From our Dept of WTF?

SCOTUS has ruled that corporations now have civil rights. I shit you not. SCOTUS just opened up a huge can of vile, carpetbagging, worms.

You can read the ruling here (pdf). This decision is total crap. Corporations are not human, they are always money-making operations.

I am pretty sure the First Amendment was not created to protect The Corporatocracy.From Public Citizen:

Today, in the widely-publicized Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC, the Justices ruled in a 5-4 decision that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Because today’s decision is made on First Amendment constitutional grounds, the impact will be felt not only at the federal level, but in the states and localities, including in state judicial elections.

Shed a tear for our democracy.

Today, in the case Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding the policy making process in Washington, state capitals and city halls. Today, the Supreme Court tells these corporate giants that they have a constitutional right to trample our democracy.

In eviscerating longstanding rules prohibiting corporations from using their own monies to influence elections, the court invites giant corporations to open up their treasuries to buy election outcomes. Corporations are sure to accept the invitation.

The predictable result will be corporate money flooding the election process; huge targeted campaigns by corporations and their front groups attacking principled candidates who challenge parochial corporate interests; and a chilling effect on candidates and election officials, who will be deterred from advocating and implementing policies that advance the public interest but injure deep-pocket corporations.

So, wtf were those five assholes thinking? Th impact of this decision will be widespread and horrific..bet on it.

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33 prisons just aren’t enough..

The continuing saga of California’s massively overcrowded prisons hit’s a new low this week. SCOTUS refused to hear Cali’s request to stay the order issued by a federal panel of Judge’s recently. From Jurist:

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation issued a plan Friday to reduce prison overcrowding as orderedby a special panel of federal judges in August, but the plan falls short of the order’s requirements. According to the CDCR, the plan could reduce the overcrowding rate from 190 percent to 155 percent in the next three years. This falls short of the federal court order requiring a reduction to 137.5 percent, or a release of nearly 43,000 inmates from the state’s 33 prison facilities, in the next two years. The plan provides various ways of reducing the overcrowding rate including transferring more prisoners to out-of-state prisons, GPS monitoring of inmates who violate parole, commuting sentences of inmates who are eligible for deportation, and building new facilities or converting unused space. It is not clear what action the court will take against the CDCR for failing to meet its mandate, but options include holding Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in contempt of court or instituting its own plan. With its filing of the plan, the CDCR also said that is was not abandoning its appeal of the special panel’s ruling to the US Supreme Court.

Last week, the Supreme Court denied California’s request to stay the court order temporarily. The special panel’s ruling was the result of a lawsuit brought by two inmates against the state’s prison system, alleging that the overcrowding had resulted in a failure to provide adequate physical and mental health care, depriving them of their constitutional rights. The prison system in the state was originally built to handle around 80,000 prisoners, and it is estimated that there are currently 168,000 inmates being held in those facilities.

Like rats in a cage, the inmates of California’s prison system are stacked in every available space throughout the state’s prisons. The inevitable will occur, just like when too many rats live in one cage.

No one is saying they should all be set free. What I am saying is this:

If you fuckers can’t provide them with the most basic of human services, you need to deal with the consequences of your actions. NOW muthafuckas.

This has gone on far too long. Even SCOTUS is not amused. They are human beings first, prisoners second.

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SCOTUS rules on California prison overcrowding

It has been a long time coming, but there is now a final ruling on Cali’s huge overcrowded prisons. From Jurist:

The US Supreme Court on Friday effectively required California to carry out a lower court’s order and come up with a plan to reduce the number of inmates in its prisons. In a brief order, the Court said that it would not stay an earlier order by a special federal court panel compelling California to create a plan that will reduce the state’s overcrowding from its current level of 190 percent of maximum capacity to a more manageable 137.5 percent. The Supreme Court, however, noted that California was only appealing its need to create a plan to reduce prison overcrowding and that, ultimately, the Supreme Court would have a say in the special panel’s final order for the California prison system.

