “the rules don’t apply to me” stooge you are, you post anyway. That says all we need to know about you.
That, and you drink too much.
……………………………….
Here Tom/Estovir comes close to implying some ‘official’ status. Is he a secret employee? And why are his puppets busily generating comments as soon as new columns are posted?
It was an exercise in constitutional READING, not interpretation. No American needs an “interpreter” for the English language. Congress will never pass a law to legalize abortion. There is no constitutional or federal right to abortion, and there is no prohibition of abortion to the States, therefore, abortion is reserved to the States, and abortion must be determined to be legal or illegal by State legislatures. The Framers used the very same English language that all Americans use. It’s not the “manifest interpretation,” it’s the “manifest tenor” of the Constitution that holds dominion. Judges and Justices have NO power to legislate, to modify legislation, or to usurp the power of the legislative branch.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
@Anon, True, but also misses the mark by a bit.
I agree with what you are saying, but that you’re forgetting why the courts did Roe v Wade in the first place.
When you look at an American woman, her heath outcome would vary at the state level. Where legal and safe abortions were not available… the woman was forced to turn to back alley solutions. These were very deadly and dangerous. In some cases, while the woman may survive, she wouldn’t be able to conceive again.
Yet another woman, in a different state, could get a safe abortion and have a better health outcome.
So by crafting R v W, you create a universal standard of healthcare for women.
There are also medical reasons for terminating pregnancies. But that goes beyond the scope of the discussion.
-G
The Supreme Court of 1973 “did” Roe v. Wade, not because its Justices were incapable of reading the Constitution, but because its Justices thought corruption was good, that the end justified the means – it was in line with their philosophy of the superiority of dictatorship, the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Like Lincoln, they believed their immoral morality was above the “manifest tenor” of the Constitution and the law. In a society of laws, the laws must be strictly adhered to.
G there is lots of data on womens health – pre and post roe – Gutmacher – and arm of PP has been tracking it.
They do not make a big deal of this but the FACT is that Roe did not change Women’s health.
The number of women dying from illegal abortions and child birth was about the same as the death rate from legal abortions after Roe.
While Women’s health improved slowly after Roe – Roe did NOT disrupt that existing trend.
This is a very common problem with leftists.
The world has been improving – fairly rapidly for about 500 years.
Those on the left CONSTANTLY beleive that laws they passed have actually improved life.
The reality is they did NOTHING to change existing trends.
In fact most of the time the assorted laws that get passed to improve things – do not pass until we have already mostly implimented some version of what the law asks for.
Chld labor goes away as an example – throughout the world once a country reaches a high enough standard of living.
TYhat happens whether the country passes laws or not.
It has long been my view that while “rank-and-file” leftists truly desire to make the world a better place — though they are clearly ignorant of the mechanics of such a thing — those at the top who feed them merely seek absolute power over everyone and everything; unwilling, even, to share in the spoils. It is the dominant motivation of men since the dawn of time, on full display for all who care to look.
BTW health outcomes STILL vary by state, by sex, by city, by race.
Roe did NOTHING to alter that.
Abortion is not healthcare, and it had no effect on womens overall health or their mortality rate.
Believing otherwise does not change the facts.
There are legitimate medical reasons for terminating pregnancies – and there were before Roe. And when there was such a reason the pregnancy was terminated.
The left is CONSTANTLY ignorant of history.
I beleive that Dobbs was wrongly decided.
But the fundimental problem is that the question is deliberately wrongly framed.
Neither the right or the left want the actual right in question to be anything besides the right to an abortion.
If you treat the issue as whether you have a 9th amendment constitutional right to control of your own body.
The issue becomes pretty easy – of course you do.
But framing the question that way runs head on into Buck V. Bell – which si unfortunately still good law – and was repeatedly cited in Covid cases.
Because if the state can sterilize you against your will it can off course vaccinate you mask you, lock you down, restrict the medical treatment you can get, lock up your doctor.
But if the State can NOT do as it pleases with YOUR body – then abortion is legal and the only power the state has is attempt to ensure that the abortion does not result in the fetus’s death.
Actual constitutional rights are the proper domain of the supreme court.
The right in question is NOT the right to an abortion – there is no such right and thinking there would be is absurd.
But there is an absolute right to the control of your own body.
But recognizing such a right kills sacred cows on both the left and the right.
