JUSTICE KENNEDY RETIRING - Part 2

Rachel Maddow gave me some hope tonight.

As someone calling into the WNYC special program said, why couldn't he have waited to announce it, so that mcturtle wouldn't rush through a successor?

Many people said that Reid ending the filibuster for judicial nominations for short-term gain would be something that people would rue in the long run.

R3, Harry Reid? I though the GOP did it.

Roe's end.

It's the general stuff - voting rights, Medicare, Social Security, environment, that scare me more than "gay rights." Yes, we now have the "right" to marry. But, there's not much else. We're not a protected group and there's no laws protecting us in a lot of areas. It's not a federal offense to discriminate against gays in housing, employment, etc. So the "loss" of gay rights isn't really may main concern in light of Kennedy's retirement. Though, a conservative court could very likely usher in a big wave of discrimination on the basis of "religious freedom." And, will it be so bad that we, instead of not advancing, actually go backwards - Lawrence v. Texas is overrturned and states again have sodomy laws on the books?

Inside track is that Trump will nominate a gay judge. Will lean conservative but will be openly gay. 2 names floating.

R3 is just repeating the same lie about Reid that got shredded in the last thread. He's a-trollin'.

Pelosi is ... wow.

[quote] Pelosi Calls Ocasio-Cortez Upset a Random Outlier, Also Dismisses Rumbling in Distance as “Probably Nothing”

I suspect that Trump will nominate someone (conservative, of course) quickly. And McConnell will push to have a vote before Jan. 1. That way it doesn't matter what happens with Dems in November.

Charles Blow

Trump Remakes America

Donald Trump, a lying, bullying, womanizing autocrat-idolizer, is fundamentally transforming America in very real and lasting ways, in ways that have left decent people slack-jawed, enraged and exasperated.

He has overtaken and destroyed the structure of the Republican Party, unleashing its ugliest elements to chant his praise and stroke his ego like drunken apostates dancing around a golden calf.

He has attacked American institutions that seek truth and justice, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the press, because he wants to weaken America’s faith in truth and facts themselves.

He has shunned and denigrated America’s traditional allies and cozied up to America’s traditional enemies, in one of the most bewildering presidential postures the country may ever have seen.

And now, with the retirement of the Supreme Court moderate Anthony Kennedy, Trump will be able to solidify the court’s conservative majority for a generation.

Elections have consequences. Not voting has consequences. Falling for Russian propaganda has consequences. Voter suppression has consequences. Taking the absolutely ridiculous position that there would be little difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has consequences.

The most lasting consequence is in the Supreme Court, which has lifetime appointments.

So now, if you are a woman, a minority, an immigrant, a person who is L.G.B.T., the rights you have acquired could be in jeopardy.

If you are just a decent person who believes in expanding equality, respecting choice and identity and civil rights, your vision of America is in jeopardy.

This is for the long game; this is for all the marbles.

Conservative strategic thinkers are not caught up in the moment’s outrages and absurdities. They are thinking in terms of generations and eras.

They know as well as I know that the demographic tide is moving against them and will soon wash away much of their power.

Therefore, their strategy is to slow that progress as much as possible, if not reverse it.

That is why there is so much energy to restrict immigration, both illegal and legal. That is why there is such a push for voter restrictions, suppression and disenfranchisement. That is why there was so little resistance to mass incarceration.

Conservatives want to arrest America’s development and send our country into regression. This is about the maintenance of their power long after they have lost the dominance of numbers.

The courts are an insurance policy in their strategy of impeding progress.

Conservatives want to reserve the right to use religion as a weapon, to control other people’s bodies and to judge some people as less worthy of full participation in the American experience because of whom they love, how they identify, where they are from or which God they worship.

They want to protect what they call “American culture,” which is more aptly described as white culture. No matter how advantage was gained, no matter how privilege was acquired, it is the province of the deniable, scrubbed clean of blood and tears. Present privilege, power and prestige must be preserved.

That is one reason that the court’s decisions on the Affordable Care Act were closely watched and in some ways controversial. At its core, Obamacare is about the interconnectedness of civil societies. It asked those with more to help support the health and well-being of those with less.

This is precisely why conservatives hate it. They prefer a Darwinian ecosystem of care in which health corresponds directly with wealth.

Obamacare required the shifting of some of that wealth — redistribution, as we call it — for an overall healthier society. But in conservative circles, your well-being isn’t linked to mine. To them, shifting wealth was shifting power, and power in this grand battle over what America was, is and can be is the only thing that matters.

Trump’s imprint on the courts will help the conservatives preserve more of that power for a longer period of time.

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This is one of the reasons that Trump’s base will never abandon him. He is their orange life raft in the middle of a blue ocean.

He is reassurance that although progress and enlightenment may feel like an uncontainable, unstoppable human yearning, it can be delayed and occasionally derailed.

Whoever Trump appoints to the Supreme Court will most likely be there for the rest of my life. I will live the rest of my days with Trump’s legacy. That’s a hell of a thought.

Over that time, the court will operate with his undeniable imprint. In this way, a man whose candidacy was a joke, whose election was a fluke tainted by fraud, and whose presidency is a bane will get the chance to remake the American bench.

This is an abomination and this moment of revulsion must burn itself into the psyche of the American electorate. This is how a country’s progress can be crippled. It’s happening right now in large part because too many people thought that it could not.

