Pence jabs at Roberts, peanut gallery says "Yeah!"

Maybe they missed his handling of the trial in the senate?

So Pence and others are pressuring him to line up with the other Republican justices in future by accusing him of voting against them in the past only because he has repeatedly caved to pressure.

Mike Pence is 'totally right' to criticize Roberts and conservatives are deeply 'alarmed': Carrie Severino

Vice President Mike Pence is "totally right" in his criticism of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts as the court is once again a paramount issue for voters going to the polls in November, author and former Supreme Court clerk Carrie Severino told "Fox & Friends" Friday.

Pence tore into Roberts, calling him a "disappointment to conservatives," during a discussion with Christian broadcaster CBN News on Thursday. 

His comments came in the wake of several cases in which Roberts, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, sided with the court's liberals in majority opinions.

"Conservatives are deeply alarmed at this pattern of decisions that make Chief Justice Roberts look much more like a politician than a judge and that is not his job," Severino said.

Severino is president of the Judicial Crisis Network and one of the people involved in putting together President Trump's new Supreme Court list.

"I'm not sure if that's sort of an anti-Trump effect on his part," Severino said, pointing out, "[Roberts] likes to say there are no Trump judges or Obama judges, but he seems to be an anti-Trump judge at this point."

Pence pointed in particular to Roberts voting in 2012 to uphold ObamaCare, a more recent decision to uphold Nevada’s coronavirus-related limits on church gatherings, and a Louisiana case that determined whether abortion-clinic doctors should have admitting privileges at local hospitals, CBN reported, as "a reminder of just how important this election is for the future of the Supreme Court."

"What's so disturbing is you see this pattern and even some of the dissents from his own colleagues suggesting that, perhaps pressure from outside the court is what is making him not want him to appear too conservative, so he seems to be trying to play both sides," Severino said.

"Some of the most recent reporting from the court suggests in cases he has flipped his decision again, may be because he is concerned about the media backlash if the court rules certain ways," she said. 

"But, you know what? Chief justice, that's not your job. Your job isn't to look at the opinion pages and figure out what's going to make them put the court in the best light. Your job is to follow the Constitution and the law."

Roberts swings his vote, again

Supreme Court again rejects church challenge to virus restriction

The Supreme Court in a split decision Friday rejected a Nevada church’s request that it block the state government from enforcing a cap on attendance at religious services. 

The decision was a 5-4 ruling, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberal wing.

The court’s order was unsigned and did not provide any reasoning, common practice when the high court acts on emergency applications. 

The court’s conservative justices filed three dissents.

So Roberts isn't a "conservative justice", Tal Axelrod?

The decision comes in response to a suit from Calvary chapel Dayton Valley arguing that it was being treated unfairly compared to casinos, restaurants and amusement parks. 

Churches in the state have a firm 50-person limit, while other businesses have been told to cut their availability to half of their fire-code capacities.

Alito:

“The Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in dissent. 

“It says nothing about the freedom to play craps or blackjack, to feed tokens into a slot machine, or to engage in any other game of chance. But the Governor of Nevada apparently has different priorities."

Phooey.

Only Thomas even pretends to take the actual, absolutist and ludicrous language of the First Amendment seriously.

Everybody drills holes in it, allowing regulation and weighing of competing considerations and exceptions.

And Roberts merely insisted that the facts just didn't bear out the claims of discrimination against religion, refusing Alito's invitation to compare apples and oranges (churches and casinos), instead comparing apples and apples (churches and theaters).

Roberts:

The Friday ruling marks the second time the high court has blocked an effort from a church to invalidate state restrictions on attendance. 

The court ruled 5-4 in a similar case in May to reject a challenge from a California church.

“Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the free exercise clause of the First Amendment,” Roberts wrote in May. 

“Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerns, movie showings, spectator sports and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time.”

Conservatives blast Supreme Court ruling: Roberts has 'abandoned his oath'

Conservative lawmakers blasted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts after he sided with the court's liberal justices in a 5-4 decision Friday that rejected a Nevada church’s request to block the state government from enforcing a cap on attendance at religious services.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted early Saturday morning that Roberts had "abandoned his oath."

