Should Trump try to amend the Constitution?  Now that the election is settled, it's time to focus on the governing agenda.  Though I'm usually reluctant to mess with the Constitution, I think an amendment is in order regarding Article III.  During the campaign, the Democrats revealed their willingness to "pack" the Supreme Court.  This is intended to nullify the particularly wise justices who don't like the Dems' hare-brained schemes.  Kind of hearkens back to 1935, when FDR made such an attempt to pack the Court following the Schechter Poultry case that gutted the National Industrial Recovery Act, which was a key component of the New Deal.  Congress failed to go along with FDR, and relations between the two branches remained strained henceforth.  All I am suggesting is that the amendment simply say, "The Supreme Court is to be composed of nine justices, no more and no fewer."  In practice, the Court has been composed of nine justices ever since 1869.  But Congress can change that — and perhaps that is what should be changed.

Delusion Democrat Says Biden Should Appoint Harris to Supreme Court.  Democrats should be doing some serious soul searching and reflecting on why a majority of American voters rejected Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates on Tuesday, and I'm sure some of them are doing just that.  [Advertisement]  There are also some on the left, however, who can't seem to face up to reality quite yet.  [Tweet with video clip] [...] There've been calls from progressives demanding the 70-year-old Sotomayor step down for months now, starting with an April column by progressive commentator Medhi Hasan, who argued that Sotomayor should retire and let Joe Biden appoint a much younger candidate who could remain on the Court for decades instead of risking another Ruth Bader Ginsberg situation.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor Faces Renewed Calls to Retire After Trump Win.  Following President-elect Donald Trump's victory, calls have resurfaced for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire to prevent Trump from potentially filling another court vacancy.  Sotomayor, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, is the first Latina and the third woman to serve on the Supreme Court.  At 70, she is the oldest Democrat-appointed justice on the Court which has a 6-3 conservative supermajority.  In light of Trump winning the 2024 presidential election over Vice President Kamala Harris, calls for Sotomayor to retire so that President Joe Biden, with support from a Democrat-majority Senate, would have enough time to appoint a new justice have recirculated on social media.

The Editor says...
Lame duck judicial appointments should be illegal — especially lifetime appointments.  The losing presidential candidate should not be allowed one last chance to throw a wrench into the machinery as he is ushered out the door.

Media Misinformation Undermines Our Democracy.  The decision in NY Times v.  Sullivan cannot be justified on constitutional grounds.  Nothing in the original text, structure, or public understanding of the First Amendment points to the notion that the media deserves special immunity from accountability.  This interpretation wasn't drawn from some obscure corner of the Constitution; it was invented, pure and simple.  Even if we were to concede that the original intent of the First Amendment was to promote open and robust public debate, it does not logically follow that this would mean granting carte blanche to spread provable lies with near-zero liability.  Journalists, unlike private citizens, benefit from various protections, including shield laws, which are designed to allow them to operate freely in pursuit of the truth.  Shield laws are legal provisions that protect journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources or unpublished information gathered during news gathering, allowing them to work without fear of retribution or exposure of their sources.

Kamala Harris and Democrats will pack the Supreme Court if they win.  In 2016, countless conservatives skeptical of Donald Trump voted for him anyway because the future of the Supreme Court was on the ballot.  Now that concern is even more pressing. [...] At her CNN town hall, Kamala Harris was asked if she supported packing the Supreme Court with multiple additional justices in order to change its ideological composition.  She declined to dismiss the idea.  Instead, she ominously said, "I do believe there should be some kind of reform of the court, and we can study what that actually looks like."  Her vague answer is the constitutional equivalent of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) quip about ObamaCare that "[w]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."  When it comes to our Constitution, Americans deserve more than talking points.  We cannot afford to wait and find out what Kamala Harris's plan is for the Supreme Court.  The only way to be sure the court will continue in its current form is to reelect Trump and a Republican majority in the Senate.  For the past four years, Democrats have been laying the groundwork to pack the court.  If they win the Senate, House and White House, they will do it.

Virginia Takes Noncitizen-Voting Case to Supreme Court ahead of Election.  Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares on Monday took the commonwealth's noncitizen-voter case to the Supreme Court after a lower court blocked officials from purging their voter rolls of noncitizen aliens.  [Two advertisements]  A federal appeals court on Sunday backed a lower court's Friday ruling that ordered Virginia to restore some 1,600 suspected noncitizens who are ineligible to vote to the state's voter rolls.  Miyares and Governor Glenn Youngkin, both Republicans, responded with a pledge to take the case to the Supreme Court with just nine days left before the election.  They followed through on Monday.  The request asks the Supreme Court to pause the appeals court's Sunday decision. "Not only will the Commonwealth of Virginia be irreparably harmed absent a stay, so will its voters and the public at large," Virginia wrote in its emergency application for staying the injunction.

Two Lawsuits Challenge Swampbuster and the Regulatory Labyrinth of the Administrative State.  An example of the arbitrary power the administrative state wields are some of the rules agencies have framed for the Swampbuster provisions, passed by Congress in 1985, under which the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can deny benefits to farmers who do not voluntarily give up farming on wetlands.  And who designates wetlands?  It is the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a federal agency of the USDA.  Using Swampbuster, the USDA has come to regulate property it would otherwise not have been able to.  However, four recent Supreme Court decisions have reined in the administrative state.  The court swept aside decades-old precedents to shift the balance of power from the agencies to the courts.  The Swampbuster provisions and NRCS-framed rules, too — seen by many legal experts as violative of property rights and overly broad in implementation — have been challenged in two recent lawsuits.  Though the courts have yet to decide on the Swampbuster lawsuits, the four Supreme Court decisions will likely have a strong bearing on the cases.

Justice Alito Wrecks ATF's 'Ghost Gun' Argument:  Are Eggs and Peppers an Omelet?  Justice Samuel Alito wrecked the government's defense of the ATF "ghost gun" rule during oral arguments Tuesday [10/8/2024] by asking if eggs and peppers are an omelet.  Breitbart News reported that the case is Garland v. VanDerStok, and it is focused on ATF Final Rule 2021-05F.  A central part of this rule was redefining what the word "firearm" means so as to designate "partially completed pistol frames" and other gun parts as "firearms."  [Advertisement]  Justice Alito asked about "components" and the way they are defined in relation to a "weapon."  [Advertisement]  He asked, "Here is a blank pad and a pen.  Is this a grocery list?"  The government answered no, citing numerous uses for the pad and pen.  [Advertisement]  He followed up by asking, "If I put on a counter some eggs, some chopped up ham, some chopped up pepper and onions, is that a western omelet?"  The government again answered no, again citing "well-known other uses" for the eggs, ham, etc.  [Advertisement]  Justice Amy Coney Barrett followed Alito by asking if the omelet analogy would change if the ingredients were purchased from Hello Fresh.  The government answered in the affirmative.  [Advertisement]  Justice Neil Gorsuch followed up, asking about the scope of "ordinary meaning," as applied to "every noun" used by Congress or the U.S. Code — if it can be used to see Alito's pad and pencil as a grocery list.

A Supremely Bad Idea.  Wielding "ethics" violations against one's political foes is a Washington tradition.  When it comes to ethics and the Supreme Court, observers should not be deceived.  Current attacks on the justices' ethics are bad-faith political barbs intended to undermine the Court — not expressions of genuine concern over actual transgressions.  And the policy reforms being suggested to solve this nonexistent problem would do enormous damage to our most important legal institution while producing few, if any, countervailing benefits.  The latest proposal, which Justice Elena Kagan herself has championed, is to create an "enforceable" code for the justices.  Details are sparse, but the basic idea is to empower lower court judges — whose work the Supreme Court reviews — to police the justices' alleged ethical violations.  Apparently, the chief justice would decide which lower court judges to endow with this extraordinary authority.  Precisely what investigatory and enforcement tools those judges would wield remains unstated.

Corruption within the Secret Service and the Supreme Court.  The big news from Sunday is that Trump — thank God — survived a second assassination attempt and, just as thankfully, no one else was killed or injured.  Currently, we have no explanation for the shooter's pinpoint accuracy regarding where he'd find Trump.  What some may have missed, though, was another story yesterday in the New York Times claiming that a massive Supreme Court leak implied that Chief Justice John Roberts, a notable squish, manipulated normal procedures to save Donald Trump via the Court's immunity decision.  Both these events — the would-be assassin's weirdly precise knowledge about Trump's whereabouts and the Supreme Court's leaks — tell us that something is rotten in the state of the Deep State.

Kamala Harris' Platform Declares War On The Supreme Court.  Kamala Harris has finally released an "issues" page on her campaign website seven weeks after she became the presumptive Democrat nominee — and part of her platform includes waging a war on the Supreme Court.  On July 1 the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that a president has "absolute immunity" for "actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority," "at least presumptive immunity" for all "official acts," and "no immunity for unofficial acts."  The decision severely impeded the Biden-Harris administration's lawfare efforts against former President Donald Trump.  Harris has now vowed to fight "to ensure that no former president has immunity for crimes committed while in the White House."  "[Harris] will also support common-sense Supreme Court reforms — like requiring Justices to comply with ethics rules that other federal judges are bound by and imposing term limits — to address the crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court," the issues page states.

Kamala Harris Is The Real Threat To Our Constitutional Republic.  A Harris presidency also threatens the separation of powers established by our Constitution.  In Article III of the Constitution, the Founders sought to guarantee an independent judiciary by providing for lifetime appointments.  Harris had previously spoken favorably of her then-running mate Joe Biden's proposed "reforms" to the Supreme Court, which included establishing term limits for the justices.  Before taking over at the top of the ticket for Democrats, Harris also reportedly told the New York Times she was "absolutely open to" packing the high court.  Such "court packing" would consist of Congress first increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court and then a President Harris appointing several new justices.  As the constitution does not set the number of justices at nine, Democrat control of both Congress and the Executive Branch would allow for the Supreme Court to be reconstituted with members whose politics Harris favors.

Supreme Court Declines to Reinstate $475 Billion Student Loan Relief Program.  The Supreme Court on Aug. 28 turned down President Joe Biden's request to reinstate a $475 billion student loan relief plan weeks after an appeals court blocked the program.  Justice Brett Kavanaugh referred the application to the full court, which denied it.  No dissents were recorded.  The Supreme Court said it "expects that the Court of Appeals will render its decision with appropriate dispatch."  The case remains pending in the lower courts.  The SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education) plan that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona first proposed in August 2022 would reduce monthly payments for millions of eligible borrowers and accelerate loan forgiveness for others.  A reported 8 million borrowers have signed up for the program.

Supreme Court refuses to revive Biden's latest student loan debt relief plan.  The Supreme Court on Wednesday rebuffed a Biden administration plea seeking to revive the latest plan to tackle federal student loan debt.  The court in a brief order denied an emergency request filed by the administration seeking to lift a nationwide injunction imposed by an appeals court.  There were no noted dissents.

The Editor says...
The only reason it's an "emergency request" is that the election is two months away, and the "Biden" administration wants to buy some votes.  The Supreme Court should be insulted by a petitioner calling something an emergency when it's not.

Democrats Promise To Save 'Democracy' By Destroying The Supreme Court.  It's difficult to sit here and make substantive arguments against the Democrats' Supreme Court "reform" proposal, since everyone knows it's just a cynical ploy to delegitimize both the court and the Constitution.  Ask yourself this: would any Democrat support the president's court-packing scheme if they believed Republicans would win both Houses and the presidency?  Of course not.  It's Calvinball all the way down.  And it is a court packing scheme.  An unconstitutional one.  One imagines the term "court packing" hasn't polled very well with the public, so Joe Biden — or whoever's running the White House these days — signed off on a backdoor plan.  An 18-year term limit for justices would, very conveniently, turn a 6-3 originalist majority into a 6-3 "living and breathing document" majority that would overturn many recent decisions, and rubber stamp a slew of federal abuses.

Biden's Supreme Court Reforms Are Unconstitutional.  On Monday, President Biden proposed two reforms to the Supreme Court — term limits for justices and a binding ethics code — along with a constitutional amendment to its recent presidential-immunity decision.  Making his case in a Washington Post op-ed, the president claimed broad support and specifically thanked "the bipartisan Presidential Commission on the [SCOTUS] for its insightful analysis, which informed some of these proposals."  But there's a problem with Biden trying to use the commission to give his proposals legitimacy.  Adam White, who served as a member of that commission, tells The Free Press that "nothing in our report actually recommended anything" that the president is now proposing.  Imposing term limits by statute would be unconstitutional, says White, a legal scholar for the American Enterprise Institute who was one of 34 experts who delivered a report on Supreme Court reforms to Biden in 2021.  "The Constitution explicitly guarantees that justices hold their office in good behavior, which means until impeachment or death or retirement, that's always been understood as life tenure," he explains.

The Biden-Harris plan to wreck the Supreme Court is the REAL threat to America's democratic system.  Democrats just revealed their true, sick political nature with their cynical push to remake the Supreme Court.  Indeed, they showed just how far they're willing to go to take down Donald Trump and win an election.  And that they are the real threat to democracy and America's political system.  The plan, rolled out by President Biden and Veep Kamala Harris, would impose 18-year term limits on justices, essentially, a plan to pack the court with liberals.  They'd subject justices to a code of conduct you can bet will be used similarly against justices they dislike.  Plus, they want more limits on presidential immunity after the Supreme Court reminded them that, under the Constitution, presidents cannot be charged with crimes for official actions they take while in office.

Biden's Supreme Court 'Reform' Is a Lame Duck Fantasy by a Failed Little Man.  Joe Biden used the op-ed page of the Washington Post rather than an address to the nation to announce his anticipated "reform" plan for the US Supreme Court on Monday. [...] It is in direct response to two related factors.  The 6-3 conservative majority does not seem to be going anywhere.  If Trump wins, that majority will probably be cemented for at least another generation.  The Supreme Court has proven to be the bulwark defending our civil liberties from the fascistic tendencies of Biden and his supporters.  The second factor is that the Supreme Court has made rulings curtailing the ability of federal agencies to rule by fiat (Loper Bright) and has attacked one of the sacraments of the Democrats' secular religion by ruling that abortion is not a constitutional right (Dobbs).  Along the way, it limited the ability of Democrats to use the legal system to harass and imprison opposing politicians by recognizing that a president has some degree of immunity for official acts.

Biden and Harris debut plan to overhaul Supreme Court — with focus on limiting Trump's powers.  President Biden formally unveiled his planned overhaul of the Supreme Court on Monday — with a clear eye on limiting the powers of former President Donald Trump should he succeed him.  The commander-in-chief took the unusual step of unveiling his major planned policy steps in a newspaper op-ed, with the Washington Post helpfully telling readers: "The writer is president of the United States."  Biden laid out three main changes to the court — which he said is "mired in a crisis of ethics" — including term limits and a binding code of conduct.

The Editor says...
I find it difficult to believe the Washington Post's claim that "The writer is president of the United States."  The man pretending to be the President is only awake for a few hours a day, and was unable to assemble a meaningful sentence during the televised debate a few weeks ago.  When somebody else writes a sentence for him, he can just barely read it off the teleprompter.  Nice try, WaPo.

Cruz Warns Biden's Plan To 'Reform' The Supreme Court Is About Destroying It.  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) warned this week that President Joe Biden's plan to "reform" the U.S. Supreme Court was code for his intent to "destroy" the court because it is the one major government institution that the political Left does not currently control.  Cruz made the remarks during his most recent episode of "Verdict" with co-host Ben Ferguson while talking about Biden's Oval Office address on Wednesday evening.  In his speech, Biden, 81, said that for the remainder of his time in office, he would "call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy — Supreme Court reform."  Cruz responded to Biden's remarks by saying: "Well, and understand by the word reform, he means destroy the Supreme Court.  What he wants to do is utterly politicize it."

Biden Needs a Supreme Court Bogeyman.  A few things in life are certain: death, taxes, and the Left trying to control the Supreme Court.  From demanding the unnecessary addition of more seats or limiting the justices' terms, relentless propaganda that certain justices and their decisions are "corrupt," creating fake ethical "scandals," openly threatening individual justices, and more, the Left wants the court under their thumb.  That's old news.  The only new thing, if you can really call it that, is that President Joe Biden, according to news reports, will soon endorse a few ideas that have been around for years.  Biden says he now supports limiting Supreme Court justices' terms and imposing an "enforceable" ethics code.

Report: Biden Caves to Left, Will Back Changes to Supreme Court.  President Joe Biden is preparing to back changes to the Supreme Court that he hopes will energize the left-wing base of the Democratic Party as his reelection campaign continues to sink.  The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Biden will soon back term limits for Supreme Court justices and a new "ethics code" to be enforced against the judiciary.  He will stop short, however, of calling to expand the Court.  That could be a matter of politics more than one of principle.  Democrats once hoped to use their temporary majority in both houses of Congress in 2021 and 2022 to expand and "pack" the Court with enough liberal justices to outweigh the Court's six Republican-nominated members.  The likely prospect of losing the Senate — given the sheer number of Democrat-held seats at stake in November — makes the idea of expanding the Court less enticing, since Republicans could block left-wing nominees.

Reining in the administrative state.  [Scroll down]  In Jarkesy, SCOTUS affirmed a defendant's Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury before a federal agency can take their property.  Jarkesy's critics claim that this decision will impede federal agencies' ability to enforce federal law.  This is incorrect due to the narrow scope of the ruling.  The majority limited Jarkesy's scope to penalties levied based on violations that stem from common law; meaning if a fine arises from a violation that wasn't historically handled by the judiciary then a jury trial isn't required.  If an agency requests a penalty and cannot convince a jury that the penalty requested is reasonable, then the penalty was unreasonable for the violation.

AOC wants to impeach two Supreme Court justices.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has led the charge to impeach U.S. Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel J. Alito, Jr. on grounds of alleged failure to report gifts and for political views that AOC asserts compromise their ethical obligation toward impartiality.  In particular, AOC is enraged that Justice Thomas has questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 elections and the Democrat narrative regarding the events of January 6, 2021, and that Justice Alito's wife passionately supported Donald Trump through the so-called insurrection and displayed flags AOC connects to extremism.  The impeachment resolutions attempt to dismantle the SCOTUS — not by depoliticizing it, but by hyper-politicizing it (like everything else in social justice America) into a one-party ideological apparatus.  Co-sponsors of AOC's Court impeachment coup include the usual extremist suspects Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Jamaal Bowman, but equally revealing is the resolutions' "endorsers," a hodgepodge of dodgy socialist NGOs and radically progressive cultural Marxists.

After Fischer, What Next?  Contrary to the DOJ's recent spin, the Fischer decision was a massive defeat for the government, as it had (mis) used Section 1512(c)(2) — a felony that entailed draconian sentencing guidelines and a presumption that charged defendants be held pre-trial without bail — against nearly 340 J6ers.  While left-leaning lawyers have been endlessly tweeting about Fischer being proof of a judicial putsch in favor of Donald Trump, the Supreme Court's decision is hardly surprising.  For years the Supreme Court, led by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has reigned in the DOJ's broad interpretations of obstruction statutes.

Stark Raving Mad.  You might think the Democrats would be able to keep it together, given that they control the presidency, the Senate, the federal bureaucracy, and the press, and are only a few seats away from controlling the House.  But, for whatever reason, they have gone mad.  Democrats have reached a fever pitch of hysteria that I doubt we have seen before in our history.  One example among many is their mental breakdown over the Supreme Court's presidential immunity decision, Trump v. United States.  As I wrote here, that decision was moderate, middle of the road, and entirely predictable.  While it addressed a novel issue, it is consistent with past Supreme Court decisions.  But to hear the Democrats tell it, the Court has unleashed anarchy and turned the president into a dictator.

Joe Biden hates separation of powers.  The chattering class spends much time arguing over the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. USA.  The decision is clearly moderate, in which the Court chose to require the lower courts to do their job and define private and official actions performed by the president in any proceedings.  The absurd argument by Justice Sotomayer that assassination would be protected misses any reasonable reading of the prerogatives of the president under Article II.  But then the three dissenters were looking to convict Donald Trump and remove him from the presidential race.  The majority was analyzing the issues for the future and recognizing the separation of powers.

Amy Coney Barrett's 'Trojan Horse'.  The Supreme Court Trump v. United States ruling that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution has significant implications for the ongoing legal battles surrounding Donald Trump.  This ruling, widely perceived as a victory for Trump, has nuanced elements that warrant closer scrutiny, particularly in the comments made by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.  The Court's decision confirmed that presidents are protected from prosecution for official actions extending to the "outer perimeter" of their office, while unofficial conduct remains vulnerable to legal scrutiny.  This distinction is crucial, as it provides a pathway for prosecutors to refocus their efforts on Trump's private actions.  Justice Barrett's comments have created a critical, largely overlooked opening for Democrats and their Special Counsel.