“I beleive that Dobbs was wrongly decided.”
– John Say
____________
In America, there is separation between church and State. This is not church. I respect your beliefs but America reads and applies the Constitution and Bill of Rights to establish governance. Congress will never pass a law making abortion legal. Please cite fundamental law for a right to abortion. Please cite a prohibition of abortion to States in fundamental law. In the absence of those citations, abortion is reserved to the States for related legislation.
You cited the guardian…
Yea. Go read it you fvcking moron
Heaven forbid that the Court’s decision result in new legislation to implement the decision. Y’know like the Constitution intended, that states have control of those decisions not expressly delegated to the federa; govt.
Anonymous – these are all the contrived cases that left wing nuts like to make up.
Your argument is false. Pro-life laws to NOT prevent removing a dead fetus. Nor do they prevent an abortion where the life of the mother is actually at serious risk. Beleive it or not there is caselaw on this back into the 1920’s – when abortion was illegal everywhere.
Left Wing nuts who do not understand the law and precident are striving mightily to pretend that they can find some unusual case.
While most pro-life laws have exceptions for threats to the life of the mother – those are unnescary – these issues were resolve more than a century ago.
You would think that none of these things came up before Roe.
Do you think none of these unusually medical situations ever occured when Abortion was completely illegal everywhere ?
Not only is there case law, but there are lots of true stories and incidents. Crushing the skull of a fetus late in the pregnancy was COMMON in the 1920’s – when abortion was completely illegal, to save the life of the mother when giving birth would kill her.
And the catholic church fought against this over 100 years ago.
Are all left wing nuts idiots ?
Are you all completely ignorant of history ?
There are very very few situations in life that have not occured over and over and over in the past.
But those who can not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
You are clueless. Roe was horrendously decided – and BTW Dobbs did NOT overturn Roe, it overturned Casey – Casey overturned Row.
Roe was an abysmally bad decision. Even RBG thought it was a mistake.
“We can not have a patchwork of traffic laws in every state. Too many metro regions span across state lines”
“We can not have a patchwork of criminal laws in every state. Too many metro regions span across state lines”
Are you completely clueless ? The laws that directly impact peoples lives everyday are enacted by the state – not the federal government.
In SOME instances states get together and agree to develop a common legal framework – such as the UCC.
In others they draft their own laws in their own way – sometimes paying attention to what other states are doing sometimes not.
Landlord tenant laws is as example both somewhat similar from state to state, and at the same time quite different in some states, and different in details in every state.
John, I note on page 5 of Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs it states “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled”. Also on page 1 of the Dobbs syllabus, it says “Roe and Casey are overruled”.
Do left wing nuts actually think before they post nonsense like this ?
Some advice to you:
When you say “We Can’t” do something – maybe look into whether we actually have – over and over and over.
When you think you have some perfect example of something that demonstrates a failure of laws you do not like.
Ask how all this might have been resolved in the past when the same things happened ?
I am thoroughly appalled at the ignorance of those on the left of logic, of history, of the ACTUAL law, of the real world, of the incredibly shallow thought.
OT
If Abraham Lincoln had not enjoyed Absolute Presidential Immunity, he would have been Drawn and Quartered for egregious and heinous Treason against the Constitution, and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
As fate would have it, Absolute Presidential Immunity failed the tyrant, Abraham Lincoln.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
“…A [TYRANNICAL] FORCE TOO STRONG FOR ME TO OVERCOME.”
“The clause in the Constitution which authorizes the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus is in the ninth section of the first article. This article is devoted to the Legislative Department of the United States, and has not the slightest reference to the Executive Department.”
“I can see no ground whatever for supposing that the President in any emergency or in any state of things can authorize the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or arrest a citizen except in aid of the judicial power.”
“I have exercised all the power which the Constitution and laws confer on me, but that power has been resisted by a force too strong for me to overcome.”
– Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, May 28, 1861
There’s a good argument for a Supreme Court of 14 justices: one for each circuit court plus the chief.
What is this “good argument.” Can you summarize it? To me it seems an arbitrary basis for the number of justices: why, logically speaking, should there be one justice one for each circuit (incidentally your math may be wrong because there are 14 circuits if you count the federal circuit)? And what happens if Congress creates a new circuit – such as splitting the 9th? That happens from time to time. Does the number of justices automatically increase?