"What happened to that judge?" tweeted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

"Freedom of religion is our first freedom. Yet SCOTUS has ruled that casinos can host hundreds of gamblers, while churches cannot welcome their full congregations. Justice Roberts once again got it wrong, shamefully closing church doors to their flocks," Cotton added in a statement.

Defending its imposed restrictions, Nevada stated that its regulations didn't target places of worship unfairly, saying that other large gatherings — like concerts and movie theaters — were treated “the same as or worse than houses of worship.” 

The complaint made its way to the highest court in the land after being rejected by a district court and a circuit court.

Three of the conservative justices wrote dissenting opinions on the emergency order.

Debating the hypothetical, Grassley sticks with the rule the Dems at the time insisted was grossly un-American BS.

What to do if RBG dies in 2020, or a seat otherwise opens up.

With all this talk of dates it helps to recall that while the president holds office until January 20 the congress is done January 3.

The lame duck session begins after the November 3 election and extends to January 3, though the congress would usually go home for the holidays.

Joni Ernst: If Trump has a Supreme Court nominee, Senate should hold hearings

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst said Friday that the Senate should hold hearings on any Supreme Court nomination President Donald Trump might make this year, even if he loses November's election. 

"(If) it is a lame-duck session, I would support going ahead with any hearings that we might have," Ernst, a Republican, said during a taping of the Iowa Press show on Iowa PBS. 

"And if it comes to an appointment prior to the end of the year, I would be supportive of that."

. . . .

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican, drew Democrats' condemnation in 2016 when, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he blocked confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

That seat became vacant when Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly in February 2016. Obama made his appointment shortly after, but Grassley led the effort to block Garland's confirmation. 

At the time, Grassley cited "the Biden Rule" — a guideline stemming from a speech given by then-Senator Joe Biden in 1992 — in holding up the process. 

Grassley said the decision to fill the vacancy should be made by whomever was elected president in November 2016 — nine months after the seat became vacant.

Biden's claim of 1992 was completely ignored by everyone until Grassley decided it was a "rule" absolutely binding on the senate in 2016, just in time to rob Obama and the Democrats of the seat.

Democrats were not amused, Biden likely least of all.

Ernst publicly agreed with Grassley's decision. 

Grassley: Supreme Court seat should be left open until after election if vacant in 2020

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said Friday that he would personally oppose Senate consideration of Supreme Court nominees in 2020 despite potential opposition from President Donald Trump and Republican leaders. 

. . . .

Grassley cited the "Biden Rule" — a guideline stemming from a speech given by then-Senator Joe Biden in 1992 — which contends that a vacancy on the Supreme Court in a presidential election year should be left open so the American people can have a say in who makes the decision. 

. . . .

"Well, I don't know what history will do and I don't care what history will do," Grassley said. "I'm just following what was established by the Biden Rule in 1986 and then emphasized by him in 1992.

"They set the pattern. I didn't set the pattern. But it was very legitimate that you can't have one rule for Democratic presidents and another rule for Republican presidents."

. . . .

Henderson also questioned Grassley on his comments that Supreme Court justices planning on retiring should announce it immediately, amid rumors that Justice Anthony Kennedy plans to retire, as reported by USA Today. 

Given a chance, Trump would push court pick before election

President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have tried to make it clear: Given the chance, they would push through a Supreme Court nominee should a vacancy occur before Election Day

. . . .

Trump administration officials have underscored that Trump would not hesitate to fill an opening before voters have their say Nov. 3, less than four months away, on whether to give him a second term.

Four years ago, also in a presidential election year, the GOP-controlled Senate refused to hold a hearing or vote when President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated federal judge Merrick Garland to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia after his death in February. 

Nine months before that year's election, McConnell said voters should determine who would nominate the person to fill that seat.

Fast forward to this past week. 

Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told reporters: “I can’t imagine that if he had a vacancy on the Supreme Court that he would not very quickly make the appointment and look for the Senate to take quick action."

. . . .

Leading Republicans, including the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, now say it’s OK to consider an election-year appointment when the Senate and the White House are held by the same party.

“Merrick Garland was a different situation,” Graham said in May.