In its earlier order, the lower court noted that that due to extremely poor medical care, one inmate was “dying needlessly every six or seven days.” In August 2008, California’s court-appointed prison medical overseer J.Clark Kelso asked the court to force the state to add 8 billion dollars over the next five years to bring prison healthcare to constitutionally acceptable standards. In response to a 2006 order to reduce overcrowding, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the transfer of some prisoners out-of-state. (emphasis mine)

It really pisses me the fuck off that Cali prisons are so grossly over-crowded and yet the state has been fighting tooth and nail to keep the status quo intact. I thought we had more compassionate liberals here than most states.

Apparently not.

How would lowering the prison population to 137 percent of capacity make them easier to manage? From a 2006 report:

Since 1990, the prison population has increased by 73 percent – nearly three times faster than the general adult population. California prisons currently hold about 171,000 adults; approximately 616 per 100,000 adults in California are in state prison. California ranks 17th among all states for incarceration rates.

Gee, somehow I thought we ranked higher in incarceration rates. What a relief that we are only 17th. (snark alert)

California spends over $10 Billion dollars a year on prisons according to the most recent report. That is 11 percent of our general fund.

Is it possible that we have such massive overcrowding because our state government has cut or ended most programs that rehabilitate prisoners, thereby increasing the recidivism rate? From HuffPo on this subject:

California on the other hand is going in the opposite direction. They have eliminated drug treatment programs, sex offender counseling and virtually every program which prepares inmates to live healthy, productive lives after they are released. These cuts allow the prisons to keep the maximum number of inmates incarcerated, but with no programs to occupy their time productively. Why? It certainly isn’t making us safer.

Fuck no it doesn’t make us safer. Even TX has more common sense on this issue than Cali does.

So now, Ahnold will finally have to deal with the prison overcrowding issue, as will the idiots in the State Assembly. They have wasted years fighting the fed’s on this issue, but now it’s time to shut-the-fuck-up and fix it.

All the law and order types will now commence screeching and bitching about letting criminals out on the streets. They have no one to blame but themselves.

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Fidelity to the law…

Shall we?

Yesterday Judge Sotomayor pledged fidelity to the law during day one of the Senate confirmation hearing. She spoke for about 8 minutes and then the committee members got their talk on and on and on.

As expected, Democrats praised Sotomayor while Republicans voiced their concerns…grave concerns…very, very grave concerns that Sotomayor may do on the left what they sure as shit hope Alito and Roberts will continue to do on the right.

Senator Grassley read his statement without lifting his eyes from the page and in a pissed off to be there in the first place tone of voice that indicated that he was…well, pissed off to be there in the first place.

Mayhap the Senator should eat more fiber?

Just a thought.

Anyhoo…

Senator Graham predicted Sotomayor’s confirmation…as long as she doesn’t have a total meltdown. And damn it to hell if he didn’t leave the impression that a total meltdown would be welcome as hell.

All in all, day one was a typical position statement-making day.

Day two will bring the realness.

And this bitch can’t help but note that all of this theatre is taking place so that we can maintain the current balance…so that the current court that gleefully demonstrates fidelity to conservatism, and applies 20/20 vision when they do, in their rulings will continue to be met with alternative viewpoints and legal interpretations.

Behold, sausage making Senate Judiciary Committee style!

Mercy.

Crossposted from the Angry Black Bitch.

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Sotomayor’s cases show us she is what?

They show that she swings both ways, as in right and left of the center. Which means no one can really call her a liberal or conservative.

Justice David Souter was supposed to be right of the center, which is why Bush41 nominated him. He was as far from that description as you can get.

Same goes for Sandra Day O’Connor. She was moderate on some issues, left on others. Very seldom was she right of center.