Trump immunity decision in balance as Supreme Court caps term.  The Supreme Court is set to rule on Monday whether former President Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution, a monumental decision that comes just days after the court dropped a decision throwing into doubt charges against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters and Trump himself.  The stakes are as high as Trump's ask of the court is broad.  The former president is pleading with the court to toss his federal Jan. 6 case with his claims of immunity.  While the court could well reject the sweeping immunity sought by Trump, several justices signaled an openness during April arguments to carving out some form of protection from criminal prosecutions for former executives.  "The question becomes — as we've been exploring here today, a little bit — about how to segregate private from official conduct that may or may not enjoy some immunity," Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the court's six conservatives, said in April.

The Editor says...
Ask is not a noun.

Clarence Thomas Questions Jack Smith's Authority in Blistering Opinion on Immunity Ruling.  Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned Jack Smith's authority as special counsel in his concurring opinion on the high court's presidential immunity ruling.  The Supreme Court on Monday ruled 6-3 that Trump has absolute immunity for his core Constitutional powers.  Former presidents are entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for their official acts.  The Supreme Court ruled there is no immunity for unofficial acts.

Trump immunity case:  Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have substantial protection from prosecution.  The Supreme Court ruled Monday in Trump v.  United States that a former president has substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts committed while in office, but not for unofficial acts.  In a 6-3 decision, the Court sent the matter back down to a lower court, as the justices did not apply the ruling to whether or not former President Trump is immune from prosecution regarding actions related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.  "The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

Supreme Court grants Trump immunity for official acts.  The Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts but not unofficial ones.  In a 6-3 decision, the Court determined that presidents enjoy immunity from official acts while in office but that privilege does not extend to private conduct.  The case has been sent back to the trial court with instructions for Judge Tanya Chutkan to determine which actions in the indictment constitute official conduct and should be dropped from the case.  Chief Justice John Roberts authored the decision, which strikes a balance between arguments that presidents have absolute immunity and arguments that not prosecuting criminal actions would lead to misconduct from presidents.

Supreme Court dismisses state challenges to red state restrictions on social media platforms.  The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed challenges to Florida and Texas laws that restrict how large social media companies moderate user content.  Each law would require Big Tech companies like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook to host third-party communications but prevent those businesses from blocking or removing users' posts based on political viewpoints.  In a unanimous ruling, the court said lower courts did not properly analyze the First Amendment issues at play in the case.  As a result, each case will go back to its respective Circuit Court of Appeals.

Reaction to Supreme Court Ruling on Presidential Immunity.  The Supreme Court on Monday ruled 6-3 that Trump has absolute immunity for his core Constitutional powers.  Former presidents are entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for their official acts.  The Supreme Court ruled there is no immunity for unofficial acts.  Jack Smith's DC case against Trump will be delayed again as it bounces back down to the lower court to Judge Tanya Chutkan.

Schumer Bashes 'MAGA SCOTUS' After Historic Trump Immunity Decision.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blasted what he called the "MAGA SCOTUS" on Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court found in favor of former President Donald Trump in his challenge to January 6th prosecutors.  Trump faces charges in Washington, D.C., brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith relating to his conduct on January 6, 2021, when rioters stormed the Capitol.  He argued that he is immune from prosecution for his official acts.

AOC threatens to file impeachment articles following Supreme Court immunity ruling.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) plans to draft articles of impeachment after the Supreme Court ruled former President Donald Trump may have some immunity from prosecution related to actions he took in the aftermath of the 2020 election.  "The Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control," Ocasio-Cortez said in a post to X on Monday.  "Today's ruling represents an assault on American democracy.  It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture." 

The Editor says...
That would be well worth watching:  Legal scholar AOC takes on a couple of Supreme Court justices, second-guessing their reasoning.  I'd like to see that, especially if she would raise the stakes:  I mean, she's threatening their continued employment, so let her wager her own job on the outcome, just to make it fair.

AOC Wants to Impeach Justices.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., threatened to bring articles of impeachment against the Supreme Court after Monday's immunity ruling regarding former President Trump.  "The Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X.  "Today's ruling represents an assault on American democracy.  It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.  I intend on filing articles of impeachment upon our return."  She's very upset about Donald Trump's presidential immunity and the decision by SCOTUS to uphold it.  What high crime and misdemeanor did the Justices commit?  Disagreeing with her?  This dingbat got 82% of the vote in her district.

Amy Coney Barrett Acts Clueless About Hunter Biden's Laptop.  Justice Amy Coney Barrett painted Big Tech's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop stories four years ago as a safeguard against foreign interference in an official Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday.  In what could have been a landmark censorship case, Barrett, who wrote the majority opinion in Murthy v. Missouri, characterized tech giants' reactionary censorship of the laptop story as a good-faith effort to minimize Russian meddling in the 2020 election.  After summarizing social media companies' content moderation programs throughout the coronavirus epidemic, Barrett wrote "platforms also applied their misinformation policies during the 2020 Presidential election season."  "Facebook, in late 2019, unveiled measures to counter foreign interference campaigns and voter suppression efforts," she wrote.  "One month before the election, multiple platforms suppressed a report about Hunter Biden's laptop, believing that the story originated from a Russian hack-and-leak operation."  Except the only people who believed this were gullible Democrats who fell for an intelligence hoax peddled by the deep state to protect then-candidate Joe Biden.

Two Trump justices just failed the First Amendment test.  The U.S. Supreme Court may have mortally wounded the Constitution this week by seemingly forgetting or not caring that the First Amendment is kind of the whole ballgame. [...] Stick with me now, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.  Because if "we the people" don't have permanent and unambiguous standing on behalf of the First Amendment to the Constitution, then explain to me what we can possibly have standing on without threat of it being taken away.  And what is the ACLU's standing to sue Oklahoma over speech?  Or what's the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation's standing to sue Louisiana over speech?  Notice how this street only goes one way?

SCOTUS J6 Ruling — Does It Matter?  Conservatives are enraged over Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's dissent in a SCOTUS decision handed down today.  It potentially effects hundreds of J6ers as well as the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) prosecution of Donald Trump.  [Tweet]  The reputedly conservative justice sided with leftists Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in the 6-3 decision that overruled DOJ's use of 18 U.S.C. §1512(c)(2) against J6 defendants.  Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was among those who upheld the decision.  SCOTUS ruled that 1512(c)(2) only applies to destruction of physical evidence in judicial proceedings or investigations.  It said that these parameters do not apply to those who participated in the rally that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. [...] SCOTUS' ruling could drastically change how sentencing is calculated, but most J6ers are faced with additional charges and enhancements.  Unless a defendant already received maximum sentences for every charge (which is not the case for any sentences of which I am aware), a judge could simply resentence for an identical time period or even add time at his or her discretion.

Americans 6, Deep State 3.  The Supreme Court decided to make the Securities Exchange Commission obey the Constitution and give the accused a right to a jury trial.  This was a Seventh Amendment case.  The amendment says, "In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed $20, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."  The SEC used its in-house administrative law judge to fine George Jarkesy $300,000 and to confiscate another $685,000 from him.  There was no jury.  Well, you don't need a calculator to determine that $985,000 is more than $20. Mister Jarkesy sued for his 7th Amendment right to a jury trial.  He fought all the way to the Supreme Court.  The Washington Post reported, "A big victory at the Supreme Court isn't priceless, after all.  It costs somewhere north of $1,144,602.64."  That was 13 years ago.  Surely Bidenomics made even higher the cost of challenging this wretched government.

Supreme Court overturns Chevron decision, curtailing federal agencies' power.  The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a landmark decision that gave federal agencies broad regulatory power.  The 6-3 decision on the so-called, 40-year-old Chevron decision upends the agencies' authority to issue regulations unless Congress has spoken clearly, according to CBS News.  The court split along conservative-liberal ideological lines in the dispute, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority, the news outlet also reports.  The crux of the Chevron decision states federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details when laws aren't crystal clear.  Opponents of the decision have argued the decision gave power to those who work in government instead of judges who should be making such decisions.

US Supreme Court blocks EPA's 'Good Neighbor' air pollution plan.  The U.S. Supreme Court blocked an Environmental Protection Agency regulation aimed at reducing ozone emissions that may worsen air pollution in neighboring states, handing a victory on Thursday to three Republican-led states and the steel and fossil-fuel industries that had challenged the rule.  The 5-4 decision granted requests by Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia, as well as U.S. Steel Corp, opens new tab, pipeline operator Kinder Morgan, opens new tab and industry groups, to halt enforcement of the EPA's "Good Neighbor" plan restricting ozone pollution from upwind states, while they contest the rule's legality in a lower court.

Did SCOTUS Start Dismantling the Bureaucratic State?  We didn't get the Loper Bright ruling or a final decision on the Chevron doctrine today.  However, the Supreme Court may have kicked a strut out from underneath the bureaucratic state today unexpectedly, in a case involving the Securities and Exchange Commission — and the Seventh Amendment.  The case of SEC v Jarkesy originates in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which granted federal regulators expanded authority to pursue and adjudicate civil-fraud complaints within the executive branch alone.  One of its early targets was George Jarkesy, Jr., and his firm, Patriot28, LLC for allegedly violating anti-fraud provisions in SEC law and regulation.  The SEC both charged and adjudicated the case of civil fraud against Jarkesy and fined him $300,000.  Jarkesy, meanwhile, labored under the impression that the Seventh Amendment guarantee of a jury trial applied to Americans in the finance industry.  In a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court agreed.  And Roberts' reasoning could have deep implications for other federal agencies as well, if taken to a natural conclusion: [...]

Liberal Justice Sotomayor bemoans 'dismantling' of federal agency power as Supreme Court curbs SEC.  Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the Supreme Court's conservative majority of seizing power for itself as it curbs the authority of federal agencies in a series of rulings, including one Thursday that went against the Securities and Exchange Commission.  She said in a dissenting opinion that the ruling, which limits the SEC's ability to enforce securities laws, was part of a "disconcerting trend" in which the court has pared back the power of regulators.  She cited other recent decisions in which the court made it easier for presidents to fire the heads of independent agencies and limited the authority of in-house judges.  "Make no mistake, today's decision is a power grab," Sotomayor wrote.  She took the additional step of reading a summary of her dissent from the bench, something justices do when they are particularly upset with a decision.

Supreme Court Sides With Biden Admin In Landmark Censorship Case.  The Supreme Court issued a ruling Wednesday [6/26/2024] siding with the Biden administration in a landmark case that challenged the federal government's ability to pressure social media companies to censor speech.  The justices ruled 6-3 to reverse a lower court injunction barring the federal government from "coercing or significantly encouraging" social media companies to suppress speech, finding that plaintiffs did not have standing.  The case, Murthy v.  Missouri, was brought by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, along with five individual plaintiffs whose own speech was censored.  "The plaintiffs rely on allegations of past Government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely," Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion.  "But they fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions to the defendants' communications with the platforms.  Thus, the events of the past do little to help any of the plaintiffs establish standing to seek an injunction to prevent future harms."

Supreme Court Dealt Free Speech A Blow In "The Worst Possible Way".  [Tweet with video clip]

The Supreme Court has ruled for the Biden Administration in a major social media censorship case.  The Supreme Court has swept aside a legal effort to stop the Biden Administration's social media censorship schemes.  By a 6-3 vote, the court found Wednesday that two states and five private plaintiffs had not shown they were personally damaged by federal efforts to make companies like Facebook suppress Covid skeptics.  Because they could not show government contacts caused specific censorship acts, the plaintiffs lacked the "standing" for a suit.  "We begin — and end — with standing," Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority, which included the court's three liberal justices and three centrist conservatives.  The decision technically only applies to an injunction a lower federal court has issued for the plaintiffs.  But it effectively ends the lawsuit, once known as Missouri v Biden and now called Murthy v Missouri.  The ruling leaves Berenson v Biden, my own lawsuit against White House and Pfizer officials over their 2021 conspiracy to force me off Twitter, as the only serious remaining challenge to the Biden administration's censorship.

Supreme Court Allows Government Control Over Speech on Social Media Platforms, Rejects Standing in Murthy vs Missouri.  The Supreme Court rejected the standing of the State of Missouri and five individuals in the censorship and free speech case surrounding social media.  The court came down with a 6-3 decision, Justice Amy Coney-Barrett writing the majority opinion.  Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas dissented in the minority.  The background of the case was very familiar to this audience, as the Biden administration was previously blocked by lower courts from telling social media platforms to remove content against their interests.  Today, the Supreme Court rejected the standing of the plaintiffs, essentially giving a green light to the USA government to begin controlling social media platforms again.  If you read the opinion, I would strongly urge readers to focus beginning on page #11 of the Justice Barrett opinion.  It is obvious in the three or four pages that follow, the court was looking for an exit from the free speech issue.  Denying the case on "standing" grounds became their justification for the cop-out.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Injunction Preventing Government From Pressuring Big Tech to Suppress Free Speech.  The Supreme Court struck down a lower court's injunction preventing the federal government from pressuring Big Tech companies to suppress free speech in a pivotal ruling Wednesday.  The court did not rule on the question of whether the government may pressure social media companies to suppress speech in a way that would be illegal for the government to do itself.  Instead, the court ruled that the plaintiffs failed to establish Article III standing to bring the case.  "We begin — and end — with standing," Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion for Murthy v.  Missouri.  "At this stage, neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established standing to seek an injunction against any defendant.  We therefore lack jurisdiction to reach the merits of the dispute."

The Supreme Court Is Not Going To Save You.  The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Murthy v.  Missouri dropped Wednesday, shattering the hopes of conservatives that maybe, just maybe, the Judicial Branch would stand up for the First Amendment rights of ordinary Americans against the egregious abuses of the executive bureaucracy.  But no.  The Court instead ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing because the Biden White House allegedly backed off of its censorship campaign after the 2022 midterms (it didn't).  The ruling essentially allows the federal government to continue trampling on the First Amendment rights of ordinary Americans by deputizing social media companies to do what federal agencies cannot do directly: police what Americans are allowed to say online.

Searching for America's Identity.  After 171 years without a doctrine of separation of church and state, the Supreme Court of the USA in 1947 by a mere 5-4 vote declared that this separation is necessary and sacrosanct.  And by 1962 and 1963, both Bible reading and prayer were declared by the Court forbidden in our public schools.  By 1973, a woman's right to an abortion on demand was declared a constitutional right, and legitimate thereby in every state in the Union.  Only recently did the Supreme Court reverse itself, after 60 million-plus abortions, to allow each individual state to make its own abortion laws as its voters see fit.  Abortions are not inherently a national, constitutional right.  In 2005, in the significant Kelo v. New London case, the Court again voted 5-4 to expand the legitimate bases for government to confiscate private property under eminent domain laws.  This was a serious attack on private ownership of property.  And, lastly, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court asserted that marriage between two men or between two women is a constitutional right.  That vote also was a 5-4 vote, but this is now the law of the land.

Will the Supreme Court Affect the Debate?  The Supreme Court announced that it was adding another opinion day to its schedule — Wednesday, June 26th.  Among the pending cases is United States v.  Trump, in which the court must decide to what extent presidential immunity shields the president from criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office. [...] The timing of the release of the opinion — should it occur on Wednesday — is particularly significant because the following day is set for the debate between President Biden and Donald Trump, and there's every indication that Biden's strategy is to hammer on the criminal cases (and singular criminal conviction in New York) against his opponent.  But all those cases have substantial infirmities as well and Trump can certainly argue that those cases are not evidence of wrongdoing by him, but rather evince the Democrats' use of lawfare to punish him and remove him from the election contest.  (All these cases arise from the deep blue cities of New York and Washington, D.C. which, at least when it comes to Trump, seem to be using a Soviet legal handbook.)

Is the Supreme Court leaker back in action?  [Scroll down]  Biden himself has been big on interfering with other branches of government to get his way since the get-go.  His fingerprints were all over the sudden spate of lawfare lawsuits against President Trump just days after he announced he would run for president in 2024, with White House operatives turning up in district attorney offices in New York and curious visits to the White House from local Georgia prosecutors among other things.  Now we learn he's out trying to throw nails into the path of the Supreme Court to ensure that the border stays open and open the pathway in to foreign criminals.  This underlines that if there is a leaker, and there probably is, it's imperative to catch him or her.  The Court can't make decent decisions if none of the justices can trust one another.  That this happened, twice, on Joe Biden's watch suggests a pretty nefarious racket inside the Supreme Court, whose leaks are unprecedented.

The Editor says...
Joe Biden's mental capacity has deteriorated to such an extent that he doesn't appear to know where he is most of the time.  Joe Biden is no longer capable of concocting any kind of plot to bypass or undermine the Supreme Court.  All this is being done by others with enough access and leverage to get their deeds done without revealing the names of the people behind it.  A shadow government, in other words.  People we didn't vote for are running the country.

Supreme Court's Immigration Rebuke Suggests Biden's Border Order Is Unconstitutional.  The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Thursday that U.S. citizens do not have a constitutional right to guarantee their noncitizen spouse admittance into the country, something President Joe Biden tried to cement in his most recent executive order concerning the ongoing border invasion.  American Sandra Muñoz sued the federal government after her husband, Luis Asencio-Cordero, an MS-13 gang member, was denied a visa by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2015 due to "unlawful activity" the immigration officer suspected based on a gang affiliation tattoo he spotted on the El Salvador native during the interview.  Asencio-Cordero, a noncitizen, eventually "disavowed any gang membership" and, with Muñoz's help, tried to appeal the visa case with the Department of State.  The federal agency, however, agreed with USCIS's decision, effectively asserting (along with the Supreme Court's judgment Thursday) that a noncitizen like Asencio-Cordero has "no constitutional right to enter the United States."

America is Riding on this Supreme Court Decision.  Rights that we have had, cherished, and depended on for over 200 years are potentially vanishing because of who?  If I were a detective on a TV Show pinning the photos of suspects on a board, it wouldn't be difficult to pinpoint the perpetrators.  Soros, Google, The Disinformation Index, Newsguard, Microsoft, Facebook, the State Department, the FBI, and others have all collaborated to spread the censorship disease.  Why?  It's big business.  Power, money, and the takeover of the once greatest nation on earth is all they want.  This decision by these justices could have profound and lasting effects on conservative causes, particularly in the Freedom Economy.  Americans should seek out companies and products that champion and safeguard free speech, not suppress it.  As someone who currently works in the tech field, and formerly in the Trump Administration, I understand this decision's significance and the judiciary's power in shaping history.  The Constitution is designed to protect you and your voice, even if it differs from the big tech companies.

Supreme Court Erases Loophole That Kept Foreigners Inside The U.S. Illegally.  In a 5-4 ruling Friday, the Supreme Court erased a loophole that allowed foreigners to avoid deportation proceedings by citing a paperwork technicality.  The case centered on three illegal immigrants:  Moris Esmelis Campos-Chaves, an El Salvador native who entered the country illegally in 2005 through Texas; Varinder Singh, a man from India who illegally entered the U.S. in 2016 by "climbing over a fence" in California; and Mexico-native Raul Daniel Mendez-Colín, who illegally entered the U.S. in 2001 in Arizona.  [Advertisement]  The trio argued that their deportation notices did not meet the criteria for a proper notice as prescribed by the law.  Title 8 USC § 1229 (a) describes two types of notices.  The first is a general initial notice to appear that shall include, among other specificities, a "time and place" for the proceeding.  The second notice regards a "change or postponement in the time and place of such proceedings."  The Supreme Court previously ruled in 2021 that "this information must be provided in a single document in order to satisfy [the law]."

Supreme Court strikes down ban on bump stocks.  The Supreme Court on Friday [6/14/2024] overturned a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, ruling that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority by determining that the gun attachments turn firearms into machine guns.  The case was decided 6-3, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing the majority opinion and Justice Samuel Alito concurring.  Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court[']s three liberals, dissented.

Supreme Court strikes down federal ban on bump stocks.  The Supreme Court on Friday struck down a ban on bump stocks on semiautomatic weapons implemented after the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert in which the shooter used the attachment to kill 58 people.  In a 6-3 decision, along the court's conservative-liberal split, the court said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not have the authority to institute the ban as the federal law that bans machine guns from the public should not extend to bump stocks, which are attachments that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire off hundreds of rounds in a single pull of a trigger.