“You had the president of one party nominating, and you had the Senate in the hands of the other party. A situation where you’ve got them both would be different.”

McConnell was even more blunt.

“Yeah, we’d fill it,” he said in a February interview.

If she drops the AWOL Republican senate will be back like a shot and confirm her successor in about five minutes

Ruth Bader Ginsburg announces cancer recurrence, will remain on the Supreme Court

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Friday she is undergoing chemotherapy to treat a recurrence of cancer.

The treatment is yielding "positive results," the 87-year-old liberal justice said in a statement, adding that she remains "fully able" to continue in her post.

Owing to her age and long medical history, Ginsburg's health is the subject of widespread interest given her status as a liberal icon. 

The prospect that President Donald Trump could name a third justice to the Supreme Court would also be a major election issue.

Supremes in 2 cases rule 7 to 2 against the president on the rule of law

A case of congressional subpoena and a case of subpoena by the AG of New York state.

The president's lawyers argued a sitting president cannot even be investigated and is not subject to subpoenas in state courts, nor must he respond to congressional subpoenas because that's all just "presidential harassment".

The Supremes said no to them both times but, like anyone else, the president gets to fight subpoenas in court and this will likely delay at least until after the election.

Neither case seems to have touched the question whether the Justice Department doctrine, based solely on a pearl-clutcher argument that it would be bad, bad, bad, that a sitting president cannot be indicted and perhaps not even subpoenad by federal authorities is valid or not.

Are you as tired of hearing about rage as I am?

Black rage, rioters' rage, Trump's rage, the rage of his base?

Go have a fucking stroke, ragers.

Trump is tweeting in giant capital letters on this, furious at the Supremes, though Roberts did lick his butt a little in the congressional case.

Both of his appointees and John Roberts and all the liberals voted against him, only Alito and Thomas dissenting.

Supreme Court blocks congressional subpoenas for Trump's financial records

The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked subpoenas from congressional Democrats for President Donald Trump's financial records.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in a 7-2 opinion, reversed a lower court decision upholding four congressional subpoenas for the records, saying that it failed to adequately account for "weighty concerns regarding the separation of powers."

But the decision pretty much told them how to do it right.

SCOTUS rules against Trump on financial records subpoena in NY criminal investigation

In the most recent time Chief Justice John Roberts has sided with the court's liberal side in a high-profile case, he wrote for the 7-2 majority, "Article II and the Supremacy Clause do not categorically preclude, or require a heightened standard for, the issuance of a state criminal subpoena to a sitting President."

Dishonesty is sometimes the best policy

The Supremes today cancelled the freedom of the electors to save the republic from the idiocy of the voters by cancelling their authority to actually choose the president.

On the other hand, affirming their authority to make their own choice would invite far more widespread faithlessness motivated and inspired by shocking new levels of skulduggery and corruption.

Most of the time, the rules of the states lead to results that mirror the popular vote nationally.

Admitting the freedom of the electors could lead to results that far more often defy the national popular vote.

So this utterly dishonest decision is more than welcome.

Supreme Court rules 'faithless electors' can't go rogue at Electoral College

They affirm that state constraints on the votes of electors are constitutionally OK and can be enforced, though where they don't exist the electors are free to vote as they choose.

Nor does it seem they pronounced the faithless votes of faithless electors invalid.

They regard the electors as mere agents who must do as they are told. If they are told.

The 538 people who cast the actual votes for president in December as part of the Electoral College are not free agents and must vote as the laws of their states direct, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday.

"Because it would be stupid" is not a reason to disbelieve that the constitution says or does something.

Nor is it a good reason to disbelieve the constitution does not say or do something.

But it's a good, if contestable, reason to say that the constitution says or does something, or that it does not.

Why the Great Fat Orange Klansman is mad as heck and itching to appoint another supreme

Supreme Court, in 5-4 ruling, strikes down restrictive Louisiana abortion law

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Louisiana's tough restriction on abortions violates the Constitution, a surprising victory for abortion rights advocates from an increasingly conservative court.

The 5-4 decision, in which Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court's four more liberal justices, struck down a law passed by the Louisiana Legislature in 2014 that required any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.