Kansas Elder, ok, then 15 justices on the Supreme Court. Each justice ‘looks after’ one circuit but the Chief justice ‘looks after’ the Supreme Court. As it is now, the work load is unbalanced and I don’t know how it is actually divvied up.
DB while I think your argument is in good faith, there still is no right answer.
I would also note there are two distinct debates here.
The supreme court varied in size in the 19th century because it was not politicized.
The courts as a whole were PROPERLY conservative. And republicans and democrats appointed equally bad or good justices.
The big politicization fo the court came with FDR’s attempt to massively expland the power of the federal government and then FDR’s threat to expand the court to fix that.
He permanently damaged the court in doing so and it has been politicized ever since.
I would prefer 7 to 9 or 14 that increases the odds the court speaks with a clear voice.
the more justices the messier the results will be.
Even when the courts get it wrong they need to speak clearly and hopefully with one voice.
But the big issue – and Turley’s complaint is NOT what size should the court be.
That is not the debate we are having.
The issue Turley is properly upset about is that democrats want to expand the court solely to change the ideology.
Courts should ALWAYS be conservative, slow to allow change and always thwarting the power of govenrment.
It is hard enough to get that from actual conservatives. It is impossible from those on the left.
If we were talking about expanding the court for some practical reason (more justices actually make it HARDER to accomplish anything). But lets assume that were not true,
If as exampel those proposing this said – We will add 4 seats to the court and two must be republican and two must be democrats
Then we would be debating the merits of that particular size of the court.
But the purpose of expanding the court is to annoint more left wing nuts – not to deal with a real problem.
And that is precisely why Turley and most americans find it offensive.
What we see over and over from the left is the same.
Lets burn the past. destroty norms without thought.
Makes changes to accomplish poorly thought out political goals.
And to h311 with unintended conequences.
It does not matter whether it is the supreme court or politically weaponizing law enforcement,
or Catastrophic Global warming.
Or any of myriads of issues.
The left thoughtlessly rushes to burn things down.
Life improves over time.
But that improvement mostly has little to do with government.
And to the extent it does, it is because good govenrment leads to rising standard of libing and rising standard of living is what ACTUALLY leads improvement.
Rising standard of living requires new ideas – constantly.
But in the real world most new ideas FAIL – by a very large margin.
People lose a fortune betting on the next big thing.
And a few make a fortune when they get it right.
If anything change in government is WORSE.
There is in reality LESS thought – by less cabable people put into governmentg change.
And government change once accomplished is near permanent no matter how badly it fails – and usually it fails.
Old man
Dont reply
That is svelaz trying to feed the troll account, since he was banned again
Most certainly, there is a “good argument” for the imposition of communism and the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
That is:
Free stuff and free status,
Welfare and affirmative action.
To the devil with severely limited and restricted government, and freedom, free enterprise, self-reliance, and merit.
Right, comrade?
I look forward to Dems in Congress supporting the expansion to 14 with a GOP prez and Congressional majorities. I suspect they will change their minds about the wisdom of adding 5 justices.
This is another of many many questions that do not have an actual answer.
There is no perfect number of justices. There are advantages and disadvantages to most any number.
What we currently have has worked well – but not pefectly for some time.
Many state supreme courts only have 7 – there are good reasons for a smaller number.
I would personally like to see the court drop to 7 as justices die or retire.
9 is too many.
But there is a different change that should be made.
The supreme court has too much work.
What we need is a US Superior court, or a US court of appeals for the United States. That should probably have about 30 justices, that should serve on panels. These should hear appeals from district courts of appeals.
This should function liek the supreme court – but without the same degree opf finality.
This would hopefully reduce the workload of the supreme court.
Cases that the US court of appeals got right, they could leave alone. We would hope that would be most cases.
But that is just my idea.
There is NO right answer.
Jonathan: The sky is falling! The sky is falling! That’s your prediction if Biden wins a second term because that “would allow the packing of the Court with an immediate liberal majority to force through sweeping Court mandates”. That hyperbolic prediction is not going to happen.
The last time I looked the Constitution provides a President can only make appointments to the Court when there is an opening. He doesn’t have sweeping powers to pack the Court with “reliable ideological allies from the ‘left'” unless, and until there are openings on the Court. Even you first year law students could tell you that!