[quote]Inside track is that Trump will nominate a gay judge.

That's an interesting possibility. I think it will be the Indian guy, Amul Thapar. It will be very hard then for senators to vote against the first Asian and Indian justice.

He came close to nominating Pryor last time. Maybe it's Pryor's turn.

Trump may have lied to bring this about. How stupid of the Supremes to fall for it.

[quote]Pelosi was later seen climbing into a steel-reinforced hatch while carrying an axe, a satchel of canned food, and a revolver and has not been heard from since.

That's the last line from R9's linked Slate article, so there might be a little bit of a misrepresentation in the part you cherry-picked, R9. Can't tell the difference between trolls and Bernbros, so I'll assume you are both.

Thanks, R11. He sure sums it up. For 2 years, I've been feeling a low-grade nausea about what's going on. I'm old, so won't be personally affected for as long as will many others. Still, I've renewed my ACLU support. I thinks it's important for any decent people to maintain their outrage and act on it, while at the same time remembering to treasure the things that make their lives meaningful.

"But what would be the case for overturning same sex marriage? Once a right is acknowledged it’s kind of hard to take it away. What proof is there that same sex marriage is a detriment to any other citizen?" [Note: This is from the first thread.]

You don't "overturn" same sex marriage, you burden it. with restrictions and caveats via state laws. Same sex marriage is technically legal, but states will pass laws stating that same sex couples can be discriminated against on the basis of religious freedom. Those laws make their way to the Supreme Court and are not overturned. And, again, kudos, we can get married, but if there's no laws to prevent discrimination in housing or employment, then that only gets us so far.

R16, the last line of the article was a joke. The rest of it is real. Not trolling but thanks for being vigilant.

Analysis

An entire generation frozen/moving backwards... Because people won't fucking vote.

So instead of poor women having five unwanted babies, now they’ll have ten.

As a non-American, I can't understand how the process for appointing a judge can be so political. Is this true in any other first-world democracy? The rule of law says that nobody is above the law and that the judicial system must be independent. The fact that a political party could so openly present a range of candidates with clear political bias is just incredulous to me.

R1...it would give me hope if I had any faith in Democrats to not be doormats. Some idiot (probably paid off by the Koch brothers) will break from the ranks to help Trump and Republicans seal the deal.

Collins and Murkowski will fall in line with their party, personal principles be damned. No way will they dissent on this, not when the GOP can finally see a finish line to overturning Roe vs Wade. They will do whatever they can to make sure those women stay in line (i.e. money, intimidation, even threats of physical violence if need be).

I wish I could be optimistic, but the Democrats had infinitely easier aims to achieve (to prevent us from ever getting close to this situation) that they squandered every opportunity they had.

I don't think America is doomed...but we're looking at a good 50 years before we're able to undo all the damage this administration has set into motion.

Can someone summarize what Rachael Maddow said so that we dont have to watch a whole video? Thanks.

R18 Many cities passed laws that you could not discriminate against LGBT people in housing. I know realtors get a bad rap around here, but I just attribute that to ignorance. In many instances we were at the forefront of anti discrimination legislation. Yearly, we are in Washington fighting against those that want to take away your tax benefits of owning a home. What worries me is this could put a great divide between blue and red states. Hell, it could put a great divide between cities and counties within a state.

Just heard on MSNBC the court will be hearing a case of double jeopardy in the fall. Think of the ramifications if these throw our double jeopardy. Trump's toxicity is seeping into every fiber of our society and being. The democrats better find a way to impeach this sick bastard before he destroys everything that is good about our country.

*they throw out

Kennedy Is Leaving Gay Rights Weaker Than He Thinks

By Kent Greenfield and Adam Winkler

In 30 years on the Supreme Court — the past 13 as the swing justice — Justice Anthony Kennedy has been the decisive vote in cases on issues ranging from abortion to affirmative action. Yet his legacy will be defined primarily by his opinions in the area of gay rights, where he wrote the major majority opinions expansively reading the Constitution to protect gay Americans.

Even though these cases have prompted some to call Justice Kennedy the “first gay justice,” his legacy remains unsettled and uncertain. His gay-rights decisions will now face a hostile majority on the court, which is likely to overturn, cut back or nullify at least some of them. And he has made it surprisingly easy.

When Justice Kennedy joined the court in 1988, it was no friend to gays and lesbians. Two years earlier, the court had upheld a Georgia law making it a crime to engage in intimate conduct with a person of the same sex. It dismissed the argument that the Constitution protected gay intimacy as “facetious at best.”

Gay and lesbian citizens found a champion in Justice Kennedy. In 1996, he led the court in overturning a Colorado law barring cities from protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. Justice Kennedy wrote that laws targeting gay people based in “animus” were unconstitutional. In 2003, he wrote for the court in Lawrence v. Texas, invalidating a law criminalizing same-sex sodomy and overturning the dismissive 1986 decision.

Justice Kennedy also wrote the court’s two most important decisions on same-sex marriage. The court in 2013 struck down a provision of the Defense of Marriage Act denying federal benefits to gay couples married under state law; Mr. Kennedy wrote that same-sex marriages were “worthy of dignity in the community equal with all other marriages.”