String Of Unanimous SCOTUS Decisions Confirms Proliferation Of Activist Lower Courts.  Coordinated attacks on SCOTUS's integrity, led by Democrats and their allies in the corporate media, try to deceive Americans into believing partisans hijacked the highest court in the land and ideologically fractured it into near-dysfunction.  The prominence of unanimous opinions and even more unanimous judgments not only discredits this notion but suggests a far more concerning narrative about the politicization of lower courts.  Since its inception, the Supreme Court has wielded its authority to deliver decisions rooted in bench agreement.  In recent years, especially, justices "defied critics" with "historic unanimity" on cases that circuit, appeals, and state supreme courts decided in defiance of the Constitution.  Of the 32 cases already decided in the 2023 term, 21 of the judgments were agreed upon by all of the presiding justices.  Many of them signaled justices' concern that lower courts abused their ruling power to violate the Constitution.

The Corruption of Supreme Court Coverage.  [T]he Supreme Court has become America's most reliable defense against national government expansion.  The mismatch between the aims of justices and journalists, some of the latter of whom are also connected to government-funded law schools staffed by liberal legal scholars, could not be more stark.  It has been reflected in Court coverage, where journalists have begun regularly using the gossip of bad literature to suggest "crime or corruption."  Since 2018, Justice Kavanaugh has been accused of a high school assault that the alleged key witness refused to corroborate.  He has also been accused of indecent exposure at a dorm party after another accuser spent "six days carefully assessing her memories." Justice Thomas has been labeled a servant of wealthy Americans based on his social relationships, in spite of at least two recent major cases in which he ruled against corporate interests.  Justice Gorsuch has been tarred over a property in which he owned a stake.

Punked.  This week, a lot of people and institutions got "punked," that is, humiliated, by their own actions. [...] Let's start with the attack on Justice Samuel Alito.  The Left simply cannot abide the fact that it doesn't control all branches of the government, and threatens to pack the court and, barring that, disparages and tries to force the recusal of justices Clarence Thomas and Alito from the presidential immunity case, if not their removal from the court altogether.  They promote one pretext after another.  Someone — maybe a dummy or a prankster determined to expose them as idiots — reported that once the American flag at Alito's home in Virginia briefly was flown upside down.  In the fevered world of the Left, this represented Justice Alito's support of the January 6 "Insurrection." [...] Not satisfied with this first, not terribly successful, smear of the justice, a second flag, a pine tree with the words "An appeal to God" flown at the family's vacation home, became the get-Alito rallying point.  The usual media mob, and even the once sane Bill Kristol (who years before had endorsed Alito for the court) argued this was further evidence of disqualifying bias by Alito because one person on January 6 waved such a flag.  In fact, the flag is an historic one.  It was created during the Revolutionary War and was used by George Washington's troops.

Justice Alito Becomes Latest Target Of Fabricated Controversies To Delegitimize SCOTUS.  Far-left activists are so desperate to knock another conservative Supreme Court justice off cases central to their campaign playbook this year that they've manufactured another pair of twin scandals to hit a new target:  Justice Samuel Alito.  On Sunday, the Daily Beast reported Alito apparently engaged in a scandal when the justice participated in the open stock market.  [Advertisement]  "U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sold off a chunk of stock in Anheuser-Busch Inbev in August 2023, just as a vicious right-wing boycott campaign of the company was reaching full swing, according to financial disclosure reports first spotted by the Substack page Law Dork," the paper wrote.  "The boycott was ostensibly in reaction to a limited social media partnership between trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light, one of AB-Inbev's best-selling brands."

Will the Supreme Court Let This Crisis Go to Waste?  Has the Supreme Court noticed that we've crossed a legal Rubicon?  The Constitution — that thing the Court is supposed to defend — is becoming less relevant by the day because the left has decided that our mutual pact of self-governance doesn't apply to leftists.  They have weaponized our government against us — using it to surveil, silence, harass, and steal from us.  Our own government is even arguing that the Constitution should not be a constraint on its operations — which is precisely what its purpose is.  Are the Supreme Court Justices beginning to realize that we are in crisis?  Two recent cases indicate that they are awakening to that reality.

America:  Goodbye my Country.  According to all available scientific evidence to date, the "Covid vaccine" has killed and destroyed the health of more people than the Covid virus.  The corrupt "authorities" have done their best to cover this up, but as I have reported the coverup has failed.  Still nothing is being done about it.  Nothing can be done as long as Congress is dependent on campaign contributions from corporations.  "Our" representatives are really representatives of those interest groups that fund election campaigns.  Congress reports to them, not to us.  The idiot US Supreme Court actually ruled that corporations had a legitimate Constitutional right to purchase the US government.  This ruling converted a government that represented the people into one that represented the political campaign contributors.

Supreme Court Lays the Groundwork for Cops to Chill First Amendment Activity, Retaliate Against Nonviolent Protesters.  In a case with far-reaching implications across the political spectrum for free speech and the right to protest, the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing a case to move forward that could hold a protest organizer liable for the independent actions of another protester, ultimately undermining the right to organize non-violent protests.  Warning that the outcome of the case could affect a wide range of protests related to abortion, gun rights, and pandemic mandates, as well as former President Trump's liability for the events that occurred on January 6, 2021, The Rutherford Institute had filed an amicus brief in Mckesson v. Doe calling on the Supreme Court to ensure that people who lead protests, political or otherwise, without intending to incite violence are not held civilly liable for the actions of others who engage in violent criminal activities at those protests.

The First Amendment:  An Inconvenience to the Government.  Modern liberals are supposed to be about liberty — protecting the rights of the people.  Our newest justice on the SCOTUS bench must not have gotten the memo on that.  She appears wanting as an arch defender of the First Amendment.  Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a Missouri case regarding (there's no other way to say this) social media censorship.  At issue is whether the federal government coerced social media companies into suppressing certain content and whether that would constitute an affront to free speech protections.  Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson created a stir while hearing oral arguments to the case.  It was her comments about the First Amendment "hamstringing" the power of the federal government that created the furor.  In the landmark case, Murthy v. Missouri, what is at issue is the federal government's influence over social media content.  Justice Jackson, nominated by President Biden in 2022, is one of three ideologically more liberal justices on the court. [...] Unfortunately, several of the other eight justices seemed to share her skepticism that the Biden administration's strong-arm tactics amounted to a violation of the Constitution.

Trump-haters hit a brick wall at SCOTUS.  Trump-hating prosecutors' joy ride hit a brick wall in the Supreme Court last Thursday, where six Justices doubted and ridiculed liberals' attempts to prosecute Trump in federal court.  This was so thoroughly a rout of Biden's minions that it also diminishes the impact of the ongoing New York County prosecution of Trump.  Delusional Biden supporters have expected federal prosecutors to rescue Biden by putting Trump on trial before the election.  But a barrage of comments by a Supreme Court majority exposed fatal defects in this legal strategy of anti-Trumpers to win the presidential election by prosecuting Trump.  Chief Justice Roberts did more than reject the decision by the Democrat-dominated D.C. Circuit that went against Trump.  Roberts mocked that decision for relying on a senseless tautology, which is also known as begging the question — assuming the truth of a statement without proving it.

Justice Kavanaugh Warns Of Vicious Cycle Of Malicious Prosecutions That Could End Presidency.  During Thursday's deliberations at the U.S. Supreme Court on former President Donald Trump's immunity claim, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned that a decision in the case has future implications for whether future presidents are shielded from vicious cycles of malicious prosecution that could effectively end the presidency as we know it.  In the course of two-and-a-half hours of oral arguments on April 25, justices on the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of a ruling by a federal appeals court that rejected President Trump's claim that he has absolute immunity from criminal charges based on his official acts as president.  President Trump was indicted by special counsel Jack Smith in August 2023 on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

SCOTUS Justices Signal They May Grant Certiorari in Case of Peaceful J6 Protestor Russell Alford.  The United States Supreme Court reportedly signaled that they are considering granting Russell Alford, one of the few J6 defendants to refuse a plea deal, his petition for writ of certiorari, a move that only happens for roughly 1% of cases brought to SCOTUS.  Alford is one of the 75 January 6 defendants who joined The Gateway Pundit in our official request to RINO Speaker McCarthy last year for the government's January 6 footage.

Justice Alito Questions Whether Prosecuting Presidents Would Undermine the Government.  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday questioned whether prosecuting former presidents may undermine the county's governance during a hearing on former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity case.  President Trump's lawyers have argued that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts.  Otherwise, they say, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn't function as the commander-in-chief if they had to worry about criminal charges.  "I'm sure you would agree with me that a stable, democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully, if that candidate is the incumbent," Justice Alito asked Michael Dreeben, an attorney for special counsel Jack Smith's team, which is prosecuting the former president in two separate cases.  "Of course," Mr. Dreeben replied.

Immunity Case — Ketanji Brown Jackson Not A Genius Either.  Today was the day the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Immunity Case regarding Jack Smith's persecution of Donald Trump for election interference.  This case hinges on the government's belief that Trump interfered with the election by believing that he had not lost and claiming so publicly and loudly.  Newest Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson used the arguments as an opportunity to prove that she is not only "not a biologist" but she is not a legal scholar or a genius either.  Good news for Sonia Sotomayor.  She no longer asks the dumbest questions from the bench.  Brown Jackson prefers to put herself up and front.  She does not believe in watching and learning.  Just over a week ago, I wrote that Brown Jackson "lectured" her Conservative Colleagues to show more "reason and restraint".  KJB (Brown Jackson) could begin by restraining her mouth.  KBJ got kicked to be curb by Trump's lawyer John Sauer, who clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, when she called the Trump Administration a regime:  [Tweet]

Supreme Court Seems Open to Allowing Some Presidential Immunity, May Delay Trump Trial.  The Supreme Court seemed skeptical on April 25 of former President Donald Trump's claim that he should receive absolute criminal immunity, but it appeared to be open to allowing some level of immunity for presidents.  Conservative justices seemed poised to remand the case back to the district court in Washington with instructions on what constitutes official and private acts for further fact-finding proceedings.  This would further delay President Trump's trial in Washington and possibly other proceedings in Georgia, Florida, and New York, handing him a strategic win as he seeks to hold up cases until after the November presidential election.  Attorney D. John Sauer argued for President Trump, and former Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben argued for Special Counsel Jack Smith.  The case stems from President Trump's attempt to dismiss Mr. Smith's indictment related to his activities on and leading up to Jan. 6, 2021.  Justice Clarence Thomas kicked off questions by asking Mr. Sauer to pinpoint where in the Constitution he derives his concept of immunity.

Supreme Court Majority Is Sympathetic to Trump's Immunity Claim With No Trial Likely Before the Election.  The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments stemming from Special Counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of former President Donald Trump on felony charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election.  Jack Smith sent his advocate, Michael Drebeen, a veteran of over 100 Supreme Court appearances and Robert Mueller's unethical investigation of President Trump, into a proverbial Cuisinart of hostile questions.  If the questions and statements of the justices are to be taken at face value, Trump's trial will not take place before November's election and possibly not at all.

U.S. Supreme Court Turns Away Two Closely-Watched Cases.  The U.S. Supreme Court declined to decide if delivery drivers for Amazon.com, Domino's Pizza, and a Flowers Foods subsidiary can get out of having to go through mandatory arbitration for employment claims, which the court recently said applies to a wide range of industries.  The court turned down both companies' separate requests to review lower court decisions that said the drivers were working in interstate commerce even when they were making local deliveries and were exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which meant they could go to court with a class action wage claim instead of an individual arbitration claim.

U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Kari Lake Voting Machine Lawsuit.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a voting machine lawsuit filed by her and former Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem.  The pair claimed in their suit "that they had sufficiently argued that all Arizona-certified optical scanners and ballot marking devices 'have been wrongly certified for use,'" the Washington Examiner reported.  A federal judge rejected the lawsuit in 2022, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in October 2023, before the Supreme Court declining to take the case.

Why SCOTUS Will Toss 350 J6 Convictions.  It's unlikely that many Americans sat down with a second cup of coffee and listened to last Tuesday's oral arguments before the Supreme Court in Fischer v. United States.  Nonetheless, it was an edifying tutorial on how the Department of Justice abused a federal law in order to charge J6 rioters with a serious felony.  The statute is part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 to prevent corporations from tampering with evidence to obstruct congressional inquiries or other official proceedings.  For 19 years, the law was used only for that purpose.  Then, in 2021, the DOJ redefined "official proceedings" to mean anything the government does, including certification of Electoral College votes.  This arbitrary revision became necessary because the actual "crimes" committed by most of the J6 defendants amounted to little more than trespassing and disorderly conduct.  This obviously conflicted with the narrative being pushed by President Biden, congressional Democrats and the corporate media, all of whom insisted from the beginning that the riot was a "deadly insurrection." Consequently, the DOJ had to come up with something that would sound more serious to the public than charging a few hundred knuckleheads with misdemeanors.

High Court's 9-0 Ruling Lowers Bar for Filing Anti-DEI Discrimination Lawsuits.  A low-profile case decided Wednesday by the Supreme Court could have big implications for employers' diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.  Muldrow v.  City of St. Louis was a case about a female police officer who alleged that she was transferred from one department to another because of her sex.  She argued that the transfer violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" discrimination with respect to employment "compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges." [...] It's fashionable for corporate employers to create race- and sex-based employment conditions and privileges as part of their DEI initiatives.  Some cases are obvious and egregious.  For example, Novant Health fired a white male executive in order to replace him with two women — one black, the other white.  And Starbucks fired a former manager because she was white.  Other cases are subtle yet ubiquitous.

Justice Neil Gorsuch Blows Up Department of Injustice's Case Against J6 Protesters.  The United States Supreme Court is holding arguments in Fischer v.  US, a case that could reduce criminal charges filed against more than 350 Trump supporters who participated in the US Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.  The Department of Injustice (DOJ) is using a statute called "obstructed a Congressional proceeding" to prosecute hundreds of these protesters simply for exercising their First Amendment rights.  This statute is a serious felony with the potential of 20 years behind bars.  CNN notes that this case also has implications for President Donald Trump, who was charged by corrupt special counsel Jack Smith for exercising his First Amendment rights on that fateful day.

Justice Clarence Thomas Grills DOJ Lawyer on January 6 'Obstruction' Statute.  The US Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in Fischer v.  United States and at issue is statute 18 USC §1512(c)(2):
  Whoever corruptly —
  (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
  (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on Fischer v United States this summer which means hundreds of J6 cases could be upended.  Biden's corrupt DOJ has charged more than 300 J6ers with 18 USC §1512(c)(2).  Additionally, two of the four charges against Trump in Jack Smith's DC case are conspiracy to obstruct so the Supreme Court's ruling could torpedo the special counsel's case against Trump as well.

Justice Gorsuch Lays Waste to the Biden Administration's Argument for Jail Sentences.  The Supreme Court heard arguments in the Fischer v.  United States case, which related to whether the DC Court of Appeals "erred in construing 18 U.S.C. § 1512 obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence," according to SCOTUSblog.  This criminal statute was slapped against hundreds of January 6 defendants, many serving years behind bars.  During oral arguments, Justice Neil Gorsuch poked holes in the Biden Justice Department's case, listing four instances of "obstructing a Congressional proceeding," mentioning Rep. Jamaal Bowman's (D-NY) fire alarm stunt last year:  [Tweet with video clip]  The best part is when the Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said they would need evidence of intent in these circumstances.  "Oh, they intend to do it alright," replied Gorsuch.  In March, a federal appeals court ruled that up to 100 January 6 defendants might have had their jail sentences improperly enhanced.

A Sesame Street analysis reveals why the Supreme Court must rule against the DOJ.  As I write this, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Fischer v. United States, a singularly important case that will affect the fates of hundreds of J6 defendants and, if decided correctly, will severely curtail federal prosecutorial overreach.  However, the Supreme Court's rules and a Sesame Street analysis say that the DOJ cannot get away with lumping Free Speech into the same felony class as destroying evidence or threatening witnesses.  The issue is how to interpret 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2).  Anyone who graduated from law school before the year 2000 (after that date, all law school graduates are presumptively ideologically corrupt) knows that the DOJ has perverted the statute's meaning, which is manifestly intended only to address the willful destruction of evidence.  It remains to be seen how ideologically corrupt the Supreme Court is (or isn't).

SCOTUS Allows Baton Rouge Police Officer's Civil Suit Against BLM Leader to Go Forward.  In a decision that may have large ripple effects across the country, the Supreme Court rejected a First Amendment appeal, thereby allowing a civil suit that was brought against a Black Lives Matter activist leader in Baton Rouge, LA, by an unnamed police officer to go forward on Monday.  The brief order states that DeRay Mckesson's First Amendment appeal to the high court was rejected, and he must face a lawsuit brought by the officer who was injured during a 2016 protest after the officer-involved shooting death of Alton Sterling in July of 2016. Sterling, who was black, was shot by officers after failing to comply with their orders and after they saw Alton with a firearm in his pants pocket.  Days after the fatal shooting, McKesson organized a protest where protestors blocked a highway outside of a local police station.  As police officers were clearing the roadway of protestors and vehicles, Officer John Doe (as he was identified in the filing) was struck in the head by a "rock-like object," which caused "brain trauma" and other injuries, according to court filings.  McKesson did not throw the object, and it is undisputed that he never authorized or incited the violence.  However, the officer claims that regardless of whether McKesson knew of or ordered/incited the violence, his leadership at the event makes him liable for damages.

Supreme Court Will Hear Arguments on Thursday That Could Overturn Convictions of Hundreds of J6 Rioters.  On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear a case that could impact the 2024 presidential election and lead to the release of or reduction in sentences for hundreds of January 6 rioters.  Before the trials began, the J6 prosecutors decided that the most serious charge they could get a conviction for was an obstruction charge.  The prosecutors were alleging that the rioters obstructed an official proceeding of Congress, making the crime eligible to be prosecuted for anyone who "corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or otherr object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so."  There are two points of contention for defense attorneys.  The first is the definition "corruptly" and the second is the "otherwise" wording that leads, they say, to an overly broad interpretation of the statute.  The case involves Joseph W. Fischer, an off-duty Pennsylvania police officer, who is facing several charges as a result of his admitted participation in the riot.

SCOTUS Errs In Murthy v. Missouri By Assuming Big Tech Is Just Like Print Media.  Along with my co-plaintiffs, I was at the Supreme Court last week for oral arguments in our Murthy v. Missouri case, in which we are challenging the federal government's alleged censorship on social media.  The Supreme Court will likely rule in June whether to uphold, modify, or strike down the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals' injunction against five federal agencies, in what, the district court judge wrote, "arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history."  At the hearing, Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that emails between the White House and Facebook "showed constant pestering of Facebook."  He went on to comment, "I cannot imagine federal officials taking this approach to the print media. ... It's treating these platforms like subordinates."  He then asked the government's attorney, "Would you treat The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal this way?  Do you think the print media considers themselves 'partners' with government?  I can't imagine the federal government doing that to them."

Have the Justices Been Captured by Media?  Today's Supreme Court is seen as an outsider institution in Washington:  either a bastion of limiting government in a government town or a rogue assaulter of what Washington insiders like to call "the common good."  But this perception may be increasingly obsolete, thanks to a trend which the justices seem unable to combat and sometimes even encourage:  their growing perception of dependency on an aggressive "fourth estate" of establishment journalists. [...] The media's heightened scrutiny of the Court started in earnest in 2018 with the nomination to the bench of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, rightly seen as a new vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.  Since then, no aspect of the justices' lives has been off-limits — whether RV purchases or publishing strategies, spousal employment or house sales.

Jan. 6 Defendant Released Early After Supreme Court Takes Case That Could Shorten Sentence.  A federal judge has released a man sentenced to three years behind bars concerning actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol Building after the Supreme Court took up a case that could have affected his sentence and that of hundreds of others.  Kevin Seefried, a resident of Laurel, Del., was handed a felony conviction of obstructing an official proceeding.  Furthermore, Seefried received a 12-month and 6-month sentence for misdemeanor charges.  According to the Department of Justice, Seefried and his son Hunter were among the first people to enter the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection.  They were also photographed carrying a Confederate flag while inside.  According to Newsweek, the obstruction charge is at the center of the case that the nation's highest court has taken up.

NYC Begs Supreme Court to Allow Over 800,000 Illegal Immigrants to Vote.  The New York City council is asking the state's Supreme Court to allow illegal immigrants to vote in the city's municipal elections.  In 2021, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a law that would have allowed 800,000 non-citizens with green cards, visas, and work permits to vote as long as they have resided in the city for at least 30 consecutive days.  However, the controversial law was struck down last month by an appellate court.