The NY Law Journal and Law.com have articles up about her cases. Her one case that bothers me is her siding with Bush43 on the gag order regarding groups that support abortion and receive federal funding. Marc Ambinder from The Atlantic has this:

David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) News breaks down Sonia Sotomayor’s most notable abortion-related decision, in which she ruled in favor of the “Mexico City Policy,” finding that the U.S. government is free to ban aid to foreign groups that support or perform abortions. (As The Hill notes, this decision won her praise from at least one Republican.) Brody’s prediction: that since Sotomayor has never ruled directly on the legality of abortion, she will be pressed even harder on the issue during her confirmation process.

Of course, that doesn’t really tell us much about her opinion regarding the legality of Roe v Wade.

I like Dahlia Lithwick’s article on Sotomayor and the logic she presents on why the Rethugs haven’t got a leg to stand on with regard to tarring and feathering her as a friggin liberal, activist, racist Judge:

Instead of wading into a bruising identity politics war they cannot possibly win, conservatives-even the angriest conservatives-should wade into Sotomayor’s vast legal writings. There are hundreds of cases for them to read and parse and quote out of context. Let’s have this confirmation battle on the merits, rather than in the sinkhole of unfounded character attacks. The real problem for Sotomayor’s opponents is that anyone who has closely read her opinions won’t find much to build a case on. As the indefatigable team at SCOTUSblog has chronicled here and here, on the appeals court, Judge Sotomayor has taken a fairly moderate, text-based approach to the cases before her, placing her much closer to retiring Justice David Souter than to the late Justice William Brennan on the judicial activism spectrum.

She has been overturned three times at the Supreme Court, and may well be again soon. But she was also a state* prosecutor, a corporate lawyer, and a Bush I appointee to the federal bench. As the White House points out in its talking points today, “In cases where Sotomayor and at least one judge appointed by a Republican president were on the three-judge panel, Sotomayor and the Republican appointee(s) agreed on the outcome 95% of the time.”

Lithwick tackles all the bs the Rethugs will throw at her. It’s a good read and I highly recommend it.

So, the bottom line for me, is this: She really isn’t known to be left or right of the center all the time. My hope is that she turns out like David Souter and surprises the shit out of everyone, including Obama. Below is Jonathan Turley this evening on Countdown, discussing Judge Sotomayor.

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Sotomayor-Muy Bueno!!!!

What a great way to wake up this morning..to the presser that announces Sonia Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court Justice.

As Obama stated, she will be the only Justice with trial experience. She will need it to deal with the rightwing justices.From a HuffPo article:

A Puerto Rican woman with 16 years of court experience who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Sotomayor is a graduate of Yale Law and served as an editor of the Yale Law Review. Administration officials note that Sotomayor would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years.

Irony alert: Bush41 nominated Souter and Sotomayor for their respective positions. How can the Rethugs argue with that? HuffPo has an article up on that angle as well.

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SCOTUS refuses to hear medical marijuana challenges by San Diego and San Bernadino counties.

Thank Gawd for small miracles! From FindLaw:

The Supreme Court won’t hear another challenge to California’s decade-old law permitting marijuana use for medical purposes.

The high court on Monday refused to hear appeals from San Diego and San Bernardino counties, which say the justices have never directly ruled on whether California’s law trumps the federal controlled substances laws.

San Diego supervisors had sued to overturn the state law after it was approved by voters in 1996, but lower courts have ruled against them.

San Diego and San Bernardino counties argued that issuing identification cards to eligible users, as required by the 1996 state law, would violate federal law, which does not recognize the state measure.

A federal appeals court ruled that ID card laws “do not pose a significant impediment” to the federal Controlled Substances Act because that law is designed to “combat recreational drug use, not to regulate a state’s medical practices.”

The cases are County of San Bernardino v. California, 08-897 and County of San Diego v. San Diego NORML, 08-887.

In spite of what many people think..San Diego county is pretty friggin red..and they have been fighting this for over a decade..to me it seems like for-friggin-evah!

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SCOTUS lowers Exxon’s spill damages.