Funny, but you didn’t make a similar argument when DJT “packed” the court with three of his right-wing ideological allies. In fact, you wrote columns praising his appointments. So much for ideological consistency!
We know it’s campaign season when you trout out spurious claims about what will happen if Biden is re-elected. Unless Congress were to enlarge the Court Biden has no power you claim. The sky is not going to fall if Biden wins a second term. Even your ardent supporters on this blog would have to agree.
Dennis – I thought you were a lawyer. The size of the Supreme Court has been changed during our history.
Wouldn’t increasing the number of positions create a lot of new openings? In everyone else’s universe it would.
Karl Marx’s “dictatorship of the hired help,” under its latest figurehead and de facto president, the thoroughly ineligible Barack Hussein “Barry ‘I-Have-A-Statue-In-Jakarta’ Soetoro” Obama, relentlessly pursues the “fundamental transformation” of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and immutable dictatorial communist dominion over once-free Americans in once-free America.
The communists’ (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) reject the American Founder’s thesis of freedom and self-reliance in conjunction with a severely limited and restricted government.
The communists’ (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) motto and mantra are: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
Translation: “Free stuff” forever for the leeches, dependents, parasites, illegal aliens, and hired help.
Why has the American judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court, allowed the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights to be incrementally extirpated beginning in 1860?
Answer: It is peopled with anti-Constitution, anti-American, bleeding-heart, globalist communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs).
Jonathan: The sky is falling! The sky is falling! You falsely claim that if Biden wins that “would allow the packing of the Court with an immediate liberal majority to force through sweeping court mandates”. Talk about unfounded hyperbolic predictions!
The last time I looked at the Constitution the President can only make appointments to the Court when there is an opening. Unless Congress were to enlarge the Court, a President doesn’t have the authority you claim–and that’s unlikely to happen any time soon. And I think in your haste to write this column you misstated the Liberal position. You say “Liberals are again stating that the Supreme Court is [not] fundamentally ‘broken'”. I presume you meant to say “now”. But the Liberal claim in not unfounded. The ethical challenges facing Thomas and Alito, along with decisions by the conservative majority in Dobbs and other cases shows the right-wing majority is willing to ignore the law and historical case precedents in order to support its ideological preferences. That’s why the reputation of the Court has sunk to an all time low approval rating of only 41% by the public.
But then you go to say “they {Liberals] demand packing the Court with reliable ideological allies from the ‘left'”. Funny, but I don’t recall you complaining when DJT “packed” the Court with three right-wing ideological Conservatives. In fact, you praised all three of DJT’s appointment. So much for ideological consistency!
We know it’s campaign season when you trout out unfounded claims that the sky will fall if Biden is re-elected. If Biden wins again this year his only power is to make appointments if, and only if, there are openings on the Court–despite your dire predictions!
Dennis, there is a common theme of the last decade.
Those on the left talk about something stupid,
Then they DO IT.
If you do not wish your stupid proposals to be taken serious – you should stop trying to make them into reality.
There are no ethics issues with Thomas or Alito.
This is left wing nut garbage.
ALL Supreme court justices receive monetary and other perks as justices.
People pay them to speak at conferences.
The pay for vacations
Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference – is atending a US constitutional conference in Paris a vacation or a speaking engagement ?
They take them to dinner.
The pay advances on books.
There are innumerable ways that justices as well as others in government can receive money or other perqs.
You can not actually make this illegal if you tried.
I know that left wing nuts think that the only thing that exists are people with one job who are paid for their hours and that doing anything else for money or other rewards is inherently hinky. Except of course when left wing nuts do it.
Regardless, Thomas can decide that he is going to sell custom jewelry if he wishes – so long as he lives up to his obligations as a Supreme court justice, what he does with the rest of his time and what he gets paid for it is hist business.
There is not a single justice that is not getting outside income or perqs of some kind.
Aside from the fact that left wing nuts are targeting Thomas, what is unique about Thomas, is that he has limited the outside perqs to a single source.
All justices are ethically required to recuse themselves from cases where they directly and personally benefit from the outcome,
or where people they are financially entangled with personally and directly benefit from the outcome.
By limiting the number of entanglements he has, Thomas radically restricts the instances he might have to recuse himself.
I would not that “personally and directly benefit” – is NOT the same is – like the outcome.
If Virginia Thomas’s income would rise or fall consequentially based on a SCOTUS decision – Thomas must recuse.