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision declaring a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, Justice Kennedy said these relationships were “central to individual dignity and autonomy.” The 5-4 decision made marriage equality the law of the land, but beyond that Justice Kennedy’s opinions were important for giving legitimacy to the love and relationships of people long shamed for those very feelings of intimacy.

Justice Kennedy’s gay-rights legacy, however, is at risk and not just because of the slim vote margins that produced it. Unfortunately that margin is almost certainly gone already. When President Trump’s second nominee takes his seat at the court, probably this fall, a majority of the court is likely to disagree with Justice Kennedy’s expansions of L.G.B.T. rights. And even without overturning his signature cases, Justice Kennedy’s decisions can be narrowed and their implications minimized.

And those who will want to cabin his legacy will be aided by the justice’s own decision-making style. His opinions often hedged, refusing to establish strong rules to protect gays and lesbians going forward. He spent more time in his key opinions discussing the ephemeral than the doctrinal. Same-sex intimacy could not be criminalized because “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Marriage was important to ensure people are not left lonely — calling out “only to find no one there.”

Meanwhile, he left much of the important work of judging undone. He muddled whether the marriage cases were based on the Constitution’s promise of equality, its protection of fundamental rights or both. He never adequately explained why, if dignity is protected by the Constitution, why similar dignity rights could not be claimed by those who want to marry more than one person or to marry a cousin. Justice Kennedy simply ignored those obvious slippery-slope problems.

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Most important, he balked at declaring that laws discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation should be, like those discriminating on the basis of race or gender, presumed suspect by the courts. Much of constitutional law depends on the “levels of scrutiny.” If a law burdens a fundamental right or discriminates on the basis of race or sex, courts take a hard look to make sure the government has a really good reason for the law. Everyday laws that do not raise such problems are subject to bare “rational basis” review, and courts take only a cursory glance before moving on to the next case.

In the marriage cases, a fair analysis should have depended less on “the universal fear” of loneliness and more on whether the bans were subject to rational-basis review or something stricter. If rational, the bans should survive. If strict, they would fail. Both sides petitioned the court to rule on that question, but Justice Kennedy could not bring himself to decide it.

These doctrinal points Justice Kennedy neglected are not mere niceties. Lower courts need such guidance to determine whether laws biased against L.G.B.T. people should be upheld. Indeed, lower courts have previously read Justice Kennedy’s opaque language in Lawrence to allow states to ban gay adoption and permit governments to fire employees for engaging in private, consensual sexual behavior. The language in the marriage cases could allow similar mistakes.

President Trump’s first Supreme Court appointment, Neil Gorsuch, proved how tenuous Justice Kennedy’s pronouncements can be. Just months after Justice Gorsuch was confirmed, the court held that states cannot refuse to include the names of same-sex parents on children’s birth certificates. Same-sex couples were entitled to the entire “constellation of benefits” associated with marriage. Justice Gorsuch dissented, saying states should be free to list only biological parents. If Justice Gorsuch’s narrow view of Obergefell prevails, gays and lesbians may one day enjoy a right to marry without marriage equality.

Justice Kennedy left unanswered one of the pivotal questions for the future of gay rights: Do businesses have a right to discriminate against gay and lesbian employees or customers if the business owners claim a religious objection? The issue was teed up perfectly this term, but Justice Kennedy ultimately punted, leaving the key questions once again unaddressed. With his resignation he ensured they would be answered by a future, more conservative court more likely to see anti-gay discrimination as perfectly rational.

Back in 2010, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United overturned one of former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s campaign finance opinions, she lamented her retirement, saying, “Gosh, I step away for a couple of years and there’s no telling what’s going to happen.”

It may be Justice Kennedy — and those Americans who’ve found protections and respect in his decisions — with similar regrets in the years to come.

Kent Greenfield is a professor of law at Boston College and the author of the forthcoming “Corporations Are People Too (And They Should Act Like It).” Adam Winkler is a professor of law at U.C.L.A. and the author of “We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.”

[quote]So instead of poor women having five unwanted babies, now they’ll have ten.

I would adopt a nice Eurasian baby if one became available.

The one significant danger to Trump's Supreme Court nominee has stood down.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who is threatening to delay President Trump’s nominees to the federal appeals courts, will not tie his support for the president’s pick to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court to other issues.

“My goal here is not to block judges. My goal is to get a vote on tariffs, and I have all the leverage I need with circuit court nominees,” Flake told the Arizona Republic.

The Arizona senator said the Supreme Court “is unaffected. I have all the leverage I need. I certainly wasn’t anticipating a Supreme Court vacancy, but it’s unaffected.”

[quote] Many people said that Reid ending the filibuster for judicial nominations for short-term gain would be something that people would rue in the long run.

Mitch McConnell said it best. "You'll Regret This". I remember when he gave that speech. Odd how MSNBC has blotted it out.

Re: Reid's Nuclear Option - "You'll regret this and you may regret it sooner than you think." Historians may rate it as one of the dumbest moves in the history of the Senate.

The Repugs were filibustering every single judicial nomination. All of them. What should have been done? And, it has nothing to do with the Supreme Court, which was untouched by Reid's move. McConnell did that. Gorsuch is the first Justice forced through with so few votes because of McConnell and that after he held the seat open, unconstitutionally as far as I'm concerned, for over a year. But, sure, it's the Democrats' fault.