Fuckers…It happened 19 years ago and the rat bastards haven’t paid any of the damages, but they have taken it all the way through the courts. Now, SCOTUS has taken the case and lowered the $2.5 billion punitive damages award. Punitive damages are designed to punish a wrongdoer, while compensatory damages compensate a wronged party for the loss they suffered. From CNN:

The high court concluded that punitive damages should roughly match actual damages from the environmental disaster, which were about $507 million. Lower courts were asked to reassess the jury verdict, extending the years-long litigation in the case.

The ‘liberals’ on the court agreed with part of the ruling.Not only did the Valdez destroy thousands upon thousands of mammals, it also destroyed much of their habitat and the fishing that locals depended upon for their livelihood.

But its all about the bottom line for Exxon..not for owning up to anything..just spending millions in Lawyers Fees in order to lower the hit to their fucking bottom line.

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Squeakers . . .

A very close call – Yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States, by a vote that was a real squeaker, restored our most basic Constitutional right, habeas corpus. Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com via Memeorandum wrote the best article. It is titled, “Supreme Court restores habeas corpus, strikes down key part of Military Commissions Act.” To quote the post’s key opening and closing paragraphs:

In a major rebuke to the Bush administration’s theories of presidential power — and in an equally stinging rebuke to the bipartisan political class which has supported the Bush detention policies — the U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 5-4 decision (.pdf), declared Section 7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 unconstitutional. The Court struck down that section of the MCA because it purported to abolish the writ of habeas corpus — the means by which a detainee challenges his detention in a court — despite the fact that the Constitution permits suspension of that writ only “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion.”

. . . UPDATE: Three of the five Justices in the majority — John Paul Stevens (age 88), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 75) and David Souter (age 68) — are widely expected by court observers to retire or otherwise leave the Court in the first term of the next President. By contrast, the four judges who dissented — Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito — are expected to stay right where they are for many years to come.

John McCain has identified Roberts and Alito as ideal justices of the type he would nominate, while Barack Obama has identified Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ginsberg (all in the majority today). It’s not hyperbole to say that, from Supreme Court appointments alone, our core constitutional protections could easily depend upon the outcome of the 2008 election.

Almost too close to call – by the end of the Democratic primary, it was a narrow win in the delegate count by Sentor Obama and a narrow win of the popular vote by Senator Clinton. Hillary Clinton started as the front runner in the campaign. By the end of the primary season, she had lost her lead though the race remained a squeaker. There are many guesses about why that happened. Many of her supporters believed that sexism was the reason. It is a close call according to this story from the New York Times (6/13/08) – “Media and Critics Split Over Sexism in Clinton Coverage” via Memeorandum. To quote:

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic Party, who says he was slow to pick up on charges of sexism because he is not a regular viewer of cable television, is taking up the cause after hearing an outcry from what he described as a cross-section of women, from individual voters to powerful politicians and chief executives.

. . . Mike Barnicle, a panelist on MSNBC, said that Mrs. Clinton was “looking like everyone’s first wife standing outside a probate court.” Tucker Carlson, also on MSNBC, said, “When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.”

The establishment news media were faulted too. The New York Times wrote about Mrs. Clinton’s “cackle” and The Washington Post wrote about her cleavage.

Ken Rudin, an editor at National Public Radio, appeared on CNN, where he equated Mrs. Clinton with the actress Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.” “She’s going to keep coming back, and they’re not going to stop her,” Mr. Rudin said. He later apologized.

Call it like it is – Whether it was sexism or something else that caused Senator Clinton to lose the contest, even those of us who did not vote for her owe her a great deal of credit. This list of credits owed from Tapped sounds reasonable: “Seven changes we owe Hillary Clinton.” Her accomplishments include: being a front-runner who stood for women, forced talk about sexism, united Democrats on Iraq, figured out health care, engaged everybody until the end, provided national security leadership, and broadened the question of Progressives and race. I believe that Senator Clinton will keep her word and help Democrats come together.