If Virginia Thomas worked on a particular issue, or is whispering in Clarence ear – he does not have to recuse himself.
If some freind or Thomas’s or Sotomayor, or some 501C3 that paid either for speaking or paid them to travel to a conference gets the outcome they wish from a Supreme court case – that is NOT personally and directly benefiting – otherwise no Justice could be a member or or speak at any legal society or the ACLU and they would all have to be monks with a vow of silence outside the court.
Justices must recuse when people they have close connections to DIRECTLY benefit.
Not when they get the outcome they like.
I would note that evern the direct benefit aspect is somewhat fungible. Justices do NOT as an example recuse themselves from automakers cases because it is likely their 401K has investments in Ford or GM.
If you want an ACTUAL example of an ethical violation – Look to VP Biden.
Joe Biden was required by Federal Ethics laws to remove himself from involvement as VP for matters that would directly benefit his son Hunter.
As an example Joe could not ethically have any involvment at all in the firing of a prosecutor who was investigating a business that his son was part of. There are BTW emails during the obama administration from the State department to the Office of the VP BEGGING Joe to Get Hunter out of things that overlapped with Joes VP portfolio because it was a violation of federal law, And because otherwise Joe would have to remove those areas from his portfolio.
The vast majority of the time ethics is not all that hard.
The hard part of ethics is that we all always thinks ethics is for others. Fro those who do not share out views.
One of the best tests of many many things is Derschowitz’s “Shoe on the other foot test”
If as an example you were calling for the impeachment of Trump for seeking an investigation of the Biden’s conduct in Ukraine – then you should be seeking Biden and Garlands impeachment for going after Trump.
If you beleive that J6 was an “insurrection” do you also beleive the riots at the WH in May 2020 were an insurection ?
Or the violent protests against the Kavanaugh confirmation ?
Or the violent protests trying to break intot he supreme court after the Dobbs decision was leaked ?
If you beleive Trump can be removed from ballots, can Biden be removed for sending money to a state sponsor of terrorism ?
For inducing millions of illegal immigrants to invade the country ?
For selling oil from the Strategic Patroleum reserve to China – a nations that his son received millions from (as well as brokering deals to send Tankers to China).
Ethical people can have different views on what is an is not legal or proper or ethical.
But they can not have one position for themselves and those they agree with and another for enemies and those they disagree with.
Double standards and ethics do not go together.
But you would not know that because you are ethically challenged.
Breaking News:
Judges Skeptical Of Trump’s Immunity Claims
Three federal appeals court judges expressed deep skepticism on Tuesday about former President Donald J. Trump’s central defense to an indictment accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election: that he is immune to the charges because they arose from actions he took as president.
In one tough moment for Mr. Trump, who was present for the hearing but did not speak, Judge Karen L. Henderson, the sole Republican appointee on the panel, pushed back on an argument made by his lawyer, D. John Sauer, that for more than 200 years, American courts had never sat in judgment over official actions that a president had taken while in office.
Judge Henderson pointed out that until Mr. Trump was indicted, courts had never had to consider the criminal liability of former presidents for things they did in the White House.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/09/us/trump-immunity-hearing
Hope springs eternal. Except that (a) she’s one out of three judges on the panel, and (b) discerning a judge’s leaning from questions and comments at oral argument is questionable. They will often most pointedly question the side they favor as an aid to them in drafting the opinion (think about it). Of course, a rag like the NY Times, that appears to employ only idiots, would characterize that as a “tough moment for Mr. Trump.”
Henderson is correct – but for the wrong reasons.
Prior to BIDEN – no president tried to make the legal and constitutional actions of prior presidents illegal.
John Say,
That right there.
I would note that NONE of this has anything to do with the issue of presidential immunity.
Obama ordered a drone strike on a US citizen in a foreign country. He claimed – probably correctly that he could do so in the US.
No one indicted him.
The CORE question is NOT whether political opponents or a subsequent Regime decides to indict.
It is not even whether a claim can be made regarding the legality of the actions – even Though Trump’s actions WERE legal.
The CORE issue is whether the actions fall under the scope of the powers of the president.
Elections are a constitutional function. That function is constitutionally distributed between state legislatures and congress.
The Enforcement of the actions of the legislatures and congress falls on the respective executives.
Whether you like it or Not Trump is empowered as president to investigate whether an election was lawfully conducted.