The Editor says...
Citizens have no need for "green cards, visas, and work permits," because those things are for temporary authorization of visitors, tourists, and migrant workers.  The New York City council is providing many illegal immigrants with housing and other freebies, which establishes a relationship that could easily be construed as buying votes, if the illegal immigrants were to be allowed to participate in elections.

Scotus Sides With Texas on Immigration Law — Round 'Em Up.  The Supreme Court last Tuesday upheld a Texas law allowing local law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants entering the US.  This is a massive victory for Governor Greg Abbott (R), whose attempts to handle the border crisis have been repeatedly stymied by the Biden Administration.  The Texas law (SB4), passed late last year, allows state and local officials to arrest and impose criminal penalties on individuals entering the country illegally and allows state judges to order deportation.  According to Abbott, the law was a necessity due to the Biden Administration's abject failure to enforce federal laws at the border.  Texas Attorney Genearl Ken Paxton described the ruling as a "huge win" and confirmed the law "is now in effect."  The Supreme Court's ruling also rejects a request from the Justice Department, which insists SB4 is a violation of the Constitution's Supremacy Clause.  The Supremacy Clause states that federal law takes precedence over state law in most cases.

Free speech hangs in the balance in 3 Supreme Court cases.  This month, the Supreme Court reviewed a trifecta of free speech cases that has government and civil libertarians alike on edge.  While each of the cases raises an insular issue, they collectively run across the waterfront of free speech controversies facing this country.  For some of us, what was most chilling from oral arguments were the sentiments voiced by justices on the left of the court, particularly Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.  The court may now be reflecting the shift among liberal scholars and politicians away from freedom of speech and in favor of greater government speech regulation. [...] We are now living through one of the most anti-free speech periods in our history.  On our campuses, law professors are leading a movement to limit free speech under the pretext of combating hate speech or disinformation.  A dangerous triumvirate has formed as government, corporate and academic interests have aligned to push limitations of free expression.

Ketanji Brown Jackson Defenestrates the First Amendment.  At her confirmation hearings, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson claimed she lacked the expertise to define "woman."  Just two years later, she did not hesitate to redefine the First Amendment and free speech as she advocated for the regime to bulldoze our Constitutional liberties provided they offer sufficiently sanctimonious justifications.  At Monday's oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, Jackson said her "biggest concern" was that the injunction, which prohibits the Biden Administration from colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans, may result in "the First Amendment hamstringing the Government."  This, apparently, was of greater concern to Jackson than the revelations that the Intelligence Community held ongoing meetings with social media companies to coordinate censorship demands, that the White House explicitly demanded the censorship of journalists, and that the Department of Homeland Security was instrumental in manipulating citizens ahead of the 2020 presidential election.  But according to Jackson's outlook, those facts may have actually been encouraging.  She scolded counsel, "Some might say the Government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country."

Ketanji Brown Jackson is a fascist who should be removed from the Court.  Ketanji Brown Jackson, is concerned the First Amendment is "hamstringing the government."  That's a 5-alarm fire of a pull-quote from a sitting Supreme Court justice, and she should absolutely be impeached and removed from the Court over it.  I'm as serious as a heart attack here.  Nearly every sentence of this single thought of hers adds up to textbook fascism, (a hybrid economic system in which the private economy exists but under strict state regulations, and must give way to the national interest, which is whatever the government says it is.) [...] Really?  Your biggest concern is how the First Amendment hamstrings... the federal government?  No, honey.  No.  Your biggest concern should be the federal government hamstringing the First Amendment.  You have it exactly backwards.  The "charter of negative liberties" is exactly that for a reason, intentionally crafted to restrict the government's ability to deprive the people of their essential liberties.  The entire point of the Bill of Rights is to "hamstring" the federal government; how does she not understand this down to her bones?

The right to shout "BS" during a pandemic.  I found the oral argument of the case now styled Murthy v. Missouri this past Monday to be utterly demoralizing.  As soon as the oral argument concluded I rashly hazarded my assessment that it portends a victory for the massive censorship-industrial complex represented by the Biden administration.  My assessment was a hot take based on the tenor of the argument.  The argument seemed to me to reflect a fantasy world.  It was unreal.  In the case argued by Biden administration, the big sticks from the feds were simply here to lend a helping hand to their friends in social media.  They all got along beautifully.  No problem!  The misinformation promoted by the government went unmentioned.  The government appeared only as our benefactor.  "My biggest concern," said Justice Jackson, "is that [plaintiffs'] view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways."  She only wants to leave government censors free to persuade their social media partners to do their bidding.  You got a problem with that?

What happened at the Supreme Court Monday, and what it means for Berenson v Biden — and free speech.  On Monday, the Supreme Court heard two cases vital to the future of the First Amendment — and Berenson v Biden, my lawsuit against the White House and Pfizer officials for their conspiracy to force Twitter to ban me in 2021. The first, Murthy v Missouri, came out of broad federal efforts to monitor and suppress "misinformation" on social media.  The second, NRA v Vullo, looks specifically at whether the state of New York overreached when it leaned on insurers to stop doing business with the National Rifle Association.  Both cases may impact my suit.  In fact, the two cases are so vital to it that on Tuesday federal Judge Jessica G.L. Clarke, who is hearing it, officially delayed it until after the Supreme Court decides them.  Based on how the justices handled oral arguments, the court seems on track to rule for the government in the Missouri case but also in favor of the NRA, overturning appellate courts in both cases.

This Country Cannot Afford A Weak Supreme Court Decision On Internet Censorship.  The Biden administration attempted to distract the Supreme Court from the voluminous evidence of federal abuse of Americans' speech rights during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri Monday.  It sounded like several justices followed the feds' waving red flag.  "The government may not use coercive threats to suppress speech, but it is entitled to speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers," said Biden administration lawyer Brian Fletcher in his opening remarks.  He and several justices asserted government speech prerogatives that would flip the Constitution upside down.  The government doesn't have constitutional rights.  Constitutional rights belong to the people and restrain the government.  The people's right to speak may not be abridged.  Government officials' speaking, in their official capacities, may certainly be abridged.  Indeed, it often must be, precisely to restrict officials from abusing the state's monopoly on violence to bully citizens into serfdom.

Getting Hot Out There in Election Fraud Land.  Is Arizona going to the Supreme Court?  The Court is rumoured to want an election fraud case.  It can't ignore this very much longer.  No one is letting go.  Everyone observing thinks the judge will quail, because he will be ruined and under threat by the cartel that owns Arizona.  If Lake loses her signature battle — which she shouldn't — this was straight up fraud — it doesn't matter.  We're in an incremental battle.  These people, the forces on the now-bonkers left, devised their successful program in 2002 with four billionaires, and for twenty years they have been accruing power, building their system straight out to fraud and selling out to the cartels and WEFers.  At some point along the way, the power they built went haywire and began to eat the culture.  What that has triggered is a tsunami of citizen activism.  Not the astroturf of the corporate left or international socialist left, but the real thing.  We're tracking everything.  Spy on us, we will gut your data.

Supreme Court Refuses to Block Texas From Arresting Illegal Immigrants.  The Supreme Court has acted.  Texas is free to deal with illegal migrants in violation of immigration law by arresting them.  The Biden administration failed in its attempt to block a Texas law that allows the state to arrest those suspected of violating U.S. Immigration law.  The Biden administration argued that the federal government may enforce or ignore immigration law as it sees fit.  It said states like Texas have no say in the matter and no recourse to defend themselves.  The court majority said no to this overreaching, and some justices were not happy.  Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote, "Today, the Court invites further chaos and crisis in immigration enforcement."  The court may still reopen the issue as a constitutional matter later, but for now, the Biden administration may not interfere with Texas.  Biden had wanted an administrative stay to halt any action by Texas as a way of shortcutting the process of appeals.  The Texas migration law makes unauthorized entry into the state, except at a port of entry, a state felony.  While such entry is already a federal crime, the Biden administration has turned a blind eye to the law.  Texas now has a free hand to defend its state borders.  A federal judge attempted to stay the law's implementation, but the 5th Circuit overturned that ruling.  The Biden administration hoped the Supreme Court would overrule the 5th Circuit.  It did not.

Supreme Court Allows Texas to Enforce Deportation Law.  Earlier today the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to allow Texas to enforce Texas Senate Bill 4 and resume arresting and deporting migrants crossing the border illegally, as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals continues litigation in United States, Applicant v. Texas, et al.  Texas Governor Greg Abbott believes the Supreme Court's decision is a positive development as the case returns to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, stating on X, "BREAKING: In a 6-3 decision SCOTUS allows Texas to begin enforcing SB4 that allows the arrest of illegal immigrants.  We still have to have hearings in the 5th circuit federal court of appeals.  But this is clearly a positive development."

A turbulent day for free speech at the Supreme Court.  When can the federal government use its coercive regulatory powers to silence ideas it doesn't like on social media?  That was the question presented to the Supreme Court on Monday, and while a majority seems ready to protect the First Amendment, too many justices seemed ready to give the government the benefit of the doubt. [...] That is not how the First Amendment is supposed to work.  The federal government does not have a First Amendment right to anything.  The same is true with state and local governments.  The First Amendment is a protection for people, not governments.  If the Biden administration wants to cajole people to get vaccinated, it is free to do so from the bully pulpit.  What it is not allowed to do is use government power or threats to censor people who disagree with its COVID policies.  That is what the Biden administration did, not just on vaccines but on other subjects, such as posts about the virus originating in China or questioning Biden policies on racial justice, Afghanistan, or Ukraine.

Supreme Court green lights Texas law that allows state police to arrest migrants.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed a Texas law to take effect that enables state law enforcement to arrest people they suspect are illegally entering the United States from Mexico.  The three liberal justices publicly dissented from the court's order that clears the way for the controversial statute, S.B. 4.  The order is not a final decision, and the case could return to the high court.  The Biden administration had urged the justices to block the law, passed by Texas's Republican-controlled Legislature last year, asserting it is an "unprecedented intrusion into federal immigration enforcement."  "There is no ambiguity in SB4," U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote to the justices.  "It is flatly inconsistent with federal law in all its applications, and it is therefore preempted on its face."

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says some foolish things.  The Justices of the Supreme Court make their living with words.  They read them, they write them, they speak them, they listen to them, and they rule with them.  We currently have a Justice who uses words very poorly.  At her confirmation hearing before the Senate, Justice Jackson was asked to give a definition of "woman."  That's a legitimate question, since many legal matters depend on whether a given person is a woman or a man.  Her answer was:  "I can't.  Not in this context.  I'm not a biologist."  Jackson was of course dodging the question.  Fine, that's what you do when you're being cross examined by a hostile questioner.  But the unartfulness of her dodge was striking.

Free Speech... For Sale or Rent.  Oral arguments were given today on the First Amendment cases concerning the government influencing social media sites to ban and censor speech. [...] Justice Jackson probably made the worst case and exposed herself as someone who has little or no understanding of the principles of the First Amendment, but obviously subscribed to Obama's definition of the Bill of Rights as a Bill of Negative Rights in that they told the government what it cannot do.  She asked "if these people are giving false information, are suggesting that the government can do nothing about that?" (paraphrased) If you understand the ideology of these communists, there's nothing the government can't do and therefore the Bill of Rights negate the ability of government to do whatever it wants.  Yes!  Absolutely right.  First of all, I argue that the Bill of Rights contain rights the people have over the government, in spite of it, regardless of it and in that sense Obama is right, but that's the whole point.  It does tell the government what it cannot do, but that doesn't make it a "negative right" it makes it a right of the people rather than a right of the government.  It would be a right of the people, even if there were no government at all.

Supreme Court Appears to Lean Favorably Toward Government in First Amendment Case.  Oral arguments were heard today in the appeal of the government against the states of Louisiana, Missouri and seven plaintiffs who claim that Biden officials, including Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media platforms to suppress or delete content about COVID-19 that federal officials found objectionable.  The Biden administration had an extensive communication pipeline into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube and various subsidiary tech companies where instructions, the government says "encouragement", were/was given about the removal of content critical of the government position, and the removal of content providers — American citizens.

War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.
Justice Ketanji Jackson justifies government censorship of Americans' online speech by invoking 'duty' to 'protect' citizens.  The Supreme Court heard arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri case, in which the attorney general from Missouri brought a case claiming that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment in colluding with social media platforms to suppress and censor Americans' speech on social media platforms.  The focus of the questioning by the justices was on the definition of coercion and the standing of Missouri having brought the case.  For Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, however, the key element was that in certain, heightened conditions, the government should have the right to suppress speech.

US Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson Just Defended The US Government [is] Violating the 1st Amendment.  This afternoon, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) tweeted about today's US Supreme Court case (Murthy v. Missouri) that involves several plaintiffs, including The Gateway Pundit, who have been harmed by censorship by the government and big tech.  [Tweet] [...] Joe Biden's latest addition to the US Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, however, had a different take on the significance of the free speech case.  Some might say that Justice Ketanji Brown, during oral arguments, dismissed the First Amendment as a roadblock for the government and big tech in their efforts to collude against Americans to censor their free speech.

Justice Jackson Complains First Amendment Is 'Hamstringing' Feds' Censorship Efforts.  Free speech is on trial at the Supreme Court, but Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson is no fan of the First Amendment.  The Constitution, you see, limits the government.  But leftists want unlimited government — which is why they hate the Constitution.  During Monday's oral arguments for Murthy v. Missouri, formerly known as Biden v. Missouri, Jackson claimed to oppose any ruling in favor of Americans' constitutional right to free speech if it limited the government's ability to censor that speech via Big Tech.  "My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods," Jackson told Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga.  [Tweet]  Jackson expressed skepticism at reigning in the federal government's unconstitutional censorship pressure campaign because "some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country" that goes far beyond simply posting its own speech or engaging in constitutional means of securing citizens from violence.

The Editor says...
Justice Jackson apparently doesn't understand the purpose of the Bill of Rights.  Or maybe she does, which would be even worse.

SCOTUS Set to Hear Free Speech Case on Biden Admin Colluding With Big Tech to Stifle 'Misinformation'.  As we wrote in Oct. 2023, the attorneys general of Missouri and Lousiana, along with five plaintiffs, asked the United States Supreme Court to uphold an injunction prohibiting the Biden administration from colluding with Big Tech companies to stifle free speech on social media sites by calling it "misinformation."  They also argued that the case should be heard in front of the High Court. [...] SCOTUS will hear arguments in what's now called Murthy v.  Missouri, which may become a landmark case in the fight to uphold Americans' First Amendment rights[.] Journalist Glenn Greenwald and Twitter-X owner Elon Musk were just a few of the people talking about the case in anticipation of the SCOTUS hearing the case:  [Tweet]

Consequences Minus Truth.  This Monday, the Supreme Court will entertain oral arguments on the case Missouri, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al.  The integrity of the First Amendment hinges on the decision.  Do we have freedom of speech as set forth in the Constitution?  Or is it conditional on how government officials feel about some set of circumstances?  At issue specifically is the government's conduct in coercing social media companies to censor opinion in order to suppress so-called "vaccine hesitancy" and to manipulate public debate in the 2020 election.  Government lawyers have argued that they were merely "communicating" with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others about "public health disinformation and election conspiracies."  You can reasonably suppose that this was our government's effort to disable the truth, especially as it conflicted with its own policy and activities — from supporting BLM riots to enabling election fraud to mandating dubious vaccines.  Former employees of the FBI and the CIA were directly implanted in social media companies to oversee the carrying-out of censorship orders from their old headquarters.

Alito extends Supreme Court pause of SB4, Texas immigration law that would allow state to arrest migrants.  Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday extended an order blocking Texas troopers and police from arresting and jailing migrants suspected of crossing the U.S. southern border without authorization under a strict state immigration law known as SB4.  Alito continued an administrative stay of a lower court order that had paved the way for Texas officials to enforce SB4, one of the toughest state immigration laws in U.S. history.  The pause was previously going to expire on Wednesday evening.  Alito on Tuesday extended it through Monday, March 18.  Passed into law by the Texas legislature last year, SB4 authorizes Texas law enforcement at the state and local levels to arrest, jail and prosecute migrants on state charges of entering or reentering the U.S. outside of an official port of entry.  It also empowers state judges to require migrants to return to Mexico as an alternative to prosecuting suspected violators of the law.

The Anti-Democratic Democratic Left.  Joe Biden has claimed that his opponents are assaulting democracy on the basis of the January 6, 2020, buffoonish riot.  Joe Biden has claimed that his opponents are assaulting democracy on the basis of the January 6, 2020, buffoonish riot.  Aside from the fact that storming the Capitol Rotunda sometimes is apparently deemed permissible — as in the recent pro-Hamas takeover of it — or aside from the fact that disrupting a federal government proceeding is deemed exempt — as in the recent pro-Hamas throng that blocked the route of the presidential motorcade and thus delayed the State of the Union address to the nation by 26 minutes — who really is attacking democracy?  Take the Supreme Court.  After the Court went to a 6-3 conservative majority, liberal law professors, progressive activist groups, and many ends-justify-the-means Democrats in Congress began advocating "packing the court" to gain additional new billets for left-wing judges. [...] Formerly, any such notion would have been written off as lunatic and dangerous, given that the nine-justice Supreme Court has been canonized for 155 years since 1869.

Momentum builds in major homelessness case before U.S. Supreme Court.  Momentum is building in a case regarding homeless encampments that will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court next month and could have major implications for cities as homelessness nationwide has reached record highs.  Dozens of briefs have been filed in recent days, including from the Department of Justice, members of Congress and state attorneys general.  They joined the growing number of western state and local officials who have submitted briefs urging the justices to overturn a controversial lower court decision they say has prevented them from addressing homeless encampments.  In 2018, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — whose jurisdiction includes nine Western states — ruled it was unconstitutional to punish people who are "involuntarily homeless" for sleeping outside if there are not enough shelter beds.  Its Martin v.  Boise decision found that doing so would violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Colorado Ballot Case:  SCOTUS Rules For Constitution.  Per the unanimous decision from SCOTUS this morning, Donald Trump's name can stay on the ballot in Colorado and votes for him will be counted. [...] There are several notable things in this decision, which you can read in its entirety [elsew]here.  First, this was Constitutional law at its best and finest.  As HotAir's Ed Morrissey points out, SCOTUS reminds us that the 14th Amendment doesn't expand, it LIMITS states powers.  Secondly, the court, in its decision, focused on the law.  What is the role of the 14th Amendment on the state and federal level?  Does a state have the legal power to keep a federal candidate off a ballot?  Their answer is no, no they do not.

Supreme Court temporarily halts rollout of Texas migrant arrest law.  The Supreme Court on Monday moved to temporarily halt the introduction of a new Texas law under which local authorities would be allowed to arrest migrants believed to be illegally entering the country.  In an order issued by Justice Samuel Alito, the high court delayed the implementation of the measure until 5 p.m. on March 13.

Supreme Court Overturns Trump Colorado Disqualification in Unanimous Ruling.  The Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump cannot be removed from the ballot by individual states, overturning the Colorado Supreme Court decision that found him ineligible as a candidate and disqualified from the state ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.  "[R]esponsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States.  The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand," the per curiam order reads.  "All nine Members of the Court agree with that result."  The order was issued on March 4, just a day before more than a dozen states hold their primary elections.

Supreme Court puts Trump back on Colorado Republican primary ballot.  The Supreme Court on Monday [3/4/2024] unanimously reversed the Colorado court ruling that barred Donald Trump from appearing on the state's Republican presidential primary ballot because of a provision in the U.S. Constitution related to people who engage in insurrection.  The decision Monday said that "States have no power under the Constitution to" enforce the provision disqualifying people from federal office if they engaged in insurrection, "especially the Presidency."  The ruling said states could disqualify people from holding state offices on those grounds.  The Supreme Court's ruling mean that no other state can bar Trump, or any other candidate, from a presidential ballot by invoking the insurrection clause in the Constitution.  "For the reasons given, responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States," the ruling said.  "The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand."

Did Biden Just Create A Constitutional Crisis?  The Supreme Court told President Joe Biden that he didn't have the authority to forgive student loan debt.  But he did anyway, bragging that the Court "didn't stop me."  So why do we even have a legislative branch and a high court if the president is going to make law as if he were a king?  It's Biden's party, and its activist media, that has been carping for years about losing "our democracy."  Yet when a Democratic president bypasses the checks and balances that are the backbone of our republic, the three co-equal branches framework of government that is intended to guard against descending into a dictatorship, they celebrate rather than condemn.  Maybe it's because they care about the integrity of our system of government only when it's making policies they want.

