When Elizabeth Warren Talks People Should Listen

Elizabeth Warren unloads on Republicans for saying they'll block Obama's attempt to replace Scalia:

Warren, a veteran law professor, also cited Article II of the US Constitution, which gives the president the power to nominate Supreme Court justices with the "advice and consent of the Senate." She quipped that she "can't find a clause that says, 'except when there's a year left in the term of a Democratic President.'"

"Senate Republicans took an oath just like Senate Democrats did. Abandoning the duties they swore to uphold would threaten both the Constitution and our democracy itself. It would also prove that all the Republican talk about loving the Constitution is just that — empty talk," she said.

For his part, Obama has said he plans to fulfill his "constitutional responsibility to nominate a successor in due time." Some Democrats have pointed to the confirmation of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and confirmed during the 1988 election year.

When Republicans say ridiculous things, they should be ridiculed.

Some Are More Equal Than Others

From Absolute power corrupts absolutely:

This is a quotation from Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Acton was preceded by William Pitt the Elder, who voiced a similar thought in a House of Lords speech in 1770:

"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins."

From Supreme Court rejects corporate campaign spending limits by James Vicini:

The Supreme Court struck down on Thursday long-standing limits on corporate spending in U.S. political campaigns, such as this year's congressional races and the 2012 presidential contest.

The 5-4 ruling was a defeat for the Obama administration and the campaign finance law's supporters who said that ending the limits would unleash a flood of corporate money into the political system to promote or defeat candidates.

The ruling by the conservative majority transformed the political landscape and the rules on how money can be spent in future presidential and congressional elections, which already have broken new spending records with each political cycle.

"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS."

The corporate animal has the Supreme Court’s thumb on the scale, as well as its own. Democracy in the United States is a joke.

The libertarians and the tea party people are pissed off about being taxed. I’m more pissed off about the fact that some the money I spend to buy things goes to the buying of elections and the diminishing of the power of my vote.

How Low Can You Go?

From When 50 is Too Old by Richard Primus:

It is now widely understood that presidents must value youth in their Supreme Court nominees. The reason lies in the combination of two factors: life tenure and the party system. Because justices serve for life, presidents can increase their influence on the law by choosing young nominees. Given two-party competition, this incentive can provoke an unhealthy game of how-low-can-you-go: If one party nominates young justices, the other party risks ceding long-term control of the judiciary if it does not choose justices who are at least as young. As a result, it is hard for anyone much older than 50 to be a serious contender to fill David Souter's seat.

Things have not always been this way. Between 1945 and 1980, both parties wanted their nominees to dominate the Court, but the locus of competition lay in winning presidential elections, and perhaps in choosing effective justices, rather than in choosing young ones. In that period, there were 18 new justices, and their median age upon appointment was 55.5 years. Crucially, 55.5 was the median age for the eight Democratic appointees and also for the ten Republican appointees.

Read the rest here.

A Mockery Of Justice

A tidbit from Justice Kennedy: the Supreme Court's man in the middle by Michael Doyle:

In Boumediene v. Bush, Kennedy's 5-4 opinion extended habeas corpus rights to foreign prisoners seeking to challenge their detention at Guantanamo.

"It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed," a vehemently dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia said.

How can Antonin Scalia make such an irresponsible statement? How can a Supreme Court judge be against the rule of law? How can a Supreme Court judge have such little regard for personal liberty? This man is making a mockery of justice, and does not belong on the Supreme Court.

What is habeas corpus?

Britannica.com says it is:

…an ancient common-law writ, issued by a court or judge directing one who holds another in his custody to produce the body of the person before the court for some specified purpose. Although there have been and are many varieties of the writ, the most important is that used to correct violations of personal liberty by directing judicial inquiry into the legality of a detention. The habeas corpus remedy is recognized in the countries of the Anglo-American legal system but is generally not found in civil-law countries, although some of the latter have adopted comparable procedures.