Calling for Unity, Action Day – The Democratic party has been working to maintain party unity from the beginning, though those efforts occasionally got derailed. But now is the right time to call again for closing ranks and working together for a victory in November. Democracy for America says they have a plan:

Everyone from Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton to Howard Dean and Speaker Pelosi are asking for Democrats to unite.

Now is the time to take the next step. Together, DFA members across the country will turn words into action on June 21. We will start the process of bringing Democrats together by reaching out to our friends and neighbors and asking them to unite for a progressive victory in November.

Squeakers cause anxiety. Two such as the SCOTUS decision and the Democratic primary remind us of what is at stake for the country this year. If we remain focused on the goals of the party to win Republican contests to be decided in the fall, we need not be overly anxious about the other squeakers as they come along.

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)

My “creativity and dreaming” post today is at Making Good Mondays.

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Jonathan Turley on SCOTUS Gitmo ruling

Jonathan Turley discusses both sides of the SCOTUS aisle on yesterdays ruling that Gitmo detainees have the right to Habeas Corpus.

Turley is a Constitutional Law Professor at George Washington University.

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any ideas? i am fresh out

i know that i have been remiss in posting. i have been taking a step back because of a variety of reasons- not the least being i hate summer but, as summer winds down- i guess i should get back into the fray. i don’t know what all of the answers are to the mess we are in. the blame has already been laid squarely on our own shoulders for being so hands off for so many years- relying on the people who we had elected and trusted to look out for our well being. yeah. see where that got us. so- here we are. what do we do now? damned if i know.

my friend and i were talking about the sad state of affairs- and activism. she is of the mind that it is essentially useless- folks spinning their wheels and being distracted while rome burns- so to speak. i agree to a certain extent. if all we do is foment, then yes, it is useless. but i think many of us agree on that point. the bigger point that we went on to talk about was the outmoded way we all think. we rely on what has worked in the past- not thinking of how to do things now. i think that we are at a point where we are realizing this- and want to move forward. perfect time for progressives to step forward and take the helm.

but- there’s that pesky thing called ‘the masses.’ the masses don’t move as quickly as a few. obviously. otherwise it wouldn’t have taken america as a whole 7 years and counting to be fed up with the boy wonder who has tried really hard to destroy an entire planet. so- onward and upward. i think that at the very least we have a sense of solidarity. now what are we going to do about it? how can we put it to the best use? if we don’t use the momentum, we’ll stall.

my thoughts are leading towards voting straight democratic in 2008. now, bz- don’t get your panties in a wad it is the best shot we have of saving the judicial branch- and consequently, our country. the right is talking about keeping the federal court system “conservative” for 2 generations. i want desperately to change our election system but we don’t have the time or the resources to do it this time around. i am less than impressed with the current crop of democrats- as a whole- but i am again looking at them as a braking system- not as a hope.

look at what 2 years will have bought us- baby steps for sure- but if we can lengthen our majority in congress and elect a democratic president- we will buy ourselves some time to do some much needed work overhauling our electoral system- and quite frankly- our infrastructure- not to mention renewing diplomatic ties. the economy is tanking folks. we can’t put our heads in the sand or rest on ideals- we have to be pragmatic and get ready to hunker down. we have a country that is in as bad a shape as the gulf coast region- and we need to put our gloves on and and get ready to get dirty. it isn’t going to be pretty- and we are going to have to sacrifice- but we have to do what we have to do. which is?

cross posted at life’s journey

tags:infrastructure, common sense, solidarity, progressive ideas

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Bush and his whores continue to sink the Country while Congress just watches.

Once upon a time, there was a Place called the Department of Justice. It was a noble institution, one we could always be sure would do the right thing and that politicization of the Department would never occur to taint their decisions or prosecutions….

Those days of old are gone sportfans..seriously..they have been for over six years now. Our DoJ is headed by a man who has sold his soul to the devil…aka George W. Bush. The Department has been a haven for liars, carpetbaggers and charlatans that care more about the Asshat in the Oval Office and covering his lily-white, privileged ass than doing the “People’s” business. We also have the whores working out of the White House..you know..Rover,Bolton, Jennings, a myriad of other whores and former whore-in-waiting Harriet Mier’s to thank for our downward spiral into the abyss.