. . . .

The challengers said the requirement was identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016. 

With the vote of then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court ruled that Texas imposed an obstacle on women seeking access to abortion services without providing any medical benefits. 

Kennedy was succeeded by the more conservative Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by President Donald Trump, who was among the four dissenters Monday.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the Texas decision, also wrote Monday's ruling.

. . . .

Roberts said he thought the court was wrong to strike down the Texas law, but he voted with the majority because that was the binding precedent. 

"The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana's law cannot stand under our precedents."

Will he respect precedent enough to uphold Roe?

Others surely would not.

Democrats liked Roberts' call but noted Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were not on their side.

Sara Gideon attacks Susan Collins on abortion rights after Supreme Court ruling

Gideon touted her endorsements from groups supporting abortion rights like NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Action and publicly questioned whether Collins still believed that Kavanaugh viewed Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision in which the court ruled that the Constitution protects a pregnant woman's right to choose to have an abortion, as "settled law."

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices because of Supreme Court precedent, emphasizing that the Louisiana law was identical to a credentialing requirement in a Texas statute invalidated by the court's 2016 ruling in the case of Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. 

Kavanaugh dissented with the other conservative justices, writing that the Supreme Court "should remand the case for a new trial and additional fact finding under the appropriate legal standards."

Thomas tears into abortion precedent, says Roe v. Wade should fall in dissent on Louisiana case

Thomas called Roe v. Wade 'farcical,' the court's reasoning for calling abortion a right 'amorphous' and its abortion jurisprudence 'grievously wrong'

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas filed a blistering opinion dissenting from a Monday decision to strike down a Louisiana law that required abortion doctors to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, calling the court's record on abortion "grievously wrong."

The pitched dissent made clear that Thomas is ready to tear down the court's protections for abortion completely in his most explicit comments yet that precedents all the way back to Roe v. Wade should fall.

Conservative groups see abortion ruling as catalyst for reelecting Trump

Vice President Mike Pence tweeted, “After today’s disappointing decision by SCOTUS, one thing is clear: We need more Conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

White House Ironically Complains That SCOTUS Judges Can Make Decisions Without Being Elected

So of course he wants to appoint more of them to put unelected conservatives in possession of the law.

Good answer, but what was the question?

Supreme Court: Montana Can't Exclude Religious Schools From Scholarship Program

A First Amendment free exercise issue, a Fourteenth Amendment equal protection (anti-discrimination) issue, or both?

Roberts went with the conservatives on this one.

Four men too vicious to live

Supreme Court refuses to block upcoming federal executions

Nothing in the story explains why the cases involving these men were federal, in the first place.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to block the execution of four federal prison inmates who are scheduled to be put to death in July and August.

The executions would mark the first use of the death penalty on the federal level since 2003.

The justices rejected an appeal from four inmates who were convicted of killing children. 

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor noted that they would have blocked the executions from going forward.

. . . .

The activity at the high court came after Attorney General William Barr directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions. 

Three of the men had been scheduled to be put to death when Barr first announced the federal government would resume executions last year, ending an informal moratorium on federal capital punishment as the issue receded from the public domain.

. . . .

The inmates scheduled for execution are: 

Danny Lee, who was convicted in Arkansas of killing a family of three, including an 8-year-old; 

Wesley Ira Purkey, of Kansas, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl and killed an 80-year-old woman; 

Dustin Lee Honken, who killed five people in Iowa, including two children; 

and Keith Dwayne Nelson, who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl who was rollerblading in front of her Kansas home and raped her in a forest behind a church before strangling the young girl with a wire.

Three of the executions — for Lee, Purkley and Honken — are scheduled days apart beginning July 13. 

Nelson’s execution is scheduled for Aug. 28. 

The Justice Department said additional executions will be set at a later date.

The Malevolent Troll in the White House strikes out at twenty-odd million Americans

At The Height Of Pandemic, Trump Asks SCOTUS To Wipe Out Obamacare

And they just might do it.

Joe Biden yesterday attacked Trump's cruelty for trying to prevent Americans from having reliable health care. 