You can never win if the other team always breaks the rules or doesn't even acknowledge the existence of rules in the first place. That's why the 'when they go low, we go high' bullshit doesn't work. We need to kill them until they are dead twice over and then stomp on their corpses...metaphorically, of course.

So some are suggesting there's something shady about the Kennedy retirement plan. That's because it turns out that Kennedy's son was also Donald Trump's banker . Here's Mia Farrow questioning how this all looks.

"Odd: Justice Kennedy’s son is Deutsche Bank’s global head of real estate capital markets. Also, Deutsche Bank loaned over $1 billion in loans to Trump when mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history."

R34, that's very interesting indeed. Deutsche Bank just failed the latest stress test. Their stock is in this shitter. I think something's going to be revealed about their relationship with Trump -- something very ugly -- soon. I fully expect that the Germany government will bail them out, however.

[quote] Once a 5-4 majority becomes their worst outcome, Republicans will have an incentive to push for more radical change. Republicans have long wanted to overturn Roe v Wade, the ruling in 1973 that decided federal abortion law. Justice Kennedy’s departure will give them that chance. His was the swing vote that decided that the federal government could regulate carbon-dioxide emission. That, too, could go. Another sally against Obamacare is inevitable. So are attempts to roll back socially liberal rulings of recent terms, such as expansions of gay rights and limits on capital punishment.

From R36:

For a sense of what a court with a stable conservative majority might look like, consider the term just past. Its 63 rulings marked the most decisive shift to the right in years (see article). The court upheld Mr Trump’s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries. It dealt a blow to public-sector unions by overturning a 41-year-old precedent that allows them to charge non-members for collective bargaining. And, most consequentially, it issued a series of decisions on voting laws that found in favour of entrenched (Republican) majorities.

The court declined to condemn gerrymandering. It upheld congressional and state legislative maps in Texas that, according to lower courts, discriminated against black and Latino voters. And it rejected a challenge to an Ohio law that takes voters off the rolls who stayed at home for several elections and neglected to return a postcard (voters who, by some extraordinary coincidence, were predominantly Democrats). Most of those decisions were 5-4, with Justice Kennedy, contrary to his usual pattern, voting each time with the conservative bloc.

[quote] Yearly, we are in Washington fighting against those that want to take away your tax benefits of owning a home.

Hilarious, Mr Realtor, R26. Your fighting for tax breaks for wealthy home owners while the rest of us have to rent and subsidize it.

Trevor Noah Blasts Media For Hyping Up SCOTUS ‘Battle’: Democrats Have ‘No Way To Stop’ Trump’s Pick

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Trevor Noah had a rather realist approach to the political shockwaves made by Justice Anthony Kennedy and his announced retirement from the Supreme Court.

Noah began by calling the idea of President Donald Trump reshaping the Supreme Court “crazy.”

“You do realize that regardless what happens in his presidency now, Donald Trump will leave a mark on this country for decades to come,” Noah said. “Like it’s not going to go away. It’s like he’s giving America judicial herpes.”

The Daily Show host told his audience that he “can handle” Trump being president “for a few years,” but what “blows [his] mind” is how he will get to “fundamentally reshape America for generations.”

He then accused the media of “licking its lips” for its coverage of the Supreme Court vacancy with several outlets declaring a “battle” between Republicans and Democrats over Kennedy’s replacement.

“I’m sorry, but what battle are we talking about here?” Noah asked. “I understand that these guys are trying to drum up ratings, but it’s not true. Republicans control the Senate, okay? The Democrats have no power and no way to stop them from confirming Trump’s Supreme Court pick. Like the media is hyping this up like it’s a heavyweight fight, but this is more like a fight between Floyd Mayweather and a baby.”

“The cold hard facts are Democrats only have 49 Senate votes,” Noah continued. “And while that’s enough to vote for Pizza Friday, it’s not enough to stop a Supreme Court pick."

Quick question: I saw somewhere that Trump is considering Senator Mike Lee of Utah. If he does nominate him, how quickly can the governor replace him? With McCain on the sidelines, the Repugs wouldn't have enough votes. That's assuming Lee would want to resign his seat and allow a successor to be put in place for an unsure nomination.

He wouldn't need to resign from the senate until he he was ready to take the oath as Justice.

AGAIN, isn't dumping R v Wade the republicans playing their last ace? How else are they gonna get Ma and Pa Deplorable to the polls?

I hear rumblings that the Democrats may consider not fighting as hard against Trump's nom to supreme court because if Mcconnell rams it through before the elections, the Republican voter will have nothing to come out and vote for.

Of course that kind of strategic thinking may also depress democratic turnout.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

As posted by someone else on the Mueller thread. Even amidst the ongoing fuckery I find this a shocking level of corruption.

R37, the link at R45 might go some way to explaining that. Seems Kennedy is severely Trump-compromised. The media need to do their fucking job and expose this shit to bright sunlight.

R9, Nancy Pelosi is a cunt.

R34, when has Mia Farrow ever been anything but an enabler for her pedo ex husband Woody Allen, and a total nutcase who thought that children are basically pets and adopted as many as she could?

R6, that's not going to happen, they're not going to overturn sodomy laws.