And The 2020 election was inarguably about as lawless as anything since the 19th century.
Frankly I find it hillarious that the courts – which created this mess by failing to enforce election laws BEFORE the election, and then burrying their heads in the sand when that went south after the election have the temridity to judge Trump for atleast Trying to look into the mess thay were complicit in making
It is unlikely this case will be correctly decided by the DC courts – though anything is possible.
Regardless, the CORE issues have little or nothing to do with Trump – Beyond the SIMPLE question regarding whether his actions fall under the domain of the powers of the executive – and election integrity unarguably does.
The Core question which has nothing to do with Trump at all – is can subsequent justice departments second guess the legality of the actions of prior presidents.
If you do not understand how wrong allowing that will go – Reject Trump’s immunity claim and watch Republicans go trough the
Biden administration with a scythe come January.
Can Trump have Biden and everyone invcoled in sending money to Iran indicted and prosecuted in 2025 ?
Can Trump have Biden and Mayorkas indicted and charged for failing to enforce border laws – for complicity in drug dealing and human trafficking in the US ?
I can go on and on. It is very easy to spin the acts of one president as illegal in the eyes of the next.
You left wing nuts keep trying to claim there is something “special” about Trump’s conduct.
But there is not. Elections are the legitimate domain of the executive.
The “criminal” allegations that are being made in these cases are incredibly broad overreaches regarding the law.
It is near certain Scotus is going to flush the 18 US 1512C J6 prosecutions – they are clearly an overbroad extension of a law that would inarguably vioalte the first amendment if is was that broad.
That is hundreds of J6 charges gone, and half of Trump’s charges.
Much of the rest are these nonsense obstruction charges – and they are just as much garbage as when discussed under Mueller.
Further there is a constitutional way to address the problem of presidential immunity -a conviction and removal by the senate.
If you can not manage to do that, then you can not bring criminal charges for anything even touching the functions of the executive.
Presidential immunity is not carte blanche to murder people – though Obama did.
‘It is the assurance that EXACTLY what we are seeing now does not occur.
That the party in power can not weaponize the justice system against the other party.
This has not occured before – because we never had people as bat schiff crazy as current democrats in power.
“Liberals are again stating that the Supreme Court is not fundamentally “broken” because a majority of justices do not share their views on legal questions.”
Shouldn’t the first “not” be deleted?
That would be the final nail in the coffin and America would officially be a banana republic. With ballot washing, we’re pretty dang close already. At least Israeli citizens understood how dangerous it would be for everyone if the Prime Minister’s government could overrule the Supreme Court. Americans are clueless. The eat the pablum and drink the Kool-Aid fed to them by the MSM.
@Mary
Yup, and ‘yup’ suffices. We are privileged and sleepy people. Older dems think they are still voting for JFK and that the alternative to federalized abortion is a coat hangar; younger progressives think AOC is going to give them free stuff from Bloomingdale’s. They really, really do, both. Between the two, the rest of us still have to try to salvage the situation.
It would indeed be a final nail in the coffin, and we would indeed be a banana republic. After that we’d likely simply be a very large fascist state, a la mainland China. Can you get dems to vote differently, even though they hate things under Biden? I sure can’t seem to bring anyone around with the same kind of logic you employ; vote blue no matter who! And forget bringing Obama into the conversation, that man is the Dalai Lama to liberal true believers. 🤷🏻♂️ Still, we have to try.
James,
I have to agree with you on the older Democrats think they are still the party of JFK. I know my sister does. But at least she has become awake to the fact and has written both the DNC and the Biden campaign that she will vote for anyone else, even a Republican, albeit not Trump, RFK Jr. to Biden.
Seeing the actions of the Biden admin, I would say we are already a banana republic and we got a part of the country that is cheering it on.
Yeah, a fascists state is the end state our leftist friends desire. I can see them using Mao’s Culture Revolution like tactics to try.
To them, “By any means necessary!”
To which I say, “Ya might not like the response.”
@Upstate
That’s good to know, though if Trump is the candidate, I’d hope he’d get their vote. The hysteria surrounding Trump is something to behold. It really is uncanny. I can’t for the life of me parse out how dem voters don’t realize ALL dem candidates are simply mouthpieces for the party at this point, doesn’t matter which one gets elected, either. Not liking Biden doesn’t make a whit of difference.