Colorado Lawyer Flails As Clarence Thomas Calmly Destroys His Trump Disqualification Argument.  By merely asking for examples, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas calmly destroyed respondents' argument for disqualifying former President Donald Trump from Colorado's 2024 presidential primary ballot.  The moment came on Thursday morning [2/8/2024], during oral arguments on Trump's appeal to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court's Dec. 19 decision to keep him off the Centennial State's 2024 primary ballot.  Colorado's highest court claimed in its ruling that the former president can be "disqualified" from holding office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which stipulates that "[n]o person" who has previously sworn an oath as an officer of the United States and has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion shall" serve in any of an enumerated list of offices of the United States.  The president and vice president are not included in this list of positions. [...] Contrary to respondents' assertion, Trump has not been convicted of any crimes, let alone insurrection, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out.

Democrat Lawyer Admits At Supreme Court That Only One Party Can Be Allowed To Rig Elections.  There was never a purer demonstration of how traitorous Democrats are about "defending democracy," or whatever corny phrase they like to use, than what just happened at the Supreme Court.  At the very end of oral arguments in the Colorado case determining whether the state had the right to remove former President Donald Trump's name from the 2024 ballot, Justice Samuel Alito asked the state's solicitor general, Shannon Stevenson, what's going to happen if other states "retaliate" by, say, removing Joe Biden from theirs.  Elected officials in at least six states have suggested it as a course of action.  It's an obvious question that Stevenson either wasn't prepared for or knew it would expose her state's case as a tragic joke.  "Your honor, I think we have to have faith in our system that people will follow their election processes appropriately, that they will take realistic views of what insurrection is under the 14th Amendment," she said.  "Courts will review those decisions, this court may review some of them."  What she said next should have resulted in her being laughed out of the room.

Supreme Court Grants Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold 10 Minutes to Justify Her Position on Disqualifying President Trump From Ballot.  Apparently the Lawfare crew have been working and coaching overtime to give Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold a framework to explain to the Supreme Court how Colorado's very specific election laws allow for presidential candidates to be disqualified despite meeting all constitutional requirements.  State Solicitor General Sharon Stevenson would be the legal mind representing Jena Griswold.  This should be an interesting attempt.  Griswold asked the Supreme Court for 15 minutes to explain how Colorado law supersedes the U.S. Constitution.  In an order announced earlier today [pdf here], the court has granted Ms. Griswold 10 minutes to make her case.  The oral arguments will take place on Thursday, February 8th.

Time to Get Rid of the Chevron Ruling.  The burden of overregulation weighs heavily upon American industry.  It saddles the business world with burdens that stifle initiative and diminish profits.  One Supreme Court decision that reinforces and codifies this government regulation is Chevron U.S.A. v. National Resources Defense Council.  The 1984 ruling over a Clean Air Act regulation held that when confronted with ambiguous provisions of federal statutory law, judges must defer to the reasonable interpretations of agency officials over any others.  This blank-check approach to the law made it difficult to challenge oppressive regulation and further empowered an already top-heavy bureaucracy.  Soon, Chevron became the rule to make all rules.  Now, Chevron is being challenged, and it is about time.

Jan. 6 convicts released after Supreme Court takes up challenge to feds' use of obstruction charge.  At least two Jan. 6 defendants got out from behind bars because the Supreme Court is reviewing the legitimacy of charging them with obstructing an official proceeding, which is one of the feds' favorite charges for people who breached the Capitol.  The legal challenge brought by Jan. 6 defendant Joseph Fischer accuses prosecutors of using an overly broad interpretation of "obstructing an official proceeding" to launch hundreds of cases stemming from the Capitol riot, including against former President Donald Trump.  The case will be argued before the high court in the spring with a decision expected by the end of June.  But until then, at least two defendants successfully petitioned for early release pending the decision.

Texas Isn't 'Ignoring' The Supreme Court, It's Upholding The Law.  A talking point cropping up on social media and press contends that Texas Governor Greg Abbott is "ignoring" or "defying" the Supreme Court by continuing to erect fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border.  This is wrong.  Abbott can't ignore the Supreme Court because Texas wasn't ordered to do anything.  SCOTUS vacated an order against the Department of Homeland Security [sic] that stopped the Feds from cutting down razor fencing along the border.  Nothing says that Texas can't erect the fencing.  Though, you must marvel at the breathtaking audacity of Democrats suddenly treating the court's (non-existent) words as if they were sacred text.  This very week, President Joe Biden again ignored the court, rolling out yet another iteration of his unconstitutional student "loan forgiveness" program.  Biden habitually circumvents, ignores, defies, attacks, and demeans SCOTUS — and Democrats cheer him on along the way.  Senate leaders and "dark money" fake media organizations like ProPublica have poured millions into delegitimizing and smearing the court to undermine its authority.

The Constitution Literally Allows Texas to Engage in War at the Southern Border.  Here's How.  The Supreme Court's decision this week to order Texas not to protect its border with Mexico will go down in history as one of the court's most cowardly decisions that could doom our nation — if it is allowed to stand.  That decision was not just about razor wire.  It was about the role of states in our federal system and the betrayal of the nation — first by a president, and now by two Republican-appointed justices. [...] The establishment media had attacked Trump for spending $11 billion to put barriers up along 50 miles of our southern border.  But the corrupt media thought nothing of spending more than 10 times that to defend Ukraine and its border.  And the House GOP now estimates the annual cost of the Biden open border will be $451 billion in caring for illegal aliens.  Biden opened the door, and over 3.8 million people walked through.  That number of illegals is greater than the population of 22 states and is on the verge of destroying the nation in every way by causing crime, drug deaths, child trafficking, terrorism, deficit spending and more.  He could not have done any more damage to the nation if he had tried.

Can America survive its traitors?  This week's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the federal government to remove razor-wire barriers set up by the State of Texas to discourage illegal border crossings was a slap in the face to every law-abiding American citizen.  An estimated 5 million foreign nationals, the vast majority of them males between the ages of 18 and 40, have illegally crossed into the U.S. since Biden took office.  And this doesn't include the "gotaways," which are those who cross over under the radar of Border Patrol rather than giving themselves up and claiming "asylum."  This is an invasion of military-aged men, who by all accounts appear well-fed and well-clothed.  We should assume most of them are here for no good reason.  If you think about the ramifications of this decision — all of the death and destruction that will take place in Texas and beyond as a result — it's not difficult to conclude that it's more than just your typical bad legal decision.  No, this was a criminal decision.  And it was made possible by a Trump-appointed justice, Amy Coney Barrett, who along with Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the Marxist wing of the court.

Supreme Court Sides with Biden Regime, Allows Border Patrol Agents to Remove Razor Wire at [the] Border.  The US Supreme Court on Monday sided with the Biden Regime and allowed Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire installed on the Texas-Mexico border.  In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court granted Biden's emergency request.  This is the 9th time that the Supreme Court has sided with the Biden Regime out of 14 emergency applications.

Supreme Court Allows Feds to Cut Razor Wire on Texas Border While Lawsuit Continues Through the Courts.  In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court permitted the feds to cut the razor wire on the Texas-Mexico border as the lawsuit over the wire continues through the courts: [...] The justices did not explain why they vacated the injunction.  Texas installed the razor wire because Biden's administration is not doing anything to secure the border.  The feds started cutting the wire to allow the migrants to cross.  Texas sued the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Border Patrol, claiming "the Border Patrol illegally destroyed state property." [...] The Supreme Court granted Biden's emergency appeal and allow the agents to cut the wire as litigation continues.  The case itself has not reached the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Rules 5-4 That State Authorities Cannot Protect American Citizens from Illegal Border Entry.  In a 5-4 ruling today [pdf Available Here], Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the radical leftists on the court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, to say that Texas is not permitted to protect itself from illegal border crossers.  None of the justices provided any explanation for their vote.  The court majority sided with the Biden administration policy of removing razor wire to permit illegal alien entry without impediment.  Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas voted with Texas, in favor of national border integrity.

Supreme Court Must Answer Whether Judges or Bureaucrats Have Final Word on Federal Law.  Will the Supreme Court uphold the Chevron doctrine, under which courts defer to contested interpretations of law by agencies in the executive branch?  Or will the high court instruct lower courts to determine the best reading of the law, as they do in virtually every non-agency case?  Those are the questions the Supreme Court must answer after hours of arguments Wednesday in Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright v. Raimondo, two cases that challenge the Chevron doctrine.  Most of the justices sounded skeptical of the doctrine.  But whether Chevron or any deference to agencies' legal interpretations endures will depend on how the justices answer a host of subsidiary questions.  Both the Relentless and Loper Bright cases were brought by commercial fishermen challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service's interpretation of a federal law called the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

Ted Cruz Has an Idea on How SCOTUS Could Rule Unanimously to Keep Trump on the Ballot.  As the senator explained to co-host Ben Ferguson, matters for the Court to address include both whether or not there was an insurrection on January 6, 2021, which Trump was in charge of, and which would thus mean he would be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, as well as whether or not Colorado was overstepping.  Cruz also had strong words for the Colorado Supreme Court, calling their decision "lawless."  Sharing at one point how he believed taking up this case was "a no-brainer," Cruz also said that "I think all nine [justices] agreed 'we needed to take it' and I don't think they hesitated on it," given how major a Constitutional question it was.  "Under the Constitution, it is difficult to imagine a more consequential question and a question that demands the Supreme Court to get it," he added.  When it comes to the topic Cruz would speak to throughout the episode, in the Court not wanting to be seen as political, the senator also offered that "I don't think the Court was eager to get into this issue at all," explaining that "the justices are not looking to opine on this, but once Colorado ruled, they had no choice and they had no choice but to do it quickly."

Is the Supreme Court Derailing U.S. v. Trump Without Leaving Any Fingerprints Behind?  Recent procedural moves by three different courts considering cases and charges filed against both former President Trump and hundreds of January 6 defendants are moving in sync — in my opinion — to likely derail any trial in the matter of United States v. Trump in the District of Columbia federal court. [...] Below the timeline is an analysis of how I think the events fit together.  Keep in mind, while there are multiple courts and Judges/Justices taking actions, there is only one calendar and the moves of each Court impact the calendaring options of the other Courts.  [Timeline omitted for brevity.]  The overall effect of these moves is to leave all the cases somewhat in limbo while the Supreme Court awaited Trump's December 20 filing on whether or not he agrees with the Special Counsel that the immunity issue should bypass the Appellate Court and go straight to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Sends Jack Smith Packing — Denies His Request For Ruling on Trump Immunity Argument.  The US Supreme Court on Friday denied Jack Smith's request for a ruling on Trump's immunity argument.  Jack Smith last Monday asked the US Supreme Court to weigh in on Trump's immunity claims.  President Trump on Wednesday urged the US Supreme Court to reject Jack Smith's request to expedite the ruling on his immunity argument.  Trump's lawyers argued that Trump is immune from federal prosecution for alleged 'crimes' committed while he served as US President.

Is SCOTUS Poised to Overturn Key J6 Felony Count?  An order published by the Supreme Court on December 13 represented a moment hundreds of January 6 defendants and their loved ones had been waiting for: the highest court granted a writ of certiorari petition in the case of Fischer v. USA.  In a nutshell, after more than two years of litigation before federal judges in Washington, SCOTUS will review the Department of Justice's use of 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding, in January 6 cases.  A "splintered" 2-1 appellate court ruling issued in April just barely endorsed the DOJ's unprecedented interpretation of the statute, passed in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the aftermath of the Enron/Arthur Anderson accounting scandal.  Justices will review the appellate court's muddy decision during oral arguments expected to take place in March or April.  A final opinion should be announced before the court's term ends in June.

SCOTUS Takes Up Obstruction Charge Appeal for J6 Defendant - Could Be Huge for Trump and Others.  On Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal brought by a man charged with obstructing an official proceeding relating to the events at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.  The plaintiff in this case, Joseph Fischer, petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case and asked for a dismissal of the "obstructing an official proceeding" charge as it related to the certification of the election, which declared Joe Biden the winner.  At the heart of the Fischer v. U.S. case is 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), which makes it a crime to "corruptly... otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding[...]."  If convicted, the penalty is up to 20 years in federal prison.  The Department of Justice has charged over 300 people under that section, including former President Donald Trump.

Senate Democrats Throw Out the Rules to Launch [an] Unprecedented Attack on the Supreme Court.  Senate Democrats threw out the rules of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday in order to launch an unprecedented attack on the United States Supreme Court.  More specifically, on conservative justices and their friends.  For months Chairman Dick Durbin and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse have been trying to issue subpoenas to longtime conservative activists Leonard Leo and billionaire Harlon Crow.  Leo and Crow, both private individuals, are also friends to Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.  Earlier this month, Durbin briefly backed off his conquest to subpoena Leo and Crow.  Today, he blatantly disregarded Senate process and voted to do just that.  "Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats have been destroying the Supreme Court; now they are destroying the Senate.  I will not cooperate with this unlawful campaign of political retribution," Leo released in response to the move.

Supreme Court May Take Up Jan 6 Defendant's Case Challenging Charges.  The United States Supreme Court is considering taking up a case of a Jan. 6 defendant who is challenging their charges as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.  A man facing multiple criminal charges for his actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot of 2021 petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in July.  He called on the SCOTUS to intervene with respect to one particular count that he asserts is unwarranted.  He argues that the charge is a potential violation of the constitutional rights of himself and others who are similarly situated.  It is not guaranteed that the Supreme Court will actually take up the case or rule in the petitioner's favor.

Senate Judiciary Republicans pressure Democrats to tamp down Supreme Court investigation.  If Senate Democrats plan to subpoena conservative judicial activists as part of a Supreme Court ethics investigation, Republicans say they must go after liberal advocates the same way.  Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) has sought to authorize subpoenas for influential conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, defending the subpoenas as necessary after the pair's "defensive, dismissive refusals" to cooperate with a congressional investigation.  Now, Republicans have proposed more than 150 additional subpoenas to broaden an investigation they say is one-sided against conservative justices on the high court.

The Supreme Court won't allow Florida to enforce its new law targeting drag shows during appeal.  The Supreme Court said Thursday it will not allow Florida to enforce its new law targeting drag shows, while a court case proceeds.  The justices refused to narrow a lower-court order that has prohibited the law from being enforced statewide.  Florida had asked the court to allow its anti-drag show law to be enforced everywhere except at the Hamburger Mary's restaurant in Orlando, which challenged the law's constitutionality.  Three justices, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, said they would have granted the state's request.  Last month, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's order stopping the law from being enforced.  The district court found that the law likely restricted free speech and couldn't be enforced anywhere in the state.

Supreme Court Takes First Amendment Case Involving Former NY Official Who Pressured Banks Not To Work With The NRA.  The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a First Amendment case stemming from a New York official's pressuring banks not to do business with the National Rifle Association (NRA).  In NRA v. Vullo, the justices will consider whether the First Amendment allows "a government regulator to threaten regulated entities with adverse regulatory actions" for doing business with a controversial speaker.  The Second Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the NRA's lawsuit in 2020, finding that it failed to prove former superintendent of New York's Department of Financial Services Maria Vullo "crossed the line between attempts to convince and attempts to coerce."  "The Second Circuit's opinion below gives state officials free rein to financially blacklist their political opponents — from gun-rights groups, to abortion-rights groups, to environmentalist groups, and beyond," the NRA wrote in its petition, adding that the "public importance of this case cannot be overstated."

Chief Justice Roberts and the Erosion of the Judiciary.  When historians review the decline of American judiciary in the 21st century, they may have difficulty evaluating the role of one of its most important figures, Chief Justice John Roberts.  His responses to a multitude of challenges have been inconsistent, and at times baffling.  In his 2010 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama broke the event's longstanding rules of decorum by hectoring the Supreme Court, six members of which were sitting right in front of him.  Obama was peeved by the Court's recent Citizens United decision, which he alleged would "open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections."  Obama had a captive audience for one of his straw-man arguments, and made the most of it.  It was too much for Justice Samuel Alito, who muttered sotto voce "That's simply not true."  Sitting right in front of him was Chief Justice John Roberts, who said and did nothing.  Obama's verbal assault was a preview of serious problems to come.

Climate Data Refutes Crisis Narrative.  By sidestepping the question of whether CO2 is indeed a dangerous pollutant, and instead leaving that decision up to a politicized EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Massachusetts v.  EPA case issued a deeply flawed ruling.  Without CO2, life on earth as we know it would not exist.  CO2 is plant food, and without it, plants die.  There is evidence that more atmospheric CO2 would have a primarily beneficial impact on planetary ecosystem health.  If oil and gas companies defended themselves on this basis, they might take a case all the way to the Supreme Court and force a reversal of Massachusetts v. EPA.

Legal experts ask Supremes to fix court mistakes in Jan. 6 case.  A prominent team of experts in the law is urging the Supreme Court to take up the arguments of one Jan. 6 protester, because the Department of Justice, in its apparent politicization of the prosecutions, has used an unconstitutional law against the protesters.  The law, known as the Sarbanes-Oxley statute, actually criminalizes First Amendment-protected speech, explains a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the lawyers at William J.Olson, P.C.  The brief urges the high court to take up the appeal of Joseph W. Fischer, one of many thousands who rallied for President Donald Trump that day.  A few hundred of those later went to the Capital, and there the protests turned into a riot for a number of people.  The legal team explained its brief argues "since the government claimed the election protest on January 6 was an insurrection, it should have charged many defendants with that crime, but instead it charged no one with insurrection, preferring use of a Sarbanes-Oxley provision (which does not apply) to get a more severe sentence."

SCOTUS Takes Up Free Speech Case.  Late Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Missouri v. Biden, a case that may end the Biden administration's circumvention of the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to Big Tech.  The case was initially filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with various private plaintiffs who allege that social media platforms censored them at the behest of federal agencies.  U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty ruled for the plaintiffs on July 4, enjoining the agencies from communicating with platforms about "content moderation."  The Biden administration sought relief from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and lost again, making a Supreme Court clash inevitable.

The Supreme Court Could Decide The Future Of Child Sex Change Bans.  As multiple federal courts have issued various rulings on the legality of child sex bans, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Supreme Court is likely to take up the issue.  In Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky, federal courts have upheld child sex change bans, while bans in other states, such as Arkansas, have been struck down.  The arguments against the bans are often derived from the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, but those arguments aren't likely to survive on the Supreme Court level, where challenges to the bans are likely headed, legal experts told the DCNF.

Supreme Court lifts restrictions on Joe Biden's administration pushing for the removal of controversial Facebook and X posts about COVID and election security.  The Supreme Court on Friday said it would indefinitely block a lower court order curbing Biden administration efforts to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.  The justices said they would hear arguments in a lawsuit filed by Louisiana, Missouri and other parties accusing administration officials of unconstitutionally squelching conservative points of view.  The new case adds to a term already heavy with social media issues.

Conservatives, Savor our Supreme Court.  Well over a year later, the Dobbs v.  Jackson Women's Health Organization decision from this court feels utterly surreal to conservatives who have become accustomed to defeats in the culture war.  The overturning of Roe v.  Wade represents a stunning victory for the pro-life movement, a key victory in a war that has endured for nearly 50 years since the original 1973 Roe decision.  The overturning of Roe was compounded with a string of wins for conservative causes including the end of affirmative action, a cutback on the regulatory power of the EPA, and a staunch defense of religious liberty.  These triumphs provide reason for hope as a new term begins.

Supreme Court Rejects GOP States' Challenge to Biden's Rule Estimating Social Cost of Carbon.  The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a lawsuit from Republican-led states challenging the Biden administration's attempt to assign a social cost to carbon — a foundational element to all life.  No explanation was given and the Court merely listed Missouri v. Biden on Tuesday as one of the petitions for writ of certiorari that were denied.  The Supreme Court similarly refused earlier this year to hear another challenge to the estimates.  Last year, the Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit affirmed a federal district court's decision to dismiss the lawsuit.  The eighth circuit ruled that the states lacked standing to challenge the estimates and indicated they could sue if it identified a concrete injury.

Supreme Court declines to consider longshot bid to disqualify Trump from running for president.  The Supreme Court said Monday that it will not take up a longshot challenge to Donald Trump's eligibility to run for president because of his alleged role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.  The case was brought by John Anthony Castro, a little-known candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, who sued Trump earlier this year in an effort to disqualify him from running for president and holding the office "given his alleged provision of aid or comfort to the convicted criminals and insurrectionist that violently attacked our United States Capitol on January 6, 2021."  The case was denied without any comment or recorded vote.