Shut up r48. Begone

I mean shut up r49. Sorry r48

Well, the Right suddenly loves Kennedy

The left suddenly hates Kennedy when they were just rimming his ass for gay marriage 🤣

Well, this term, the Left was livid over Kennedy’s votes

R53, no they weren't. Being a good GOP stooge though, you think the only options are blind loyalty or outright hatred.

Not fighting this would absolutely hurt Dem turnout. If Dems don't think their party will fight for them they won't vote.

But the Red State Democrats risk losing if they fight it

Justice Kennedy is retiring. What happens now?

The deeply conservative 2017-18 term is just a taste of what the Supreme Court could become

LAST June, progressives breathed a sigh of relief when Anthony Kennedy (pictured) stuck around to serve a 30th term on the Supreme Court. But a year later, with Justice Kennedy announcing he is ending his tenure on July 31st 2018 and handing another high-court vacancy to President Donald Trump, the left is gasping for air. Abortion, environmental protections, gay and lesbian rights, racial equality and voting rights are all newly vulnerable.

As the court’s median justice for more than a decade, the 81-year-old Reagan appointee has sided with the liberals in certain key cases. He stood up for abortion rights and protected affirmative action at universities. He helped to save the anti-discrimination protections at the heart of the Fair Housing Act in 2015. Most famously, he wrote four gay-rights rulings, culminating in a 2015 decision opening marriage laws to gays and lesbians. Yet Justice Kennedy closed his third decade on the court in a decidedly rightward pose. This term the court issued 63 rulings, 18 of which were decided 5-4. Of those, only four rather piddling victories went the liberals’ way. And Justice Kennedy did not swing towards them in any of the tight decisions.

That should not come as a huge surprise, says Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine and former Kennedy clerk. Her old boss “has always been on the right”, she says. “The left just eked out a few wins along the way”. But liberals had high hopes that Justice Kennedy would see the law their way in three of the year’s most contentious cases.

The first disappointment for liberals came in Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the tiff over whether Jack Phillips, a Christian baker, had the right to refuse to bake a cake celebrating the nuptials of two men. Justice Kennedy’s empathy for the baker won the day in Masterpiece. A civil-rights commissioner had spoken disrespectfully of Mr Phillips’s faith, Justice Kennedy wrote for a 7-2 majority, unconstitutionally impinging on his religious liberty.

Another case involving hostility towards religion—the wrangle over the third iteration of Mr Trump’s ban on travellers from certain Muslim countries—seemed different in the outgoing justice’s eyes. In Trump v Hawaii, Justice Kennedy voted to uphold Mr Trump’s proclamation despite presidential comments suggesting that “Islam hates us” and that Muslim terrorists should be shot with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. The Supreme Court’s job, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the five conservatives, is not to “denounce” presidential statements but to respect “the authority of the presidency itself”.

The decision drew a furious dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor. It inspired an almost plaintive concurring opinion from Justice Kennedy. While many statements and actions of government officials “are not subject to judicial scrutiny or intervention”, he wrote, “that does not mean those officials are free to disregard the constitution and the rights it proclaims and protects”. It is an “urgent necessity”, Justice Kennedy continued, “that officials adhere to these constitutional guarantees and mandates in all their actions, even in the sphere of foreign affairs”. With some evident trepidation about the hands in which he was about to place the responsibility of filling his seat, Justice Kennedy added this mild parting shot: “An anxious world must know that our government remains committed always to the liberties the constitution seeks to preserve and protect, so that freedom extends outward, and lasts.”

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Anthony and Caesar

A pair of partisan gerrymandering cases teed up just for Justice Kennedy might have reformed voting laws had the man Rick Hasen, an election-law expert, calls “Justice Hamlet” been a little less mercurial. In 2004, Justice Kennedy lamented election “rigging” but couldn’t find a workable standard for policing the practice of lawmakers drawing electoral districts to rope out the competition; 14 years later, he had little interest in new theories on how to define egregious gerrymandering in Gill v Whitford and Benisek v Lamone. What could have been a coalition to rein in partisan redistricting became unanimous decisions to put off the matter for another day. With Justice Kennedy on his way out, and the conservative justices unworried by gerrymandering, that day may never come.

Justice Kennedy and the court’s four liberal justices may not have waltzed together in a 5-4 decision this term, but Chief Justice Roberts did, twice, and the soon-to-be-second-newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, took one turn across the aisle. The chief departed from his conservative colleagues in Carpenter v United States, a Fourth Amendment ruling requiring authorities to get a search warrant before tracking individuals’ location through data beamed to cell-phone towers. Justice Gorsuch, who owes his seat to Senate Republicans’ refusal to consider Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s choice for the court, joined the liberals in Sessions v Dimaya to curtail the government’s power to deport people convicted of certain crimes.

Yet in his first full term on the bench, says Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Centre, Justice Gorsuch has largely lived up to his billing as a “legal vending machine” for the right. He helped form three 5-4 majorities in June to curb voting rights. In NIFLA v Becerra, he joined another 5-4, striking down a Californian regulation designed to inform pregnant women about where to go to get an abortion. After remaining silent in the oral argument for Janus v AFSCME, an important case on public-sector unions, Justice Gorsuch signed onto Justice Samuel Alito’s 5-4 opinion overturning a 41-year-old precedent that let unions charge non-members an “agency fee” for collective bargaining. In Justice Elena Kagan’s dissenting opinion, Janus is the result of the conservative justices’ “six-year crusade” to cripple the struggling labour movement.