Late last night, proving him right, the Trump administration joined a serious challenge to the Affordable Care Act.

. . . .

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi has announced a vote Monday to expand the health care act, calling Trump's move "an act of unfathomable cruelty.”

Another surprise!

US supreme court rejects Trump's bid to end Daca program

The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Trump administration's attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation.

The 5-4 ruling was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

In penning the opinion, Roberts once again sided with the liberals on the bench in a momentous dispute that will infuriate judicial conservatives who are still bitter that he once provided the deciding vote to uphold Obamacare.

The opinion is the second time in a week when the Supreme Court -- bolstered with two of President Donald Trump's nominees -- has ruled against the Trump administration. Monday, the court said LGBTQ Americans are protected under the Civil Rights Act.

The ruling emphasizes that the administration failed to provide an adequate reason to justify ending the DACA program.

"We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies," Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. 

"'The wisdom' of those decisions 'is none of our concern.' We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action."

Surprise!

Supreme Court says federal law protects LGBTQ workers from discrimination

Happening now.

Gorsuch and Roberts hand the liberals a surprise win on LGBT rights.

Federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender workers, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The landmark ruling will extend protections to millions of workers nationwide and is a defeat for the Trump administration, which argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that bars discrimination based on sex did not extend to claims of gender identity and sexual orientation.

The 6-3 opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's four liberal justices.

This outcome is all the more odd as the government's reading of the portion of the law prohibiting discrimination based on sex as prohibiting only discrimination against an employee or job applicant on account of being male or not being male, or on account of being female or not being female - is surely correct as a fair reading of the actual wording of the thing, understood as it normally would have been at the time of adoption, and indeed as it normally would be understood even today.

That fact, generally urged by conservatives, is nevertheless flatly denied by liberals.

(Don't you love it when liberals piously insist everyone is entitled to his own opinions but not his own facts?

Or when they with equal piety - but still falsely - protest that alternative facts are not facts but untruths?)

So Gorsuch and Roberts?

Neil Gorsuch, one of the Trump appointees, wrote the sweeping decision that extended federal employment protections to gay and transgender workers.

He is proving to be more of an ideological wildcard than many on the left expected.

Chief Justice John Roberts, another Republican-appointed justice who has at times defied predictions, joined to give the ruling a comfortable 6-to-3 margin.

Both are sure to face an uproar from conservatives quarters.

It's difficult to overstate the significance of the decision. 

While the court is establishing a long history of decisions expanding gay rights, this is the first time it spoke directly about the legal protections for transgender individuals.

That the ruling comes out just days after the Trump administration announced it was removing transgender health-insurance protections only puts the issue in stark relief.

Transgender rights is becoming a political battlefield, and a majority of the Supreme Court just announced which side it's on.

Update later that same day.

MSNBC reports Gorsuch wrote that though protection of homosexuals and trans people was doubtless not the intention of the congress that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that doesn't matter because according to the meaning of the words discrimination on account of sex covers discrimination on account of sexual orientation or trans status.

CNN

"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids," Gorsuch wrote.

"There is simply no escaping the role intent plays here: Just as sex is necessarily a but-for cause when an employer discriminates against homosexual or transgender employees, an employer who discriminates on these grounds inescapably intends to rely on sex in its decisionmaking," the opinion read.

. . . .

But the ruling was also sharply criticized by the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, whose president issued a blistering statement about Gorsuch, who replaced the late Justice Antonin Scalia.


"Justice Scalia would be disappointed that his successor has bungled textualism so badly today, for the sake of appealing to college campuses and editorial boards," said Carrie Severino, a former clerk of Justice Clarence Thomas. 

"This was not judging, this was legislating -- a brute force attack on our constitutional system."

So Gorsuch simply drank the liberal Kool-Aid on the language of the statute.

Alito and Thomas call bullshit.

Kavanaugh is not impressed, either.

Surely a novelty is the spectacle of a conservative judge so egregiously violating his own alleged principles not in order to reach a result required by conservative ideology - as Scalia himself so often did - but to reach one condemned by it and required instead by liberal ideology.

You were warned.

They're thinking of Ginsburg, but of course they'll fill any seat that opens up.