Update:
Man Who Aggressively Tried to Get Trump Removed from 2024 Ballots Arrested on Federal Charges.  A Texas man who launched an aggressive campaign to prevent former President Donald Trump from appearing on the ballot in 2024 has been arrested on tax fraud charges.  John Anthony Castro, who himself is running for president as a Republican, asked the Supreme Court last year to disqualify Trump, citing the 14th Amendment.  The court declined to hear the case, so Castro took his effort to states across the country, filing over two dozen challenges to Trump's eligibility, The Hill reported.

Supreme Court Caves to Left on Racial Quotas.  The Supreme Court sided on Tuesday with federal interference in the Alabama legislature for the second time in four months, by ordering or allowing the liberal judicial override of a redistricting plan.  This misuse of the Voting Rights Act obstructs a state legislature from exercising its constitutional authority to reformulate its congressional districts based on population changes.  Some 15 years after Americans elected a black president, and long after black congressmen and senators have been elected by majority-white constituents, the Supreme Court is still falling for the liberal lie that whites won't elect a black representative.  Liberals perpetuate this fiction to increase the number of Democrat-controlled congressional districts, rather than to protect voting rights.

Clarence Thomas Gets It.  Ever since the end of June, Americans in the media have been chattering about the implications of the Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. [...] First off, consider the fact that the proponents of race-based admissions feel the need to use euphemisms like "affirmative action."  Generally speaking, political factions that rally around a euphemism are doing so because they don't actually feel good about the thing they're defending.  Just think of how Southerners before the Civil War often talked about the sanctity of their "domestic institutions" without naming the "institution" they were defending, or the way that pro-abortion people today talk about "a woman's right to choose" without saying what it is that the woman should be able to choose to do.  But of all these content-free labels, "affirmative action" takes the cake.  What is being "affirmed"?  What "action" is being taken?  If you didn't already know the answer, a hundred guesses would not suffice.

Roberts and Barrett join liberals as Supreme Court revives federal ghost gun restrictions.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to freeze a lower court order that bars the government from regulating so-called ghost guns — untraceable homemade weapons — as firearms under federal law.  The brief order grants the Biden administration's request to allow the regulations to remain in effect while legal challenges play out.

The Remaking of America.  [#3] The Attack on the Supreme Court.  Once the Court achieved a more or less predictable conservative majority, the Left sought to diminish it in a variety of ways.  It has called for packing the Court with leftist jurists to create a new 15-justice bench.  Leftist law professors in the Ivy League, in neo-Confederate nullification and insurrectionary style, call for the nation to ignore Court rulings on abortion and affirmative action.  The Senate minority leader led a throng to the doors of the court, threatening justices by name:  "You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.  You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."  Protestors now mob the homes of individual justices hoping to intimidate them and alter their upcoming opinions — confident that the Department of Justice will exempt them from any legal consequences of such felonious behavior.

Justice Alito Says [there is] 'No Provision' In The Constitution Allows Congress To Regulate SCOTUS.  Justice Samuel Alito said "no provision" of the Constitution allows Congress to regulate the Supreme Court in a Wall Street Journal interview published Friday [7/28/2023].  Alito's comments come in the face of Democrats' escalating efforts to impose a code of ethics on the Supreme Court following reports alleging justices violated ethics rules, which Republicans have sharply criticized as an effort to delegitimize and intimidate the Supreme Court.  Just last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's Supreme Court ethics legislation to the full senate.  Whitehouse's Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act would require the justices to adopt a code of ethics, increase disclosure and recusal requirements and establish a process for reviewing and investigating complaints made against justices.

Senator John Kennedy Goes Off on Senate Democrats for Excusing the Evil, Racist Attacks Against Clarence Thomas.  The Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) did a markup on "ethics" legislation Thursday targeting conservative Supreme Court Justices.  While the Democrats managed to pass out of this sick bill out of committee on a party-line vote, they got humiliated by Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) in the process over a simple amendment condemning racism.  Kennedy is a straight-shooting national treasure complete with an incisive wit and dry sense of humor.  He has displayed these talents throughout his time in the Senate whether by stumping unqualified Biden nominees or in interviews with reporters.  As Townhall reported, he put his remarkable skills once again to the test and went scorched earth on the Democrats for refusing to pass his amendment calling out the evil, racist attacks against the great Clarence Thomas.

Subverting the Court.  It's important to keep in mind that the Biden administration still wants to pack the Supreme Court, but they also want to compress it, and now more than ever, after it found itself on the losing side of several rulings.  By so doing, they seek to change the nature of American government.  Packing the Court, or adding more justices beyond the current nine, is a progressive policy going back at least to Roosevelt and the New Deal.  If the DNC can run up the number of justices on the Court, then it can cement a near-permanent majority, using the Court to legislate.

Media Attacks on the Supreme Court Cross a Different Line.  Unsteady politics breeds ugly innovations, and this year, those innovations are striking at the heart of America's constitutional order.  In the last half-week alone, three negative stories about Supreme Court justices have appeared in major outlets, on top of multiple stories since January.  None of these stories covers the law; all of them suggest ethical improprieties but stop just short of alleging them; and cumulatively, they push against the freedom of association of the justices and their staff.  At no point in our history have Americans seen an entire media, academic, and political apparatus line up to indiscriminately attack one of our branches of government.  But, in the face of a conservative Supreme Court determined to rein in national power, we're seeing that now.

'60s Denialism: Affirmative Action's Last Ditch Defense.  [Scroll down]  Ketanji Brown Jackson had no more use for Obama's truth-telling than Jesse did.  "Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens," writes Jackson.  "They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations."  The 53-year-old Jackson and the 69-year old Sotomayor seem to have both sleep-walked through their charmed, affirmative action-greased lives.  The income and educational gaps were not "created in the distant past."  They were created on their watch and largely by their own political party.  Neither Jackson nor Sotomayor acknowledges that those gaps were narrowing up and through the 1950s.  Neither says a word about fatherlessness or family breakdown and the accompanying reversal in economic momentum.  Sotomayor, for instance, mentions President Andrew Johnson three times but never once mentions President Lyndon Johnson.  No one mentions Moynihan.

Liberal Supreme Court justice comes out in favor of segregation.  Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is trying to put one over on America.  In her dissent from the high court's long-overdue ruling against racial preferences in college admissions, she cited an utterly bogus statistic.  "For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live," she wrote in rationalizing Harvard's bigotry against Asian American applicants.  Yet that black infant mortality number is obvious bunk.  If it were true, it would mean thousands of black infants dying every year thanks to white doctors' secret racism.

Extremist Democrats are openly calling for the destruction of the Supreme Court.  When spoiled toddlers lose a game, they often try to change the rules or otherwise throw a tantrum.  That's how former President Donald Trump handled losing the 2020 election.  And it's evidently how top progressive members of Congress — who endlessly criticize Trump — are handling a slew of recent defeats at the Supreme Court.  The conservative-majority Supreme Court recently ruled against racial discrimination in college admissions, against President Joe Biden's attempt to twist the law to spend $430 billion on a student loan bailout against Congress's wishes, and against LGBT activists in a free speech case.  Progressive Democrats are not taking these decisions well.  Indeed, they're responding by effectively calling to destroy the Supreme Court as we know it.

The Press Slobber Over Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, but Inadvertently Expose She's Terrible at Her Job.  Another Supreme Court term has wrapped up, and it wasn't short on controversial landmark decisions.  As RedState reported, affirmative action in college admissions was struck down while Joe Biden's illegal student loan forgiveness scheme also went up in smoke.  Further, in a less sexy but equally important case, the court ruled against the EPA's ability to arbitrarily define and regulate bodies of water.  If you are a fan of preserving personal freedom and equality under the law, the results were worthy of celebration.  Unfortunately, many people, including some of the justices on the Supreme Court, have no care for such things.

To Gain Power, the Left Seeks to Destroy the Supreme Court.  Always remember:  Any institution the Left doesn't control, it will seek to destroy.  The Supreme Court dealt a series of serious blows to the Left's agenda this summer, and leftists aren't taking it well.  First, the high court ended racial discrimination in college admissions, which the Left views as essential to upholding the diversity, equity, and inclusion regime.  Then the court struck down President Joe Biden's blatantly unconstitutional student loan bailout scheme, which was unpopular with the general electorate but extremely popular with the base of his party.  Several other Supreme Court decisions have the Left pretty steamed at the moment, too.

Democrats' Insidious Assault on 'Our Democracy'.  In March 2020, then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stood on the steps of the Supreme Court to openly threaten Trump's first two court picks if they did not rule correctly in a forthcoming abortion decision.  Schumer intoned: "I want to tell you [Justice Neil] Gorsuch.  I want to tell you [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh.  You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.  You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions." That outburst triggered a rare public rebuke from the typically mild-mannered Chief Justice John Roberts: "Threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous."  Later that same year, Trump's nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the high court elicited nonstop hysterical comparisons of — and risible public demonstrations about — the Handmaid's Tale dystopia that would come if Barrett's nomination succeeded.

Arizona AG tells U.S. Supreme Court to shove it.  You have probably noticed the full-court press against the Supreme Court the Left has been playing.  Constant threats to ignore its rulings, attacks on its integrity (which, in an unusual move, the Supreme Court Justices unanimously denounced), and threats to pack the Court to regain a Leftist majority.  Now we have yet another direct attack on the Constitution and the legal system from the Arizona Attorney General.  [Tweet]  Kris Mayes, Arizona's Attorney General, has announced that she intends to defy the Supreme Court's decision in 303 Creative vs. Elenis, and did so in no uncertain terms.

The Muddled Mindset of Progressivism.  It's time we had a courageous conversation about the left's incoherent stance on big government and race.  This muddled mindset was on full display last week as two progressive Supreme Court justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, attacked the majority's decision rejecting affirmative action in higher education by crediting such race-based policies for progress while also claiming that nothing much has changed in our supposedly racist country.  "Today," Sotomayor declares in the second paragraph of her dissent, "this court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress."  Despite that grand advancement, she asserts just one sentence later that the majority was cementing "a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter."  Momentous progress in an endemically segregated nation?  Both Sotomayor and Jackson try to show how race continues to matter by drawing on the pessimistic historical determinism of critical race theory to argue that African Americans are still shackled by the original sin of slavery.

Democrats Revive Calls To Pack Supreme Court.  Democrats revived calls to pack the Supreme Court with liberals last week after the court's conservative majority decided several cases the wrong way, as liberals view it.  On Thursday and Friday, the Supreme Court handed down three decisions on multiple closely watched cases.  The court ruled against Harvard and the University of North Carolina's race-based admissions processes, it ruled in favor of a Christian graphic designer who did not want to make wedding websites for same-sex couples, and the court struck down President Biden's student loan forgiveness program.  Democrats and liberals raged at the high court, some calling to expand the court's bench to dilute the conservative majority, which was cemented by former President Donald Trump's three conservative nominees.

We Need a Constitution That Means What It Says.  Take, for instance, the Supreme Court's ruling last week that state legislatures do not have the sole discretion to determine how federal elections will be run in those states.  Instead, state courts are given veto power over the decisions of the legislature.  The mainstream media (and of course their Democratic Party allies) celebrated the court's decision in Moore v. Harper that rejected the so-called "independent state legislature" theory.  The New York Times called the theory "dangerous."  Vox said the ruling was a "big victory for democracy."  Those who supported the independent state legislature "theory" were called extreme, fringe, radical, and worse.  In other words, they were Trump supporters.  The only problem is that if the theory is extreme, then so is the U.S. Constitution, because no matter how much the 6-3 majority insists otherwise, it isn't a theory at all.  It is the plain language of the Constitution.

AOC proposes subpoenas and impeachment to limit SCOTUS justices' power following landmark decisions.  Democratic "Squad" member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slammed the U.S. Supreme Court for what she called an "abuse of power" Sunday, following landmark decisions this past week rejecting affirmative action and Biden's student loan debt plan.  She proposed impeachment and subpoenas be put into play in order to limit the justices' power.  "The Supreme Court is far overreaching their authority," Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN's "State of the Union."  "And I believe, frankly, that we really need to be having conversations about judicial review as a check on the courts as well," she added.

Supreme Court rulings favor American freedom, despite what the left thinks.  The final cases rang out with a consistent clarity that the Constitution favors individual liberty over group rights and government power.  The distinction is what helped make America different from the start, yet to witness the hysterical outcry against the rulings, fewer and fewer Americans understand the founding principles.  Either that or they want to trash American exceptionalism so they can force everybody to think alike.  You don't have to read the opinions to see the pattern.  You only have to see who is furiously denouncing the court as a right-wing instrument of hate and exclusion.  The list includes the usual suspects — President Biden, The New York Times, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and all the petty potentates of the progressive-media-government complex.  They are united in demanding more sweeping government power and fewer rights for individuals who dissent from their orthodoxy.

Supreme Court tosses Biden's student loan forgiveness plan where it belongs: The trash.  On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed President Joe Biden and his administration a strong rebuke.  In a 6-3 decision, the conservative majority of the court struck down Biden's controversial decision to cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt based only on his say so and without Congress' clear approval.  "...this leads the Court to conclude that '[t]he basic and consequential tradeoffs' inherent in a mass debt cancellation program 'are ones that Congress would likely have intended for itself,'" wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority.  The president overstepped his authority in unilaterally declaring millions of Americans could benefit from up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness, without going through Congress.  This "generous" plan would have saddled taxpayers — the majority of whom have not gone to college themselves — with at least $400 billion in debt.

Affirmative Action Is Another Nonsense Leftist Position We've Been Conditioned To Take Seriously.  It's often incredibly surreal to remember that concepts and arguments from the left are at all taken seriously in this country.  Reading Justice Ketanji "Black Girl Magic" Brown Jackson's dissenting opinion in the college race-based admissions case is truly one of those times. [...] "Our country has never been colorblind," she said in her dissent.  She said that in reality, because race-based admissions "help to address" past discrimination against blacks, they are actually "to the benefit of us all."  Hear that, Asian applicants?  Losing a spot at Harvard to someone of lower academic achievement is actually to your benefit!  You should be saying thank you.  Jackson then chronicled every way in which blacks are at a disadvantage — including in fictional ways — asserting that the only way to remedy the matter was to then compensate black Americans with preferential treatment. [...] It's unclear whether Jackson knows that she's a sitting justice charged with determining whether policies are constitutionally sound and not an academic theorizing on what a perfect world might look like.

Justices Thomas And Jackson Help Us Understand Judicial Activism.  I must first admit that, as a conservative, I thought that decisions to avoid decisions in favor of the freedom to practice religion (Masterpiece Cake Shop) smelled funny.  The pendulum swung when the Dobbs decision gored the Left's ox.  But were either of those cases actually legislating from the bench, to use the worn-out pejorative?  As I've become an active consumer of SCOTUS legalese, I believe that there is a useful distinction between someone who legislates from the bench and one who does not.  The opinions of Justices Thomas and Jackson provide us with the decoder ring.

Supreme Court Kills Joe Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Scam.  In a decision released on Friday, the Supreme Court struck down Joe Biden's student loan "forgiveness" plan.  Biden's plan, which was unveiled last August, mere months before the midterm elections, sought to cancel $10,000 of debt for individual student loan borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year (or $250,000 for households) and $20,000 of debt for borrowers who received a Pell Grant. [...] Biden's Education Department utilized the HEROES Act of 2003, which grants the U.S. secretary of Education the authority to let military service members postpone their student loan payments during national crises, previously used to postpone student loan payments during the COVID pandemic.  But the Biden administration attempted to use the HEROES Act to forgive debt.

Libs are mad at the Supreme Court for recent decisions so they're back on their "pack the court" thing again.  Who's ready for another month of discourse where Democrats gripe and complain about our republic working the way it was intended. and spout off their fantasies about destroying the legitimacy of the court?  Well, that's where we are.  On Twitter, #ExpandSCOTUS is trending because the libs don't know how to handle their Ls.  [Tweets]  Tough beans!  Trump picked three good justices and y'all have to live with it.

Liberal Supreme Court Justices Rely on False Claims about Racism, Anti-Gay Bigotry to Bolster Dissents.  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, in which the Court ruled that race-conscious admissions policies violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.  She cited an Association of American Medical Colleges study that argues for the "critical importance of diversity in the medical profession."  Affirmative action, Jackson claimed, doubles the chance of black infant survival:  "For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die."  The study, however, finds that black infants have a 99.6 percent survival rate with black doctors and a 99.8 percent survival rate with white doctors.  What Jackson misinterpreted when she claimed that the black infant survival rate "doubles" with a black doctor is the discrepancy that more white doctors are in Neonatal intensive care units (NICU), where babies are less likely to survive.  If a black baby has a black doctor, it's likely because that baby is not in a NICU, which of course yields higher survival rates.

Supreme Court rejects Biden's student loan forgiveness plan.  A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in trying to cancel or reduce student loans for millions of Americans.  The 6-3 decision, with conservative justices in the majority, effectively killed the $400 billion plan, announced by President Joe Biden last year, and left borrowers on the hook for repayments that are expected to resume by late summer.  Biden was to announce a new set of actions to protect student loan borrowers and would address the court decision later Friday, said a White House official.  The official was not authorized to speak publicly ahead of Biden's expected statement on the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Supreme Court rules for web designer who refused to work on same-sex weddings.  The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of an evangelical Christian web designer from Colorado who refuses to work on same-sex weddings in a decision that deals a setback to LGBTQ rights.  The justices, divided 6-3 on ideological lines, said that Lorie Smith, as a creative professional, has a free speech right under the Constitution's First Amendment to refuse to endorse messages she disagrees with.  As a result, she cannot be punished under Colorado's antidiscrimination law for refusing to design websites for gay couples, the court said.

Biden: 'I'm Hoping' Attacks on Court Legitimacy Influence Their Rulings.  On Thursday's broadcast of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," President Joe Biden stated that he hopes members of the Supreme Court will react to repeated attacks on and questioning of the Supreme Court's legitimacy by ruling differently and that he hopes Chief Justice John Roberts' ruling earlier in the week in a case involving the powers of state legislatures was influenced by these attacks on the court's legitimacy.

Supreme Court Quoted Pelosi In Decision That Killed Biden's Student Debt Cancellation.  Chief Justice John Roberts quoted former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in the majority opinion — released on Friday — that struck down President Joe Biden's student debt cancellation program.  The program, which was designed to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loans for borrowers whose incomes were below a certain threshold — up to $20,000 if they had been Pell Grant recipients — was ruled unconstitutional by a 6-3 margin, with Roberts saying that the COVID-era HEROES Act did not give Joe Biden the authority to act unilaterally on the issue.  "The Secretary asserts that the HEROES Act grants him the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal.  It does not.  We hold today that the Act allows the Secretary to 'waive or modify' existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up," Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

Here's How Much The Supreme Court Just Shaved Off The Deficit In A Single Ruling.  The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Biden administration's plan to forgive student loan debt was unconstitutional, and by doing so, the Supreme Court may have lowered the deficit by nearly $400 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).  The Biden administration's decision to offer student debt forgiveness to millions of Americans circumvented Congress' constitutional right to make laws on spending, the Supreme Court ruled, according to Reuters.  By ruling against Biden's plan, the Supreme Court has shaved off $400 billion from the deficit, saving taxpayers about $30 billion annually for the next decade, according to the CRFB.

Gorsuch blasts Sotomayor's dissent in Christian web designer ruling: 'Reimagines' facts from 'top to bottom'.  Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a harsh rebuke of Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent in the case of a Christian web designer who the court ruled was not obligated to design websites for gay couples.  "It is difficult to read the dissent and conclude we are looking at the same case," Gorsuch wrote in the 6-3 Supreme Court decision on Friday.  That decision said web designer Lorie Smith was not legally required to design websites for gay marriages because doing so would violate her free speech rights and Christian beliefs, despite a Colorado law that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.  Gorsuch said Sotomayor's dissent in the case "reimagines the facts" from "top to bottom" and fails to answer the fundamental question of, "Can a State force someone who provides her own expressive services to abandon her conscience and speak its preferred message instead?"

Gorsuch Savages Sotomayor's Brain-Melting Dissent in the 303 Creative Case.  Friday, the Supreme Court on Friday delivered another wild ride as several highly-anticipated decisions came down, leaving Democrats reeling.  As RedState reported, Joe Biden's clearly illegal student loan scheme was stopped in its tracks by a 6-3 split on the court.  That finally put to bed a cynical ploy by the president meant to buy votes before the 2022 mid-terms.  On the other side was the 303 Creative case, which once again put the future of religious liberty in the United States on the chopping block.  In the end, another 6-3 decision won the day, ruling that Lorie Smith (the owner of the company) could not be compelled to violate her religious beliefs by creating websites for gay weddings.  Not surprisingly, the case originated in Colorado, the same state that has spent somewhere around a decade hassling Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop.