The only way to break the back of this horrible beast is for our Congress to do its job. Their job, which our founding fathers put in writing, was among other things… to protect our country from an evil dynasty of men who would rather lie to us, spy on us, squander human lives, drain our federal budget, take care of their friends, cronies and business partners AND sacrifice what’s left of our Constitution….for personal gain.

Why did this happen now when Congress is planning a month long vacation which is thinly disguised as time to go home and ‘talk to their constituents’ you might ask yourself..I know I did. There are many different scenarios and they all stink to high heaven.

Read more

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Big Brother May Be Watching ~ But You Can’t Prove It

Micah Wright/Progaganda Remix Used with Permission

 

Tangled in the Sticky Wicket of the Bushco State, Court Says “Do Not Pass Go”

Last week’s most distressing ~ or more precisely, frightening ~ news was that two Republican appointed judges of the Sixth Circuit reached what strikes me as a Kafka-esque ruling in denying a group of Plaintiffs who were very likely spied upon without warrants their day in court ~ based on an exceedingly narrowly drawn, & indeed, twisted, technicality, with the result that you, my friend, however much you value your privacy, & regardless whether spying on you is legal or not, cannot contest it.

A very bizarre result ~ a jaw-dropper, in fact. Last I checked, we are all still living in the USA as opposed to some flimsy 3rd-world dictatorship, where, as Karl Rove warned us, the guys in charge are colonels in mirrored sunglasses.
Unlike the lower court decision by Anna Diggs Taylor which found that the administration had admitted to the program & the fact that it had been carried out with no oversight, the Sixth Circuit, hearing the appeal, did not address the legality of the spying program itself (presumed to be the one Americans would not know about if not for the New York Times telling us about it, & the same, we have to presume, put into effect by Presidential fiat over the initial Department of Justice’s & even the FBI’s objections.

The judges instead chose (at the present DOJ’s urgings) to focus on whether the Plaintiffs, who were, among others. lawyers representing Muslim detainees whose attorney-client privileged communications would have been seriously breached if the government was listening in without a warrant. They were turned away on the basis that they lacked standing to sue.

“Standing” is lawyer-speak & a basic legal concept, requiring that some harm has actually been done: in other words, you can’t file a claim before a court unless & until some actual, legally-recognized harm has been done to you. I have no quarrel with that tenet, but the decision as a whole is also an exceedingly cramped one in that the judges, 2 to 1, also accepted uncritically the DOJ’s argument that any evidence could be forbidden to the Plaintiffs based on the government’s say-so that any spying programs are “state secrets.”

The LA Times reported that Judge “Batchelder wrote: ‘The plaintiffs do not — and because of the state secrets doctrine cannot — produce any evidence that any of their communications have ever been intercepted by the NSA, under the TSP, without warrants.’

“Rather, she said, the plaintiffs had asserted ‘a mere belief’ that their overseas contacts were the types of people being targeted by the NSA.

“The ruling presents ‘a Catch-22,’ said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and one of the plaintiffs.

Read more about it here.

The state secrets argument is based on a 1953 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Reynolds that, according to the Constitution Project, has resulted in overbroad readings of the doctrine, &, ironically enough, in a case where the widows of Air Force personnel sued the government for the wrongful deaths of their husbands ~ they were forced to drop the case. But it turned out (much later) that there were no legitimate “state secrets” involved ~ the government was just trying to conceal its own wrongdoing. (Proving, yet again, that no irony is too heavy to be lost on, or ignored by, Bushco & its friends in the judiciary.)

Read more about it Here.

But the question is not entirely resolved. Several other suits, including one to be heard in the Ninth Circuit, sitting in California, will be addressing the similar questions, & are not bound by the Sixth Circuit’s decision.