The origins of the writ cannot be stated with certainty. Before the Magna Carta (1215), a variety of writs performed some of the functions of habeas corpus. During the Middle Ages habeas corpus was employed to bring cases from inferior tribunals into the king’s courts. The modern history of the writ as a device for the protection of personal liberty against official authority may be said to date from the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509), when efforts were made to employ it on behalf of persons imprisoned by the Privy Council. By the reign of Charles I, in the 17th century, the writ was fully established as the appropriate process for checking the illegal imprisonment of people by inferior courts or public officials.

Read the rest here.

Without some form of “protection of personal liberty against official authority”, what are we left with? Well, fascism comes to mind.

Here is part of what Britannica.com says about fascism:

Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from each other, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.

I respectfully submit to Antonin Scalia that more Americans will probably be killed BECAUSE of Guantanamo and the LACK of habeas corpus there. I know that if my mother, father, sister, or brother were detained there (with all their rights stripped away) I would be extremely angry at those holding them.

I am also deeply offended and insulted by Scalia’s fear-mongering in service to America’s “extreme militaristic nationalism.” A Supreme Court justice should not be making predictions that are not based on any factual evidence. Especially predictions that support a particular partisan position.

We talk often of the global economy. We need to talk more about global justice.

Antonin Scalia should resign from the Supreme Court. Someone who does not support justice for all does not belong there. Someone who has so little faith in our courts to convict the guilty does not belong there.

Gun Worship

The Supreme Court says we get to have guns.

This makes President Bush happy.

From High court strikes down gun ban by Bill Mears:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a sweeping ban on handguns in the nation's capital violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

In a statement, President Bush also praised the decision, saying he agreed with the court's interpretation of the Constitution.

On a local television news broadcast last night a person being interviewed at a gun shop said that gun ownership was a right granted to us by God. I have never heard that one before, and do not know how one goes about proving it.

My neighbors and fellow citizens of the United States have a hard time keeping themselves safe when using automobiles and fireworks. The intended functions of both are not meant to cause any bodily harm or death, yet they do.

“In 2006, eleven people died and an estimated 9,200 were treated in emergency departments for fireworks-related injuries in the United States.” Fireworks are illegal where I live, yet every Fourth of July brings me the fear of my property being set on fire by one of my neighbors. They have managed to do this in the past, so it seems likely that they may do it again.

“In 2006, 42,642 people were killed in traffic accidents.” All these deaths from a machine whose function is transportation. A machine that requires a license, registration, insurance, an age requirement, and the passing of a test before it can be operated anywhere in the United States.

So when the Supreme Court says that my fellow Americans and my neighbors have the right to have a device in their homes whose main function is to kill, I get a little nervous.

My neighbors are irresponsible in their use of automobiles and fireworks. I don’t have much faith that they will use firearms responsibly either. And of course, they already don't.

Since the Constitution supposedly (and apparently even the Almighty) says that my neighbors can have guns in their homes, could we at least take some steps to ensure that they use them as safely as possible? Things like a license, registration, insurance, an age requirement, and the passing of a test before they can be operated anywhere in the United States might be a good start.

After all, I can't pursue my Constitutionally (actually the Declaration of Independence, but close enough) protected right to the pursuit of happiness if I'm dead.

Bush Loses, Justice Wins

And Bush is pouting like a two year old. "We'll abide by the court's decision, that doesn't mean I have to agree with it."

From Guantanamo ruling - the fallout by Kevin Connolly:

Whatever you think about the morality and legitimacy of the Guantanamo detention facility, there can be no doubting the determination of the Bush administration to stick to its policy, regardless of judicial attempts to undermine it.

The legal implications of Thursday's judgement are huge - after all, it is at least possible that it might end with American judges ordering the American government to release foreign detainees.

It means that even though the US government deliberately built this camp in an American base on the island of Cuba - so that it is not on American soil - and even though the detainees are not US citizens, they are deemed to have rights under the constitution.

The Bush argument that those rights are forfeit because America is fighting a "war on terror" was dismissed.

Read more here.