Biden and the Democrats won't do what's needed - pack the court - to defend the heritage of liberalism in the law, if and when they get a chance.

'We're going to fill it': Republicans ready for any Supreme Court vacancy

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s hospitalization this week and the looming end of the Supreme Court’s term raise the prospect of yet another prized vacancy for President Donald Trump. 

And if there is a surprise opening or retirement in the months before the presidential election, GOP senators plan to act on it, despite denying President Barack Obama a Supreme Court seat in an election year.

The GOP denied O nomination of Garland in an election year, yes, but not - or anyway not only - because it was an election year.

Their "justification" was even more absurd than that.

They said he was a lame duck meaning only that he was not eligible to serve after the end of his current term, as every president is throughout his second term and Trump will soon be, if he wins this fall.

[But see these about the Biden Rule and the Thurmond Rule, both adverted to during the struggle over Garland and both bullshit, anyway.]

They won't hold it against Trump, if they're still in control of the senate.

Nor will the Democrats embrace such nonsense.

She's right, she's absent, and she's dying

She'll be dead and replaced by January.

All the more reason Joe B will need to stuff the court with added liberals in added seats.

Doubtful he'd ever do that.

Imaginary old fashioned bipartisan amity is too important to him.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins oral argument by telephone from hospital

The high court's oldest justice and a four-time cancer survivor, Ginsburg, 87, joined the court's telephonic debate Wednesday morning from Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she is recovering from acute cholecystitis, a benign gallbladder condition.

And the leader of the court's liberal minority didn't mince words: She criticized the Trump administration's rule exempting employers with religious or moral objections from providing cost-free insurance coverage for contraceptives in unusually sharp terms.

“You have just tossed entirely to the wind what Congress thought was essential,” she told U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who was defending the new exemption that lower courts have blocked temporarily.

 "The women end up getting nothing. They are required to do just what Congress didn’t want.”

Reality based politics?

How can anybody who has witnessed these last decades of increasingly ferocious partisanship by Republicans ever more crazed with hate talk about a return to political civility, cooperation, and mutual respect that have been utterly destroyed over that same period?

How can anybody who understands how the right really feels about America, today, about nonwhites, non-Christians, non-heteros, working class Americans, and the homeless and desperate not react with horror and anger?

How can anyone who sees how far they are willing to go, even attacking the foundations of democracy and the basic structures of the republic, to make the legal environment as bitterly inhospitable to consumers, borrowers, workers, nonwhites, the poor, and the elderly and as empowering as possible for the 1%, for corporations, for the moneyed elites as they can not loathe them utterly?

Silly questions, I know.

In politics as in all else, we are who we are, we feel what we feel.

Some of us, paid or not, with or against the grain of our interests, publicly and unashamedly side with the most powerful in their most unscrupulous and damaging assaults on the less.

Casting the rest of us into the more or less radical, or more or less moderate, but in any case more or less self-conscious and committed resistance.

Even in the event much to be hoped for, a Biden victory, the Democrats will be able to mitigate and undo the damage done so far by these bastards only if they can override the most bitter opposition from the now constantly enraged and mouth-frothing right.

Is Biden up for that?

Are the likely Democratic leaders in the house and the senate?

Will they pack the Supreme Court, as they must to secure the future of a century of progressive achievements of all kinds and not only those based on the right to privacy?

Will they trample to dust all remnants of the senate filibuster, a change without which what needs to be done in that body will certainly not be done?

Both those moves would be entirely constitutional and yet furiously protested in the right wing media as revolutionary, a coup d’état, dictatorship, and so on in their usual, hoarse-throat shouting style.

Could our Dems withstand all that pressure?

Or are they, figuratively speaking, just so many hapless Social Democrats or other republican losers in Germany or Italy between the wars?

Create a recess so he can do recess appointments?

McConnell Dismisses Trump’s Call to Adjourn Congress to Make Federal Appointments

President Trump raised the possibility that he could invoke Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution to adjourn Congress in order to make recess federal appointments, a never-before-used presidential power that Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) suggested he would not support.

Trump proposed during the White House coronavirus press briefing on Wednesday that we would use his “very strong power” to “exercise my Constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress.”