The term ending this week offers a “preview of what the Supreme Court would be like if Chief Justice Roberts were to become the swing vote”, Ms Litman says—in other words, a court with a Gorsuch-like jurist in Justice Kennedy’s old seat. Except in some criminal cases, “progressives will lose, and they will lose a lot”. As bad a beating as the left took this year, losses may be starker and deeper in years to come. And areas of the law in which Justice Kennedy has stemmed the right-wing tide could soon be the wild west. No outright challenges to Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision establishing a right to abortion choice, have reached the court in recent years. That may change with Justice Kennedy’s departure, as cases involving state abortion bans as early as six weeks’ gestation—like a fetal-heartbeat bill Iowa legislators passed this spring—could make their way to the justices’ inbox. Challenges to gay rights—even Obergefell v Hodges, the same-sex marriage ruling—may get a fresh hearing, too.

This is an extraordinary moment in the life of America’s constitution which, though written down, has meanings that the justices find to be ever-changing. The president holds the keys to an appointment that could lock down a conservative majority for decades, while he is under investigation by a special counsel. The Senate must carefully scrutinise whoever Mr Trump taps to replace Justice Kennedy.

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So many of Trump’s positions, not just on abortion but also on a whole lot else, were embraced late in the game, as matters of political convenience. They were his clearest path to power. Then they were his crudest way to flex it.

Now they’re his crassest way to hold on to it. He will almost certainly move to replace Kennedy with a deeply, unswervingly conservative jurist not because that’s consistent with his own core (what core?) but because it’s catnip to the elements of his base that got him this far and could carry him farther.

Never mind how much it exacerbates this country’s already crippling political polarization. Never mind how much fear it sows in many women, in many people of color and in many L.G.B.T. Americans, all of whom could see rights that they fought so long and hard for snatched away. Never mind that this is a moment, if ever there was one, to set a bipartisan example and apply a healing touch.

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Meanwhile, those in power will celebrate how much they deserve their wealth and how little anyone else deserves. And they will grab for more. You’d think they’d be happy: America now has the highest income inequality in the industrialized world. But even that is not enough. The greed is insatiable. And it is a greed not just for wealth but for domination—for permanent entitlement. What they want is to be served. At restaurants. On golf courses. In corporate offices. There is no form of protest they will respect: loud or silent, formal or spontaneous, civil or rude. Written petitions or marches on the streets. They don’t care. Those in power have been very clear about what they do care about. “We have more money and more brains and better houses and apartments and nicer boats,” Trump said Wednesday in a speech to his supporters, because he cannot help but say what he really means. “We are the elite.”

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Why this political scientist thinks the Democrats have to fight dirty

“The Republicans are behaving like a party that believes it will never be held accountable.”

Sadd

We need TOTAL EXPOSURE. I guarantee that fucking Kennedy is compromised, there is NO WAY he isn’t. We need to start the pressure on investigations, I’m NOT KIDDING. They are constantly putting us on defense, let’s put THEM on defense. We need Kennedy and his sons emails immediately!!!! Someone needs to hack and leak!!! We also need just ONE witness to communications between the WH and Kennedy’s office — again, I guarantee it exists!!! Who do we turn to? Mother Jones? The Intercept? The Guardian? There is no fucking WAY a deal wasn’t made, and I won’t stop til all the disease is out in the sunshine.

I don't agree with Maxine Waters on several of her past political views going back years. Yet, I respect her for being confrontational and very outspoken. There needs to be a few dozen more House and Senate members showing overt outrage. A more vocal, and unpredictable 'left' among the Democratic reps needs to be unleashed to confront Trump and his Congressional allies. They don't need to overtake the moderates neccessarily, but be loud enough to be heard through every step.

Not the MO of Schumer and Pelosi to be 'loud', largely unrestained, and outwardly combative.

How sweet. Inanka and one of her children photographed today after a tour of the Supreme Court at the invitation of retiring Justice Kennedy.

Puke. Even if there was a promise or deal to name a "moderate" replacement (which I doubt) who could ever enforce it?

The fix is in

I've asked this in other threads but can American citizens ask the UN for help? Is there a way to petition it about crimes against humanity? Everyone and their mother seems to be intervening in Africa and the Middle East all the time when evil dictators threaten the nation and its people. Will the Trump administration have to literally start wearing brown shirts and shooting people in the street before anything can be done internationally? What about the vote tampering and international crimes that got him in in the first place? Can we ask for election monitors for the midterms?

What have those petitions accomplished?

The story that the Orangina fatboss may have conned Kennedy into retiring by promising to preserve AK's legacy is breaking tonight. There's audio from the SOTU address.

Please elaborate r70, that’s the first I’ve heard that angle.

Trump can nominate anyone he wants; he doesn't answer to the Republican party or the Republican base, they answer to him. Republicans will rationalize any choice that he makes. Trump could nominate a clone of RBG and Republicans/evangelicals will rationalize and make excuses for his choice. If Trump nominates an extreme right-wing candidate it will be because he wants to not because he feels he has to.