The Supreme Court ends Affirmative Action [in college admissions].  Sixteen years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote these wise words: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."  Today, the Chief Justice put action behind that statement and held unlawful the race-based admissions of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina (UNC), declaring they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  In doing so, he ended Affirmative Action in the colleges.  At issue in this particular case were the programs of Harvard and UNC, both of which consider race in determining which students get admitted.  In Harvard's admission process, race is determinative "for a significant percentage 'of all admitted African American and Hispanic applicants.'"  It's also determinative for a large number of Asians and whites who are not admitted based on their race.

Winsome Sears Nukes Ketanji Brown Jackson's Dissent: 'Chosen Because She's Black'.  Justice Clarence Thomas isn't the only person who made an epic response to Ketanji Brown Jackson's absurd dissent in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina cases.  During an appearance on Fox News, Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears blasted Jackson's dissent while calling out Jackson as an affirmative action pick to the court.  Host Martha MacCallum asked, "This is the dissent from Justice Jackson.  She said, 'With let them eat cake obliviousness today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces color blindness for all by legal fiat.  But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,' she said.  She and Justice Sotomayor were outraged by this decision.  Sotomayor said, 'The opinion today will highlight the court's own impetus in the face of America who cries for equality resound.'  What would you say to these justices?"

Chief Justice Roberts Accuses Liberal Justices Of Power Grab In Affirmative Action Opinion.  Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a scathing response to the liberal justices in Thursday's Affirmative Action decision, accusing them of burying a power grab in the dissents penned by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, with Justice Elena Kagan concurring.  Roberts addressed the dissent on page 46 of his opinion, saying that the Justices had divorced the case from the context in a concerted effort to make the Court the arbiter of which race[s] were entitled to preferential treatment.  "The principal dissent wrenches our case law from its context, going to lengths to ignore the parts of that law it does not like.  The serious reservations that Bakke, Grutter, and Fisher had about racial preferences go unrecognized," Roberts began.  "The unambiguous requirements of the Equal Protection Clause — 'the most rigid,' 'searching' scrutiny it entails — go without note."  "And the repeated demands that race-based admissions programs must end go overlooked — contorted, worse still, into a demand that such programs never stop," Roberts continued.

Justice Jackson's emotional dissent relied on an objectively flawed study.  For decades, leftist Supreme Court justices have abandoned legal analysis and relied on questionable "science" and "sociology" to prop up their unconstitutional amendments to the Constitution.  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson continued that dishonorable tradition in her dissent to Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.  It's a perfect reminder of how far leftists will deviate from the law to control the culture. [...] Thankfully, in Students for Fair Admissions, the Supreme Court's leftists did not get the chance to abandon the constitutional question and, instead[,] use irrelevant arguments to create a constitutional right to discrimination.  Because of the Sotomayor and Jackson dissents, we know that's exactly what they would have done.  Jackson, especially, doesn't understand that her job is whether the Constitution authorizes a specific behavior, preferring, instead, to scream (in legal terms), "This is so unfair."  It seems appropriate, then, that Jackson's existential screed relied in part on a faulty study about black infant mortality.  Ted Frank, an attorney at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, noticed that Jackson claimed that, irrespective of the actual Constitution, the court should essentially legislate affirmative action or black babies will die.

Biden and AOC Reveal Just How Little They Understand About the Constitution or SCOTUS.  My colleague Sister Toldjah wrote about some of the bizarre things that Joe Biden said about the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action on Thursday.  I wanted to talk a little bit more about what he said and what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said to show that the Democrats just are clueless when it comes to the Constitution and the Supreme Court.  What Biden said revealed how he doesn't understand the Constitution or the Supreme Court.  He said, "We cannot let this decision be the last word."  [Tweet with video clip]  Yet, that's exactly what the Supreme Court is:  the last word on the subject, legally.  The right response is:  "I may not agree with the decision but the Court has spoken."  But instead, he attacked the Court, calling it not a "normal court" — because it doesn't do what he wants it to do.  But he doesn't seem to care that sounds a bit "insurrection-y" — he's attacking the legitimacy of the Court.

Supreme Court: 'Eliminating Racial Discrimination Means Eliminating All of It'.  The Supreme Court handed down a definitive ruling against the use of racial preferences in college admissions, declaring in a 6-3 decision on Thursday: "Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it."  The syllabus opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College notes that any exceptions to that principle — based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — "must survive a daunting two-step examination known as "strict scrutiny."  Unless the discrimination is for a "compelling" government interest, and is "necessary" to achieve it, it is unconstitutional.

The Great Clarence Thomas Demolishes Biden's Race-Baiting Supreme Court Justice in "Ferocious" Affirmative Action Case Concurrence.  The only piece of sour news on today's historic ruling abolishing race-based college admissions is that Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion instead of the great Justice Clarence Thomas.  His concurrence is the stuff legends are made of. [...] But Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden's affirmative action Supreme Court pick, does not share these patriotic beliefs.  After today's ruling, she threw a race-baiting, hissy fit that predictably had liberals swooning.  She accused the Court's conservatives for having a "let-them-eat-cake obliviousness." She went on to whine that the Justices detached" themselves from "this country's actual past and present experiences," while lecturing the "ostrich-like" members about "lived experiences."

Of Course Ketanji Brown Jackson Supports Affirmative Action.  It's The Only Reason She's A Supreme Court Justice.  Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is not pleased with her judicial colleagues' ruling that Harvard and the University of North Carolina's affirmative action admissions programs are unconstitutional. [...] Jackson's assertion that the Students for Fair Admissions decision is "truly a tragedy for us all" is not the least bit surprising considering that her ascent to the bench reeked of race-based choosing.  No matter how hard the left tries to paint Jackson's rise as "monumental," there's no denying that the Biden administration handed Jackson a position in the highest court in the land based on her sex and race.  Even before he became president, Biden made it clear that nominating a black woman to Supreme Court was a top priority.

The Supreme Court Corrects a Grievous Error.  In every area of life, the Constitution and federal civil-rights laws forbid the government from using race in making decisions.  Government cannot use race to distribute government funds, provide benefits, deploy police, run prisons or hospitals, or even protect the nation's security through "racial profiling."  But the Court carved out one area from this fundamental colorblind principle.  In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the Supreme Court created a special exception for admissions to colleges and universities.  A majority in Grutter accepted the claim that colleges could use racial diversity as a proxy for intellectual diversity — which relies upon the stereotyping assumption that a student's mindset depends on his or her race.  Yesterday, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court finally cut this cancer out of constitutional law.

Ketanji Brown Jackson's Dissent Is An Argument For Institutional Racism.  Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson hardly feigned interest in adjudicating the constitutionality of affirmative action in her dissent today.  Remember all that talk about Jackson's "progressive originalism?"  It's not a thing.  Instead, Jackson offered more than 9,000 overwrought words of leftist social commentary, "expound[ing] upon the universal benefits of considering race in this context."  Her embrace of identitarianism and defense of Asian-American discrimination is jarring.  Jackson believes state-funded institutions should judge Americans by their immutable characteristics and historical sins rather than their individual accomplishments and actions.  It's really that simple.  "With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces 'colorblindness for all' by legal fiat," Jackson's sarcastically noted.  I dunno; colorblindness seems like a worthy ambition.  But the Supreme Court didn't institute "colorblindness for all."  It could no more do that than stop justices from mixing their metaphors.

Black Conservatives Praise SCOTUS Decision Striking Down Government-Sanctioned Racism.  Black conservatives praised the Supreme Court's Thursday decision to strike down government mandated race-based admissions policies at colleges and universities.  The court ruled so-called "affirmative action policies" violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  While liberals lamented the ruling and claimed it will bring segregation, many black conservatives have celebrated.  Ambassadors with the Project 21 Black Leadership Network called the case "a 21st century Brown v. Board moment."  "Today we have a 21st century Brown v. Board moment," Project 21 Chairman Horace Cooper said, according to its press release. "Finally, the Court has ruled that colleges and universities will have to use only methods that are 'race-neutral' for admissions and will no longer be able to discriminate against or in favor of applicants based on their race."

The Unsurprising Affirmative Action Decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.  Today [6/29/2023] in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court effectively ended the current regime of diversity-justified-race-based affirmative action in higher education.  As the opinion for the Court by Chief Justice Roberts puts it:  University programs must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and — at some point — they must end.  Respondents' admissions systems — however well intentioned and implemented in good faith — fail each of these criteria.  They must therefore be invalidated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  While the majority opinion is somewhat cagey about the extent to which it is overturning its prior precedents such as Grutter and Fisher as a formal matter, it does seem clear that going forward current practices at many elite universities will now be held unlawful.

Supreme Court Bans Affirmative Action in College Admissions.  The Supreme Court has ruled that it is unlawful for colleges and universities to use race as a factor in admissions, overturning rulings from as far back as 1978 that claimed institutions of higher education had a valid interest in promoting racial diversity on campus and could thus give favorable consideration to black and Latino applicants in their admissions process.  Two separate decisions were reached in which the nation's highest court ruled that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill engaged in unlawful discriminatory practices based on race that violated the Constitution.

Supreme Court rejects affirmative action in ruling on universities using race in admissions decisions.  The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a major ruling on affirmative action Thursday, rejecting the use of race as a factor in college admissions as a violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.  In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that, "A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student's courage and determination."  "Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student's unique ability to contribute to the university.  In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race," the opinion reads.

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Christian Postal Worker Who Refused Sunday Work.  The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of a Christian letter carrier who refused to work on Sundays because of his faith, arguing that the federally funded United States Postal Service violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requiring employers to accommodate the religious practice of their staff with limited exceptions.  All nine justices on the bench, including progressives Justice Kagan, Sotomayor, and Brown-Jackson, ruled against the USPS.  The case involved Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian who believes for religious reasons that Sunday should be devoted to worship and rest.  While working for the USPS, Groff did not work on Sundays, according to the court opinion authored by Justice Alito.  His schedule remained this way until the postal service facilitated Sunday deliveries for Amazon.  To avoid the requirement to work on Sundays, Groff transferred to a rural USPS station, until it also started Sunday deliveries, forcing him to redistribute work load to other staff.

Supreme Court rules state legislatures do not have complete control over federal elections.  The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled Tuesday that state legislatures do not have complete power over elections in a challenge brought by North Carolina legislators.  "The Elections Clause does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections," SCOTUS ruled in a 6-3 majority decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts.  The legal theory is called the "independent state legislatures theory."

Did the Supreme Court Just Give Jack Smith the Green Light To Charge Trump for January 6?  The Supreme Court's decision in Moore v. Harper to reject the independent state legislature theory could give Special Counsel Jack Smith a free hand to bring charges — including, possibly, against President Trump — in respect of efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.  By a 6-to-3 vote, the high court held that notwithstanding the Constitution's Elections Clause, the national parchment "does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law," meaning that state lawmakers are bound by state constitutions and the judges who interpret them.  The link between Chief Justice Roberts's opinion and Mr. Smith's prosecutorial potential was ventured on CNN by a retired judge, Michael Luttig, who clerked for Judge — later Justice — Antonin Scalia, spent 15 years as a rider on the Fourth United States Appeals Circuit, and is now one of President Trump's legal antagonists.

Supreme Court Rejects 'Independent State Legislature' Theory, Finds State Courts Can Rule on Federal Elections.  The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that state legislatures do not have sole discretion in setting the rules for congressional elections, dismissing the plaintiffs' argument that questions surrounding partisan gerrymandering are outside the reach of North Carolina courts.  "The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the 6-3 majority.  He was joined in the opinion by Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.  However, Roberts clarified that "state courts may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections."

Supreme Court Allows Louisiana Congressional Map To Be Redrawn To Add Majority-Black District.  On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana congressional map may be redrawn to include another majority-Black district.  When lawmakers failed to achieve an agreement on a new map last year, the courts were ready to take over.  The justices abandoned their preparations to hear the case themselves and lifted a hold on a lower court's decision for a revamped redistricting plan.  The decision by the Supreme Court follows a ruling earlier this month by the justices on Alabama's congressional maps, which upheld how courts have historically approached the redistricting provisions in the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law that Black voters are using to challenge the Louisiana congressional plan.

What the Left Has Left for America.  The Left has adopted Franklin Roosevelt's once infamous (but now sanctified) 1937 approach to destroying the autonomy of the Supreme Court by threatening to pack it.  Note how any means necessary are justified in their attacks.  Swarm the conservative justices' private homes to leverage future opinions, with the assurance that an ethically bankrupt Justice Department will never enforce existing laws prohibiting such intimidation of the justices.  Have the Democrat Senate minority leader scream threats to justices by name at the very doors of the court and at the head of a mob — promising to individual justices a whirlwind to reap and unrecognizable forces that will soon hit them.  Wage ad hominem attacks on traditional justices in the media.  Allege they are corrupt, on the theory that they are limited in their means of defense and any rebuttal will lack the wherewithal of the original unfounded smears.

Have You Noticed That Only Conservative Justices Are Prone to 'Ethical Lapses'?  Do you think it's a coincidence that these attacks on Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett are occurring when a Democratic president is in office?  Meanwhile, the "charges" against these justices are laughable — so much so, that CNN buried the lead in its piece detailing the charges against Alito and Barrett: "Neither Barrett's real estate deal nor Alito's appearance in Italy appear to violate any of the court's ethics rules, according to several experts interviewed by CNN."  But here's the smear anyway.  Go ahead and feel free to spread it around.  It's a "war against the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as a whole," writes National Review's Noah Rothman.  And it may be the most despicable, unscrupulous assault on the court as an institution in history.

Supreme Court allows Biden administration to limit immigration arrests, ruling against states.  The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the Biden administration to reinstate rules that instruct Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus its deportation efforts in the U.S. interior on immigrants with serious criminal convictions and those deemed to threaten national security.  The court found that Texas and Louisiana, the two states that challenged the administration's guidelines, lacked standing to bring the suit, formally known as United States v. Texas.  The ruling was 8-1, with only Justice Samuel Alito dissenting.  Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion for the majority, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.  Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett concurred in the judgment, with Gorsuch and Barrett contributing opinions of their own.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas' Challenge to Biden Border Policy.  The Supreme Court Friday struck down Texas and Louisiana's legal challenge to new Biden administration border policies that violate federal statutes and harm citizens in Texas and Louisiana, the states argued.  All justices besides Samuel Alito concurred in the opinion that Texas and Louisiana lack standing to challenge the new rules, which the Department of Homeland Security promulgated in 2021.  Texas and Louisiana argued that federal law requires law enforcement to arrest certain noncitizens upon their release from prison or entry of a final order of removal, but the new DHS rule only prioritizes the arrest and removal of noncitizens who are suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals who unlawfully entered the country recently.  The states claimed that these rules harmed them by imposing extra costs by requiring them to continue to incarcerate or supply social services — such as health care and education — to noncitizens.

Supreme Court rejects appeal from religious college disputing transgender dorm rooms.  The Supreme Court rejected an appeal on Tuesday from a Christian college in Missouri that sued the Biden administration over a requirement to open dorm rooms and shared shower spaces to members of the opposite sex.  The College of the Ozarks asked the justices to block the Department of Housing and Urban Development directive that added "gender identity" to the definition of "sex" in the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Landmark Supreme Court gun ruling sparks lawsuits on 'sensitive places'.  The Supreme Court's landmark Second Amendment decision last summer kicked off new legal battle lines to overturn laws designating broad localities as gun-free zones known as "sensitive places."  Sensitive place laws aren't new but have become a burgeoning strategy for Democratic-led states implementing gun control after last year's June 23 New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision.  The ruling struck down the Empire State's old discretionary concealed carry regime and, most notably, held that gun regulations should be "consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

The Campaign To Destroy SCOTUS Is Getting Increasingly Stupid.  The dishonest, ginned-up campaign to smear originalists on the Supreme Court has always been predicated on half-truths and innuendo.  But Slate's Mark Joseph Stern is now accusing Samuel Alito of "violating" completely imaginary SCOTUS ethic "rules" in a case involving Phillips 66.  According to Stern, even when originalist justices properly disclose all their investments and then recuse themselves, they're still corrupt.  Why? [...] The "Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices" plainly states that in "many instances, the grounds for recusal will be obvious," but that justices "may provide a summary explanation of a recusal decision" or "may provide an extended explanation for any decision to recuse or not recuse."  There is no "rule."  The above italics are mine.  Because the word may, meaning "to express the possibility," has a different definition than words like "will" or "must," which denote an obligation or duty.  So, for example, one may refer to a person who cynically delegitimizes constitutional governance for the sake of power as an "irredeemable authoritarian hack masquerading as a journalist," but one is not required to do so.  The word "may" does not appear in a document drafted by Supreme Court justices by accident.  As Roberts explains in the letter cited by Slate, compelling an explanation for every recusal "might encourage strategic behavior by lawyers who may seek to prompt recusals in future cases."

SCOTUS to unions, 8-1: You break it, you bought it.  Alternate headline:  Pottery Barn rules apply to walkouts.  In an 8-1 decision in which only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson fully dissented, the Supreme Court ruled today that unions have to reimburse employers for damages caused by striking workers.  The National Labor Relations Act does not confer immunity to unions or workers — the latest ruling from a court that has stiffened the boundaries for labor activities in the last few years:  ["]The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that federal labor law did not protect a union from potential liability for damage that arose during a strike, and that a state court should resolve questions of liability.  The majority found that if accusations by an employer are true, actions during a strike by a local Teamsters union were not even arguably protected by federal law because the union took 'affirmative steps to endanger' the employer's property 'rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk.'["]

What the 'Pig Case' Says about the Supreme Court.  On 11 May, the U.S. Supreme Court decided National Pork Producers' Council v.  Ross, in which the justices ruled by a 5-4 margin that California's Proposition 12, approved by voters in 2018, is constitutional.  Proposition 12 banned the sale, in California, of pork derived from pigs, or the offspring of pigs, that were confined on less than 24 square feet of floor space per breeding pig, or "in a manner that prevents the animal from lying down, standing up, fully extending [its] limbs, or turning around freely."  The case was an important decision for states' rights, and it split the Court in an unusual way: Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Barrett sided with California, while Justices Roberts, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Jackson voted against allowing the new law to go into force.  It is worth noting that of the five justices who made America's liberals so angry by deciding Dobbs v.  Jackson last summer, three of them — Thomas, Gorsuch, and Barrett — sided with deep-blue California in this particular dispute, while the four left-leaning justices were split half and half.

Police Get a Green Light to Use Force Against Unarmed Individuals Who Have Already Surrendered or Complied.  The U.S. Supreme Court has once again refused to hold police accountable for using force on unarmed individuals who have already surrendered or complied with police orders.  Despite a series of high-profile incidents involving the use of unnecessary and excessive force by police against unarmed individuals, the Court declined to narrow the scope of qualified immunity granted to officers who assault non-violent suspects who have ceased to resist arrest.  Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute and Cato Institute had filed a joint amicus brief before the Supreme Court in Salazar v. Molina, challenging a lower court ruling that essentially gives police a green light to punish and harm suspects solely based upon their initial nonviolent resistance or flight.  The legal coalition warned that the ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which granted qualified immunity to a police officer who tased a non-violent suspect in the back after he lay down to surrender, undermines public safety by discouraging suspects from surrendering or complying with police commands.

SCOTUS unanimously yanks chain on EPA in Sackett.  Anyone want to take bets on the life expectancy of the Chevron doctrine after today's unanimous decision on Sackett v EPA?  The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the EPA had grossly overstepped its congressional mandate in defining "Waters of the United States," vastly limiting its authority to declare jurisdiction over what it claims to be "wetlands" on private property.  It's the second such loss in as many years for the EPA's attempt to aggrandize its jurisdiction, CBS News notes: [...] In both instances, the EPA had tried to extend its authority without involving Congress.  In this case, which has been percolating for years, the Obama-era EPA had defined the term "wetland" in the Clean Water Act and Waters of the US rule (WOTUS) as basically any land where water naturally pooled on occasion.  That led the EPA in 2004 to block Mike and Chantell Sackett from completing a home on their residential-zoned Idaho lot of less than an acre and socking them with massive per-day fines until they dismantled what had already been built — even though their land was nowhere near a navigable body of water, as the WOTUS rule required.

Schumer rips 'MAGA' Supreme Court after 9-0 vote on EPA waters rule.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday that limited the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate bodies of water, calling it a "MAGA" court even though the decision was 9-0.  On Thursday, the high court issued an opinion that narrowed the EPA's broad definition of Waters of the United States (WOTUS).  The court said the federal government must define WOTUS as a water source with a "continuous surface connection" to major bodies of water.  The decision upended an attempt by the Biden administration to regulate wetlands, lakes, ponds, streams and other "relatively permanent" waterways, which had relied on a broad reading of the EPA's authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA).