But it is not a power to adjourn congress ad lib.

He can only do it if and when the two houses of congress cannot agree on a time of adjournment, and nothing of the sort is happening or in prospect.

Article II Section 3 reads in pertinent part

. . . in Case of Disagreement between them [the two houses of congress], with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he [the president] may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper . . .

All the same, Trump is rightly frustrated because though the congress is already in recess, making the power to adjourn them irrelevant, anyway, at the same time it pretends not to be in a manner intended precisely and only to prevent recess appointments.

Something that annoyed the heck out of O, back in the day, and that the Supremes endorsed against him.

Congress, currently in recess until May 4, is still having pro-forma sessions in which any lawmaker can object to a motion — preventing the president from pushing through vacancy appointments.

“The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty the American people can’t afford during this crisis,” Trump said. “They have been warned.”

. . . .

In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case against a 2012 attempt by then-President Barack Obama to make three recess appointments during pro-forma sessions, saying “that the Recess Appointment Clause does not give the President the constitutional authority to make the appointments here at issue.”

A warning from AG Barr of an impending constitutional clash?

If Bozo tells the states to knock off the lockdowns in, say, mid-May and they refuse, what happens?

Maybe this is a hint.

Laura Ingraham Very Concerned Americans Can’t ‘Freely’ Catch And Spread Coronavirus

She interviewed AG Barr.

INGRAHAM: 

Right now, we have no freedom of worship, public worship to go, to gather.  

We have no real freedom of assembly, not even freedom of movement, given what some of the states are doing.  

What can you tell our viewers tonight about what the Justice Department will do after this limited period to ensure that our civil liberties are balanced properly against the need to protect the public?

BARR: 

Well, you know, generally speaking there are occasions where liberties have to be restricted during certain emergencies such as war or, in this case, a potentially devastating pandemic but they have to be balanced.  

Whatever steps you take have to be balanced against the civil liberties of the American people and it cannot be used as an excuse for broad deprivations of liberty.  

So as things proceed, you know we're going to be interested in both what the federal government is imposing and also making sure that that's justified but also what the states do.  

The states have very broad well as you know what we call police powers they have very broad powers that the federal government doesn't have to regulate the lives of their citizens as long as they don't violate the Constitution. 

So we'll be keeping a careful, a careful eye on that.

But she wanted a more explicit commitment, so she continued with specific reference to events in New York.

INGRAHAM: 

Governor Cuomo spoke out this week very forcefully this holy week for Christians, obviously Passover as well for Jewish Americans, about the importance of not gathering together to celebrate and I want you to listen.

VIDEO CLIP OF ANDREW CUOMO: 

Now is not the time for large religious gatherings.  

I mean, we've paid this price already. 

We've learned this lesson. 

You do no one a service by making this worse and infecting more people.

INGRAHAM: 

At what point in time do Americans feel like they're going to be able to have that right back and that the federal government will stand up if local officials continue this all-out prohibition going forward?

Barr assured her that he is “very, very concerned” about such restrictions but he also acknowledged that government has the power to impose them during a time of public emergency, such as this one.

She went on.

INGRAHAM: 

I tweeted out something earlier today, just how, you know, these are inalienable rights. 

It means - and there's a lot of Americans today who are mourning those who've lost their lives in this horrible virus who also say the government doesn't have this right, to take this right, to take our rights away. even when the experts are saying this is a horrible time for us health wise.

Salus publica suprema lex est?

Barr explicitly agrees but she is flatly denying government - the state governments, in this instance - has the authority to limit these First Amendment rights in the interests of public health.

She evidently agrees with the claim of those who insist the lockdown is right now unconstitutional and has been from the start because the individual rights in question cannot be limited for the sake of public health.

[Aside: Napolitano, in quoting the Supremes, ignores that the public health emergency posed by the Coronavirus is not a war, despite propaganda and hyperbole to the contrary, nor is the public effort to deal with the danger. That means the quoted passages are simply not relevant to the problem at hand. And see this.]

Barr is not agreeing to that, at all.