Maga ❤️

A righteous rant from John Cole (former Republican, now Democrat) over at the Balloon Juice blog. I think it strikes the right note of anger and reality: "No One Is Going to Save You, There is No God, and Your Parents Were the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus"

[quote]Over the last 24 hours since Justice Kennedy announced his retirement, a popular form of political fan fiction has sprung up and is racing across the intertubes. Here’s an example: "The fate of the Supreme Court could ride on these 2 senators."

[quote]Narrator Voice: “It doesn’t.”

[quote]Murkowski, Collins, Capito- they might all say they support Roe, but none of them are going to need an abortion any time soon and that’s just shit they say to give them a thin veneer of moderation. I mean, it works enough to fool Chris Cilizza and other idiots in the media, but if they gave a flying fuck about abortion rights they’d have voted against Gorsuch. They didn’t. They’d have voted against Alito. They didn’t.

[quote]But what about Jeff Flake, who has already been stalling judicial nominees over tariffs? Maybe this is his time, people speculated. Maybe he and McCain will finally have the courage of their convictions?

[quote]How about no?

....

[quote]It’s fucking gone and there ain’t nothing you can do about it in the short term. With the greenlight from SCOTUS this week, we should expect a full on assault on voting rights, expect unions to be killed off in short order, and christ it’s so depressing I’m done listing shit BUT IT IS ALL FUCKING GONE.

[quote]The only solution is long term. And that means we need to act accordingly, and expect setbacks and failures, and not expect things to be fixed overnight. Hell yes, you should still be in the streets protesting. Yes, you should be calling, writing, emailing your congressman. But most of all, what you need to do is vote. In every election. This shit needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. And it is going to take a long, long, time. States won’t purge their voter rolls or gerrymander their districts if the legislature and the Governor are in the right hands.

[quote]There is no quick fix. There is no fucking savior. There is no fucking Santa Claus. All you have is each other, a righteous anger, and for now, the vote. Use it. Deal with the current reality, but don’t give up. Never give up. Make the motherfuckers kill you. But don’t give them an inch.

Link to the above rant.

Is this perhaps what R70 is referring to?

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From a Republican perspective, Trump has now earned his right to reelection. He has granted their wildest fantasies

I know there was recently a fight in Ireland to allow for more abortions, but does anyone in the rest of the world think that the U.S. is incredibly obsessed with abortions? Freedoms of speech, religion, press, voting, etc., all seem to take a backseat to abortion. It's treated like the most important thing by far in civilization.

Well, if a huge percentage of people think abortion is murdering of babies, don’t you expect people to be fervent about it?

I'm with R64. I Don't understand how all the compromising information coming out now about Justice KennKennedy and his son doesn't turn Citizen's United, every decision SCOTUS has made since then and the 2016 election on it's head. EVERY MEDIA SOURCE IN THIS NATION should be on this story, and IT not the Orange Turd should be bringing our government to it's knees!!

I agree. The news about Kennedy's son should be a MAJOR FUCKING SCANDAL, which of course means it won't be.

[quote] but does anyone in the rest of the world think that the U.S. is incredibly obsessed with abortions?

Sixty million dead babies (and counting) is ten times the total of the Holocaust. That gets some people's attention.

Pennsylvania is a big prolife State. So much so that Bob Casey is prolife although Dem. Trump has a great chance of winning PA again

I mean the first things stated about the Kennedy retirement were about Roe v. Wade and the one and only litmus test for Democrats for SC justices is supporting abortion, not any other freedom. How did protecting that become so much more important than any right in the Constitution? It's seems like there would be a lot of rights ranked in front of it as far as importance.

I've seen supposition that Trump leaked the Kennedy-Deutsche-Bank information to prompt Kennedy's abrupt resignation.

There is no short-term solution for the more progressive elements of society in this mess. The only solution is to vote, vote and vote. Vote in every election from dogcatcher to the president of the United States. There can be no gerrymandering if the governor’s house and state legislature are in democratic hands. Hopefully, Bader Ginsburg and other liberal justices manage to hang on until 2021 and there is a Democrat in the White House-unfortunately, that is the best that we can hope for at this point. But, this absolutely needs to happen. GOTV like your life depends on it-Because even though your life may not depend on it, a whole lot of your freedoms do.

"the more progressive elements of society" being the people who can't wait to erase their lesbian daughters in favor of their new straight sons.

Wow R74. What a devastating turn to this thread and the other Trump threads. I'm feeling the lowest I've felt since this shit-show began 1.5 years ago because I suspect that every word in that rant is true. It is ALL theater and which ever actor-politician puts in the best performance reaps the biggest returns in the form of money and privilege. We are ALL just a means to an end and really not that crucial a part of the means component. We really haven't been worthy of the term pawns on a chessboard. TPTB have steamrolled over the chessboard, smashing everything in their path. Have we all been so easily duped? Jeez....I think I need to disconnect for a few days and recharge, if that's possible. I think I am still going to the march tomorrow. Perhaps being around some young energy will snap me out of it.

Yeah it’s over. They won. Goodnight.

I like that those of you who think voting will fix it when it was clearly shown in the last presidential election that it's not the casting of the vote that matters, it's the counting of the votes that matter and that counting is controlled by Repugs and Russian hackers. It's hard to win when the other side blatantly cheats and is never held accountable for it.