On another front, & perhaps a more fruitful one, “Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) called the court decision ‘a disappointing one that was not made on the merits of the case, yet closes the courthouse door to resolving it.’ [A] panel has been conducting an investigation into the warrantless wiretapping program. Last month, it issued subpoenas to the administration, seeking documents related to the program’s “authorization and legal justification.”

The Bush Administration has already said it won’t comply with the subpoenas, & a full-blown Constitutional crisis may well be in the making. Since Bushco’s arrogance seems to know no bounds, it does appear that nothing short of drastic remedies will loosen its death grip on American democracy. At this point, it seems to be our last, best hope.

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Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court’s Drama Queen

Justice Anthony Kennedy loves his job. He loves being the center of attention. He sits squarely in the catbird seat as it were, able to single-handedly affect change as no other individual in our government…this side of George Bush of course. He has more power than the head Supreme, Justice Roberts, because with the rest of SCOTUS evenly split between liberal and conservative views…it’s Justice Kennedy they all look to for the final vote, the final answer in a complex question of who’s right and who’s wrong.

To understand how this egotistical, self- described ‘nerd’ relishes his position of power and authority, one should look at his childhood. It was spent in the company of adults more times than not. Raised in Sacramento California, both his parents were part of the CA legislature and their friends were the famous and not-so-famou s of Californian legislative history..like Governor Earl Warren for example, who Kennedy ‘worked’ for as a young child of nine at the Statehouse. Since Kennedy had a hard time developing childhood friendships, his father saw to it that a job was created for the child at the statehouse. Damn, how does that work? I want a job created for me working for the Governor damnit..but I digress.

Justice Kennedy seems most at home when he is lecturing and condescending to others. He relishes his role as the deal-breaker in all SCOTUS cases now that Sandra O’Connor has retired. There are four obvious conservative s with Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas. Then there are Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens for the moderate to liberal pov. Kennedy waffles back and forth with little to tell us which way the wind is going to blow for him on each case. He sided with the moderates on the Military Tribunals and most abortion cases, yet it was Kennedy who wrote the opinion upholding the federal partial-birth abortion ban. This past week he voted with the four “Bushies” on the issues of freedom of speech, campaign ads, faith-based funding by the government and the role of the EPA in saving our planets non-human species. A recent study also showed that Kennedy is the most consistent Supreme who votes to strike down more state and federal laws combined than any of his colleagues. He is no friend of ‘states rights’..this I can pretty much state with authority.

Justice Kennedy also thinks SCOTUS is more important than Congress when it comes to affecting the lives of the average American. He might be right..but still, I take issue with this quote from him: “You know, in any given year, we may make more important decisions than the legislative branch does—precluding foreign affairs, perhaps,” he said. “Important in the sense that it will control the direction of society.”. When asked to name the most important qualities for achievement in his field, he replied: “To have an understanding that you have an opportunity to shape the destiny of the country.”

Wait a minute pal..isn’t your friggin job to stay the hell out of morality and merely define the rule of law? Correct me if I am wrong Anthony baby..but aren’t you just supposed to protect the Constitution and define the laws created by our legislative branch? What balls this man has..seriously, my dear reader..his grandiose view of his job scares the shit out of me. This man defines ‘activist judge’ to a proverbial tee, don’t you think?

What really causes me to despise Justice Anthony Kennedy was his role in Bush v. Gore. Yes, my dear reader..that case which decided that George Bush was our President instead of Al Gore. To quote from a New Republic article on Kennedy: “Kennedy initially joined the four liberals who wanted to allow the Florida recount to continue, but, after a brief show of agonizing, he changed his mind. This left Justices Breyer and Souter—who thought they could win Kennedy’s vote—with their hands extended, played for dupes. In the per curiam opinion itself, which Kennedy drafted on his own, his muddy writing style and self-aggrandizing conception of the Court’s role are on full display. “When contending parties invoke the process of the courts,” he wrote pompously, “it becomes our unsought responsibility to resolve the federal and constitution al issues the judicial system has been forced to confront.” Note the false modesty and the feint at shrinking from the burden of an “unsought responsibility.” Of course, it was the Court, at Kennedy’s insistence, that decided to settle a debate Congress would have resolved.”