And it seems noteworthy that the Duce himself, who has repeatedly, impatiently, and angrily denounced the lockdown as "worse than the disease", does not seem to share that view, either.

But the AG does seem to be signalling readiness to argue the need has passed and so continuing the lockdown is unconstitutional in court when Trump wants him to.

Interesting how far the parties have switched sides on the need for government imposed social discipline for the sake of public health since the time when Obama had to cope with Ebola and the Republicans were demanding more intrusive methods in the face of O's delicacy.

The Duce clearly wants his Coronavirus economics committee to run the rollback of the lockdown on a timetable of his choice - a choice incorporating their views as well as those of the public health gurus under Fauci and Birx.

Suppose his Coronavirus economics committee starts issuing rollback instructions to commence May 1 and the states tell them and Bozo to pound sand.

Will Barr go to the courts to attack the continuation of the lockdown as unnecessary and so a violation of the Bill of Rights, relying on the incorporation doctrine so often denounced by right wingers eager for a return of the "constitution in exile"?

Will Democratic state governments defend the need for a slower rollback as a legitimate limit to the individual rights in question, all which have always been understood to allow exceptions?

Will Barr insist that the duty of the president to enforce the constitution against the states both means his judgement must prevail over theirs as regards the timing of the rollback and legitimates the authority of his economic committee to control it in as much detail as they say they need?

Cuomo said today New York is developing it's own rollback plan.

Will the governors of surrounding states who followed New York's lead on the lockdown opt again to follow Cuomo's lead on the rollback?

Bozo refused responsibility (blame) for controlling or coordination the public health response to the virus, forcing the states to impose, define, and control the lockdowns.

Now he's getting ready to demand the authority (credit) for removing the lockdowns.

Behavior completely true to his opportunist and narcissist and even crooked presidency.

Cuomo on Pathways Nursing and Rehab lending the state 35 ventilators that have now been returned: "Thank you for your incredible generosity" and "Love conquers all".

Sound scary? That's the constitution.

'Faithless elector': Supreme Court will hear case that could change how presidents are chosen

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up an issue that could change a key element of the system America uses to elect its president, with a decision likely in the spring just as the campaign heats up.

The answer to the question could be a decisive one: Are the electors who cast the actual Electoral College ballots for president and vice president required to follow the results of the popular vote in their states? 

Or are they free to vote as they wish?

If the Electors being utterly free scares you to death it probably would scare the whole country to death and move most people to support a constitutional amendment to abolish it.

Because if these guys are painfully honest about the constitution that's what they'll say.

Will the US election of 2020 hinge on changes nearly as massive as did the Brit election of 1945?

Clement Attlee. Aneurin Bevan. The Labour victory and the birth of the NHS in 1948.

But at that time the Labour members were deeply committed, and even many Conservatives favored providing top quality and free health care for all.

But today it is questionable whether all or even most Democrats in the new Congress of 2021 would support any version, not of socialized medicine, but even of socialized health insurance.

And would any Republicans that year support it?

Will the "play nice" Democrats retain the filibuster thus enabling even a senate minority of Republicans to prevent it?

They shouldn't, but they likely will.

If the Supremes attack Medicare for All legislation, and perhaps also Obamacare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as unconstitutional will the Democrats be too cowardly to simply pack the court?

I take it for granted they will not immediately pack the court to eliminate the threat before it emerges, as well as the obvious and immediate threat to Roe and the sexual revolution in the law that rests on the version of the constitutional right to privacy resting on Griswold.

A sign of how he would play his role in an impeachment of the president?

Would he be a genuine opponent of disinformation and fake news, or a Jim Jordan / David Nunes / Lindsey Graham opponent?

Americans 'take democracy for granted', supreme court chief warns

Supreme court Chief Justice John Roberts has urged federal judges to promote public confidence in the judicial system, while warning that Americans have come to “take democracy for granted”.

In his annual report on the state of the judiciary, the George W Bush-appointee, who will preside over Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, said civic education had “fallen by the wayside”.

“In our age,” he wrote, “when social media can instantly spread rumour and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital.”

Roberts did not mention Trump but his statement was widely interpreted as part of an ongoing effort to shield the judicial branch from executive harassment.