Give it up. We didn’t get our vote out.

R92, I hope you're still alive in 50 years when they finally have to release the actual findings of the intelligence community about the vote hacking that took place in 2016. There was no mechanism in place to deal with it, so they kept it quiet. Anyone watching the returns saw it happen right in front of their face. It started in Florida when, unlike all elections ever, Trump gained votes as the urban areas came in late. That's when it started and the rest of the night fell like dominoes just as planned.

And, honestly, what part of 3 million more votes don't you understand? The electoral college makes it much easier to steal elections and that's what happened in 2016.

I hate the Democratic and liberal hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth going on now. In 2016, we had one job: to defeat Trump. We knew the consequences of not completing our assignment. We messed it up. They completed their assignment. It’s over. They win. We must live in their world now.

" It started in Florida when, unlike all elections ever, Trump gained votes as the urban areas came in late. "

R93? Trump gained votes in Florida late because the panhandle (mostly republican) is in another time zone. So their polls closed an hour AFTER the urban areas closed - which were still in the Eastern Time Zone.

The Florida panhandle is like in the central time zone.

They’re obsessed with abortion because white women are not having babies. But, even if abortion is made illegal, white women cannot have enough babies to sustain the white majority. That battle is long already over.

This was later than the polls closing, R95. I'm in the Central time zone and it was an hour or two after our polls closed. Even the commentators were acting like it was weird and wondering where the votes were coming from. There were also precincts that seemed to be holding their vote totals without any explanation. That, added to the hacking stories that eventually came out, just leads to too much bullshit to be dismissed.

R9 And Pelosi wonders how Trump is president? Useless, past her sell by date. This woman will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

I'm in my late 20s and I'm absolutely terrified of the direction of the Supreme Court. It has been in the hands of the right since I was born and it looks like it will remain that way for the remainder of my life. The sad thing is that Trump himself is probably in his heart of hearts pro choice and pro SSM. His list of Supreme Court nominees was handpicked from the right wing Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, which all but ensures they will outlaw abortion, dismantle LGBT rights and every advancement the country has made over the last century.

I will NEVER, EVER forgive Bernie Sanders, Susan Sarandon, Jill Stein and all those fuckers who said that Trump and Hillary are the same. We are truly fucked.

Democrats, without the election cheating of W's Supreme Court decision and Trump's Russian stealing of the election and McConnell's unconstitutional holding open of Scalia's seat, should have filled the seats currently occupied by Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kennedy. Hell, if Reagan hadn't conspired with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election, none of his nominees or GHW Bush's nominees, including the current asshole, Clarence Thomas, would have been there either. Plus, Ginsburg would probably have retired under a Clinton administration.

The Court is to the far right because the Repug party is absolutely, 100% corrupt and the Democrats are too worried about being "civil" to those corrupt fucking assholes. Fuck the goddamn high road. We need to beat them until they are dead or we'll all be dead...or at least wish we were.

The Right has abdicated their morals to demons. They see the long term trajectory of the country. Tx will go blue in less than 10 years. After that, it's game over. They are going insane right now and it is obvious they are in a panic. Time to get dirty and fight. Fuck them!

[quote]Time to get dirty and fight. Fuck them!

Fight them with what? The GOP holds the majority in every branch of government. Our best chance was Susan Collins, but she's already surrendered and said that abortion won't be a litmus test. Red state Democrats will vote for the nominee to save their asses in November. There's literally nothing we can do short of scandal or Mueller locking up Trump. We're fucked, fucked, fucked.

[R102] True. But we can win the PR battle and look to the mid-terms. The evangelicals are energized now. This will be the test for us. I agree, we are fucked right now. Red state Dems can't stop this so they need to vote however they see fit. There is always 2020, a Dem Prez, Thomas croaks within their term. No liberal justice dies before 2021. All dependent on a Dem Prez in 2020. It is going to be brutal that is why I say fight.

If he nominates Napolitano I will forgive him for half the rest of the shit.

R7

Will AN actually come out if nominated? Will it just be a “gentlemen's agreement” about his bachelorhood?

He is fantastic, IMHO.

Nominating a gay justice will enrage Trump's base. Will never happen.

R106

Have you heard of a guy named Milo?

One of the experts that was on MSNBC said that a democratic congress and president could expand the bench in order to lessen whatever damage Trump has done to our courts. I didn't know that was possible but apparently it is.

It's possible but even FDR couldn't' get it done. I wouldn't place bets it would ever happen.

R101 I wouldn't be so sure of that.

"Well, if a huge percentage of people think abortion is murdering of babies, don’t you expect people to be fervent about it?"

Not sure why I bother, but most people are still pro-choice, and "babies" aren't involved in abortions.

(R83) "60 million fetuses that escaped being born unwanted and unloved by parents who didn't have the means to care for them properly anyway, many of which would have been miscarried if the woman had waited a bit longer, since 20% of all fetuses are miscarried before week 20.". There, I corrected it for you.

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This Kennedy, Deutche Bank, Trump thing STINKS TO THE HIGH HEAVENS!!!!!

I’d love the next Democratic President to appoint Obama to the SCOTUS. He’s certainly qualified. Of course, the Senate would never approve it.

Oops!

Until Merrick Garland, (religion unknown), all the other Justices are either Catholics or Jews.

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