This flip-flopping sumbitch possibly cost Al Gore the election. In one of the most divisive elections ever held in modern history..Kennedy had the nad’s to change his mind midway through the process. For this alone, I will never be able to forgive him and I personally want him to spend eternity washing the feet of Jerry Falwell in hell while he has to listen to the non-stop styling’s of American Idol first round losers who’s voices resemble the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.

Yesterday, Kennedy once again sided with the conservative s, although he did not participate in writing the decision. He also stated he didn’t agree with the ruling in it’s entirety. My question is..why would you vote with them if you couldn’t support the complete ruling. Racial equality is something our country has danced around and attempted to provide since the civil war. What part of it was expendable Justice Kennedy?

SCOTUS agreed Friday to review whether Gitmo detainees may go to federal court to challenge their indefinite confinement. . In April, the court turned down an identical request, which makes this an incredible and highly unusual move. The last time this subject came up SCOTUS only had 3 of the necessary 4 Justices that wanted to review the case. True to form, Kennedy was on the fence. It is unclear if he flip-flopped again. The question this time is why a Military Tribunal over our regular court system. This case won’t come before them until after October sadly..but its something to give us hope. What side will Kennedy come down on? As noted earlier, he sided with the left side of the court in the Hamden case.

It seems the right doesn’t mind “activist” judges so long as the bastards go ‘their way’. I would like to bring this around full circle with some citations from a TomPaine article about some of the recent decisions by SCOTUS that I mentioned earlier, where Justice Kennedy held the swing vote. :

The conservative activists on the Supreme Court decreed in a series of 5-4 decisions:

• Individuals, who believe their tax dollars are being unconstitutionally misused by the White House to promote religious beliefs, aren’t allowed to enter a courthouse to make their case.

• The Environmental Protection Agency can avoid its responsibili ties under the Endangered Species Act, even though it’s a law reflecting the public will as passed by the democratically-elected Congress.

• Corporations can once again use their checkbooks to flood the public airwaves with political ads during election season, again overruling Congress.

It’s critical to recognize these decisions—along with earlier decisions to end privacy between a woman and her doctor, and to make it harder to challenge pay discriminati on—are part of a pattern. Justice Anthony Kennedy played an important role in each and every one of these decisions.

As long as Justice Anthony Kennedy likes to play “Drama Queen” for a day..we have faint hope that not all rulings will go along with the rightwingers bullshit scheme for America. But I ain’t holding my breath dear reader..and neither should you.

Tags: Gitmo, Torture, Habeas Corpus, SCOTUS, Justice Kennedy

Racial Equality, Womens right to choose, Equal Pay for Women, McCain-Feingold

Cross-posted at 

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SCOTUS screws us again..Thanks Bush

Today the highest court in the land shit on the first amendment once regarding students, and then turned around and allowed swiftboaters to continue to do their dirty work.

Explain those two rulings to me and how they don’t contradict each other someone, anyone. In fact, explain the four rulings to me today..as this article in WaPo points out..the fucking neocons went 4 for 4 today using baseball lingo. That means they won all four cases.

Bastards can thank George Bush for setting up the Supreme just the way they like it…Alito, Roberts and the other two bible-thumping neocons gave the green light to BushCo’s ‘faith-based’ funding bs as well.

It was a crappy day overall for Lady Justice. Something tells me she is going out and getting drunk tonight. I wouldn’t blame her if she did. Bush has stacked the Supreme Court for what looks like decades to come, judging by the ages of Roberts, Alito and company. Only the liberals are old..and that ain’t good my dear reader.

Tags: Bush, SCOTUS, First Amendment, Bong Hits 4 Jesus, Faith based Funding

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