Minnesota County Had No Right to Confiscate Elderly Woman's Home Equity, Supreme Court Rules.  The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the plaintiff in Tyler v. Hennepin County, finding that county officials violated the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment by seizing not only back taxes owed by an elderly home owner but also the equity she had accumulated in her condo.  The case centers around Geraldine Tyler, a 94-year-old woman, whose $40,000 home was seized by Hennepin County, Minn., due to $15,000 in unpaid taxes and fees.  However, after the sale of the property, local officials kept the surplus $25,000 profit instead of returning the funds to Tyler.  "A taxpayer who loses her $40,000 house to the State to fulfill a $15,000 tax debt has made a far greater contribution to the public fisc than she owed," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a majority opinion published on Thursday.  "The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but no more."

Supreme Court delivers blow to wetlands protections in win for Idaho landowners.  The Supreme Court on Thursday significantly weakened a landmark water pollution law by ruling that an Idaho couple's property does not include wetlands subject to federal oversight under the law.  The ruling, in which all the justices agreed in the outcome but differed on the legal reasoning, concluded that Mike and Chantell Sackett's land does not fall under jurisdiction of the 1972 Clean Water Act, so they do not require a federal permit to build on the property.  The decision ends a years-long battle between the Sacketts and the federal government and is a victory for conservative groups and business interests opposed to the broad application of the water pollution law.

Woman Who Exposed Planned Parenthood Baby Part Sales Asks Supreme Court to Overturn Judgment Against Her.  Liberty Counsel has filed a petition for writ of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the previous ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against Sandra Merritt in Planned Parenthood's multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit for her undercover investigation of the abortion giant.  The implications of this case have far-reaching First Amendment consequences involving free speech and undercover journalism.  In the petition for writ of certiorari, Liberty Counsel asks the High Court to consider "whether the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause protects newsgathering journalists, who operate under an alias to document and expose what they reasonably believe to be unlawful conduct, from being subjected to punitive liability for 'fraud.'  This case concerns whether, and to what extent, the press may raise the First Amendment as a defense against generally applicable tort laws when undercover journalists gather and publish truthful news of significant public importance.

Supreme Court Rules IRS Can Secretly Grab Bank Records of Outside Parties.  The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously in a delinquent taxpayer case that it is lawful for the IRS to secretly summons the bank records of third parties.  In other words, the nation's highest court recognized that the Internal Revenue Service is not required to notify third parties who are not under investigation when seeking a summons for banking records thought to be relevant to the tax delinquency of another person.  One lawyer who briefed the Supreme Court said the new ruling gives the IRS "startlingly broad authority to pry into the financial records of people who may be only remotely connected to a delinquent taxpayer."  The ruling, a victory for the Biden administration, came after the administration's attempts to strengthen IRS enforcement efforts became an issue in the midterm congressional elections.

Gorsuch Condemns the 'Breathtaking' Use of Emergency Powers During Covid.  Justice Neil Gorsuch has penned a passionate polemic against the emergency powers that were widely used during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that while they may have solved some problems, they created many others.  Gorsuch's statement came in the Supreme Court's final word on the effort of a group of states to challenge the end of Title 42, which allowed migrants to be expelled on public-health grounds.  Last December, the conservative justices blocked the administration from lifting Title 42 and scheduled oral arguments.  However, the justices removed the case from the argument calendar in February after the Biden administration announced it planned to end the Covid-19 national emergency.  The justices closed the book on the case Thursday, days after Title 42 expired.

Unanimous SCOTUS shields Google, Twitter — and bypasses Section 230.  Do Internet platforms need Section 230 to shield them from liability?  Should it be taken down as social-media platforms increasingly apply editorial control over content, arguably transforming them from platforms to publishers?  Don't expect explicit answers from two decisions handed down by the Supreme Court today, both unanimously rejecting liability claims without the use of Section 230 protections.

Supreme Court allows Illinois 'assault weapons' ban to take effect.  The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Illinois' ban on "assault weapons" to take effect temporarily on Wednesday.  The ruling allows the Illinois law to remain in effect while lower courts deliberate on its constitutional status.  Wednesday's ruling comes after a gun shop owner in Illinois requested an injunction against the ban.  The Illinois law bans the sale and new possession of semi-automatic "assault weapons."  Those who already legally own such weapons would not have to turn them in.  The law also bans the sale of large capacity magazines.

Sen. Markey introduces bill to pack Supreme Court, claims two Justices 'have no right to be there'.  Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey introduced a bill to pack the Supreme Court on Tuesday, claiming during a press conference on the legislation that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett have "no right" to be on the Court.  Markey's Judiciary Act of 2023, which pro-abortion groups Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America endorsed, would add four seats to the Supreme Court.  During his press conference on the Supreme Court steps, Markey called for Justice Clarence Thomas to resign and claimed that two justices have "no right to be there."  "In 2016, Senate Republicans broke the rules and packed the court," Markey said.  "In 2020, Donald Trump helped them to break the rules again."  Republicans refused to confirm Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016. After former President Donald Trump took office, Republicans confirmed Gorsuch in 2017.  After Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Republicans confirmed Barrett in October 2020.

The Great Left-Wing Disinformation Operation Against the Supreme Court.  The past five weeks has seen a flurry of media activity, clearly coordinated, against the right-of-center U.S. Supreme Court.  First, the outlet ProPublica began publishing a series of pieces "exposing" the well-known fact of Justice Clarence Thomas' long-running friendship with billionaire real estate tycoon Harlan Crow, and alleging ethical improprieties pertaining to the justice's purported failure to disclose certain information.  Second, Politico alleged a conflict of interest for Justice Neil Gorsuch in an old real estate transaction in his native Colorado that involved the CEO of a major law firm.  Third, Business Insider relied on a "whistleblower" to allege corruption on the part of Jane Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, due to her being a well-compensated legal recruiter.  Fourth, The New York Times ran a lengthy and meandering front-page story about the at-times coziness between George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School and some of the Court's right-of-center justices.

The Left's Three-Part Strategy Targeting the Supreme Court.  [Scroll down]  ["] Well, there is a federal statute which prohibits protesting at a judge's home, not limited to Supreme Court justices, at a judge's home for the purpose of influencing the judge or obstructing justice.  So the question would be legally, are they trying to influence?  Well, certainly the protests that took place between the leak of the Dobbs decision and the actual Supreme Court issuing its decision clearly were intended to influence the justices.  And I think you could probably say these so-called ethics protests also are, they're trying to influence them to go along with Dick Durbin and the other Democrats who want to impose some sort of external ethics code on the Supreme Court justices.  So I think clearly it violates the statute.  Now, some people say the statute's unconstitutional and has never been challenged, but it's on the books.  And as we know, the FBI and the DOJ love to enforce even petty laws that are on the books when it's politically convenient for them.["]

Liberal Justices Had Political Entanglements That Were Largely Ignored By Democrats.  Between 2004 and 2018, justices collectively disclosed taking 1,306 trips paid for by others, including 219 taken by Breyer, some of which were paid for by a wealthy Democratic donor family, according to Open Secrets.  Three of Breyers trips in 2018 were funded by the Chicago-based Pritzker family, which has donated millions of dollars to Democratic causes.  Breyer, who serves on the Pritzker Prize for Architecture jury, took two of those trips as part of that role.  Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz highlighted Breyer's travel during Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics.  "In 2019, [Justice Breyer] traveled to New York City, to Vancouver and Paris," Cruz said.  "In 2018, Justice Breyer traveled to Ireland and Spain.  In 2016, he traveled to New York, Spain and France.  In 2013, he traveled to Norway, Sweden and Denmark.  In 2012, he traveled to Beijing and to London — all of this paid for by the Pritzker Foundation."  "I'm not suggesting that he is corrupt," Cruz continued.  "What I am suggesting is this committee is corrupt."

Biden DOJ 'Actively' Tried to 'Dissuade' Marshals From Enforcing the Law to Protect Supreme Court Justices, Senators Say.  Republicans are accusing the Department of Justice of "actively" seeking to "dissuade" the U.S. Marshals Service from enforcing 18 USC 1507 to protect the Supreme Court justices.  In a May 3 letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama, Tom Cotton of Iowa, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Mike Lee of Utah reveal that they have obtained "post orders" dated May 19, 2022, that claim "USMS is not in a position to enforce" federal and state law.  "This is the exact kind of thing from the Biden DOJ that continues to cause people across Alabama and America to fear that there is a two-tiered system of justice in our country," Britt said in an emailed statement to The Daily Signal.  "The simple fact of the matter is that the Administration agreed with the protestors' politics and willfully chose not to enforce the law."  The U.S. Marshals Service should not engage protesters "unless they attempt to enter private property," the post orders said, according to the senators.

Cruz, Hawley Cut Dems Down to Size on SCOTUS Security Funding Threats.  Ever since the Capitol riot, Republicans have been subjected to non-stop pious lectures from Democrats, their allies in the mainstream press, and on the NeverTrump "right" about how it is undemocratic to allegedly undermine and delegitimize "sacred institutions" in America like the Supreme Court and Congress.  But as Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee reminded them this week during a predictable hearing on so-called "Supreme Court ethics reform," it's Democrats themselves who are guilty of the worst offenses on this front, which include repeated smear attempts — likely coordinated at high levels — against sitting conservative members of the court like Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

Supreme Court is the left's new Trump.  Having convinced themselves that Democrats will cream President Trump next year thanks to ballot harvesting, the left has moved to remove the last obstacle to their total control of our country, which was a constitutional republic until January 20, 2021's installation of Biden in the White House.  The left now attacks the Supreme Court.  Democrats want to give Congress control of the court by creating an ethics commission of some sort.  That's like Jack the Ripper calling for knife control.  If such a commission does not work, assassination is not outside the left's ken.  Justice Samuel Alito flat out raised that possibility when asked about the leak of his draft of the decision that overturned Roe.  Readers must understand that we now have a government of the government by the government and for the government.

Rather Than Smearing Justices, Democrats Should Be Asking Them For Ethics Lessons.  The concerted effort by the media and Democrats to delegitimize the Supreme Court is the most consequential attack on our institutions in memory.  Make no mistake.  Today's "Supreme Court Ethics Reform" hearing is meant to discredit the high court and slander justices with innuendo.  Nothing else.  Democrats are angry because the court happens to occasionally uphold basic constitutional principles of American governance.  Democrats are nervous that originalist justices are going to weaken the administrative state or hand power back to localities or protect religious liberty or gun rights.  The recent hit pieces on Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch were shoddy and transparently partisan.  They did not uncover any conflict of interest nor corruption.  They exist to give politicians fodder and hackish outlets like The Washington Post the freedom to contend that the Senate is "consider[ing] strengthening ethics rules for the Supreme Court in response to a cascade of revelations about unreported lavish travel and real estate deals."  Most Post readers will, no doubt, be unaware that there has been no "unreported" lavish travel or real estate deals.

Senate Republicans Accuse Democrats, Media Allies of Smear Campaign against Conservative Justices.  Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee tore into their Democratic colleagues during a Tuesday hearing on Supreme Court ethics, accusing the lawmakers of joining with their ideological allies in the media to undermine the conservative Supreme Court majority because it stands in the way of their desired policy outcomes.  The hearing was scheduled by Judiciary Committee Democrats after ProPublica published a series of articles detailing Justice Clarence Thomas's relationship with Texas billionaire Harlan Crow.  Despite the fact that Crow has not had business before the Court during Thomas's tenure — with the exception of one case that was never taken up involving a company which Crow had a minority interest in — many Democrats have seized on the report to argue that the Court should adopt stricter ethics rules to prevent undue interference.

Democrats are threatening to remove security funding for Supreme Court.  Even I underestimate the willingness of the Democrats to use the threat of violence to force compliance with their demands.  According to both Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, 15 Democrats from the Judiciary Committee have sent a letter to the Appropriations Committee asking that funding for the security that defends the lives of the Supreme Court Justices and their families be denied until the Court buckles to the demands of the Democrats.  [Tweet]

SCOTUS Grants Review of Case That Will Gut the Federal Bureaucracy.  In the biggest news to come out of the Supreme Court of the United States since Roe v. Wade was overturned, the Court has granted a review of Loper Bright Enterprises vs.  Raimondo.  In its deliberations, the court will deal with the question of whether to overrule the infamous Chevron Doctrine, a '70s-era precedent that granted broad powers to the bureaucratic state to interpret vague, often narrow statutes with near zero accountability. [...] [L]ower courts have been bound by former Justice Stevens' assertion that "reasonable interpretations" of statutes by administrative agencies are to not be overruled.  In this case, the word "reasonable" has been stretched to absolute extremes, and that has allowed the bureaucratic state to reign supreme with near impunity.  That's how you get the ATF banning bump stocks despite there being no actual statutory allowance for such a violation of personal freedom.  It's also how you get the lion's share of environmental regulations, including literal puddles in backyards being hit with ridiculous, costly EPA enforcement.  The federal government has been completely out of control for decades, and the Chevron Doctrine has been at the heart of many of the abuses.

Supreme Court to Hear Case That Could Rein in Federal Agencies.  The Supreme Court agreed to hear Loper Bright Enterprises v.  Raimondo, a case which could see an end to Chevron deference, in which courts defer to a federal agency's interpretation of an ambiguous statute.  The Court limited its grant of certiorari to the second question presented — namely, "whether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency."  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself because she heard arguments in this case when she was on the D.C. Circuit.

The Left's Plan for [a] Hostile Takeover of [the] Supreme Court.  The Left's campaign to control the Supreme Court has three parts.  First, they push the idea that the current justices are deciding cases politically, rather than impartially.  In other words, the justices are twisting and shaping the Constitution's meaning to reach results that advance certain political interests.  This tactic appears to be working.  In a March poll, 62% of respondents said that justices often decide cases based on "their own personal or political views," rather than "legal analysis."  Second, the Left attacks Supreme Court decisions, and individual justices, that do not reliably advance liberal political interests, as partisan, corrupt, or unethical.  Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., for example, claims that the Republican-appointed justices have "delivered rulings that advantage the big corporate and special interests that are, in turn, the political lifeblood of the Republican Party."  Whitehouse doesn't even try to argue that the decisions he doesn't like were legally incorrect, or applied the law improperly, only that they advanced the wrong political interests.  The Left's personal attacks on certain justices follow the same pattern.

Dobbs was probably leaked by Sotomayor.  The Supreme Court decision last year in Dobbs v. Jackson overruled Roe v. Wade, their 1973 decision that purported to find an abortion right in a U.S. Constitution that never mentions or alludes to it.  Abortion is now rightly governed by the people's elected legislators, and, sadly, to some extent by unelected bureaucrats, but, in any event, not by judges.  The Dobbs decision was leaked a couple of months in advance of its issuance.  The effect of the leak was an outcry from abortion proponents, illegal protests at the homes of the conservative Justices, and an attempted assassination of one.  The leak was unprecedented in over two centuries of Supreme Court jurisprudence.  Chief Justice Roberts turned the matter over to the Court's marshal, a person not skilled in criminal law investigation.  Apparently unaided or little-aided by the unlimited resources of federal law enforcement, she concluded that there was no "preponderance of evidence" to name the leaker.

An Amazing Coincidence!  Three Conservative Supreme Court Justices Under Investigation for Ethics.  I am not a conspiracy monger.  Readers of my work know that I take a dim view of trying to explain what happens in the world as some sort of organized or even generalized plot to discredit/destroy the right or its personalities.  The world is far too messy to be so organized about anything.  But the human brain is a wonderful mechanism for ordering the world.  We are born to see patterns around us; cloud formations as animals or other illusions that are beautiful but irrelevant.  But just because it seems organized doesn't mean it is.  Essentially, you can't take outcomes as evidence of conspiracy.  But isn't it interesting that within a matter of a few days, three conservative Supreme Court judges have been reported to have ethics problems?

Justice Alito Has 'Good Idea' Of Who Leaked Dobbs Opinion; Suggests Motive Was Assassination.  Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said that he has a "pretty good" idea who was behind the leak of the court's decision on overturning Roe v. Wade — and that the leak made the justices targets for possible assassination.  Alito, who authored the landmark Dobbs v.  Jackson Women's Health Organization decision that ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion, made the comments in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.  "I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that's different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody," Alito said: "It was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft ... from becoming the decision of the court.  And that's how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside — as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court."

Supreme Court says you need to pay off other people's student loan debt.  The Supreme Court just handed thousands of student loan borrowers a victory.  The nation's highest court ruled on Thursday in favor of $6 billion in student debt relief for 200,000 borrowers — a result of a settlement from a years-long lawsuit now known as Sweet v. Cardona.  The lawsuit was first filed in 2019 under former President Donald Trump on behalf of borrowers with stalled borrower-defense claims, or claims that borrowers can file if they believe they were defrauded by the school they attended.  If approved, their debt would be wiped out.

Why Progressives Attack the Supreme Court.  The modern tradition of political philosophy begins with the assertion of the rule of will.  This comes to us by men like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and others.  Modern political ideology is also antagonistic toward nature; it believes nature to be malleable, or changeable, and that man has the power through science, industry, and will power to fundamentally transform nature to something new.  Modern political philosophy is about the will to power, the will to transform.  Because the Supreme Court exists as the guardian of the rule of law, and therefore the natural law and natural rights, which stands against the rule of will, progressives hate the Supreme Court and want the Supreme Court destroyed.  Progressivism is the embodiment of modern political philosophy.  It is all about the rule of will.  Thus, progressivism naturally clashes with the Supreme Court's judicial philosophy of rule of law, natural law, and natural rights.

Democrats Seek to Remove the only Black Male from the Supreme Court.  The Democrat News-Media Complex (the DNC) has "discovered" another intolerable crisis that they hope may enable them to impeach the only black male, Clarence Thomas, on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in order to remove him from that position.  That's so that Joe Biden can put perhaps another black woman on the court who doesn't know what a woman is, because that, not expertise in the Constitution, is the primary qualification for a SCOTUS seat by the Biden administration.  AOC, given her zeal for "social justice" [that is, injustice], says she is willing to file the articles of impeachment herself.  One might normally think that removing the only black male on the Court is a clear case of racism, but it is not because AOC is a Democrat and socialist and Justice Thomas is a Republican.  Anyone who disagrees is a racist.

This Supreme Court ruling could upend everything about climate change lawsuits.  Federal courts of appeals cannot agree whether climate change lawsuits are governed by state or federal law.  Some federal courts have also concluded these cases should proceed in state court, an outcome Judge David Stras — a respected jurist on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit — just last week called "confounding," even if correct.  It's time for the Supreme Court to intervene.  For over a century, the Supreme Court has held that lawsuits over air (and water) pollution that crosses state lines must be decided under federal law.  This means overreaching states and cities cannot impose their environmental agendas on their neighbors or otherwise hijack the domain of federal environmental law, federal regulations and international treaties.  The Supreme Court unanimously extended this principle in American Electric Power Co. v.  Connecticut (AEP).  That case, decided in 2011, involved federal-law claims by eight states, New York City, and others to compel certain power companies to abate their greenhouse-gas emissions.

Report: U.S. Marshals Were Told Not to Arrest Protesters Outside Supreme Court Justices' Homes.  U.S. Marshals assigned to guard Supreme Court justices during the controversy over Roe v. Wade last year were reportedly told not to arrest protesters that gathered outside their private homes.  Last year, individual Supreme Court Justices were targeted by protesters after an illegal leak of a draft decision aiming to overturn Roe v. Wade before it had been officially decided.  At the time, even the left-wing Washington Post admitted such protests were likely illegal according to Title 18, Section 1507, of the U.S. Code.

County's Lawsuit Suing Energy Companies For 'Climate Change' Teed Up For Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court may be getting ready to take up a county's lawsuit alleging oil companies are responsible for environmental damages caused by climate change, the latest development in a campaign by local left-wing officials to influence national climate policy.  The case, brought by Boulder County, Colorado against Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil, seeks monetary relief for the companies' decision to burn fossil fuels and allegedly "conceal" the associated dangers, which the county argues "caused, accelerated, an[d] exacerbated the impacts of climate change."  While the companies have appealed the case to the Supreme Court, it still has to decide on the question of jurisdiction, and whether or not the case should be heard in state or federal court.  Boulder isn't the only local government suing oil companies: local-level climate lawsuits have been occurring for years, and there are similar pending cases in cities across the country, from California to Rhode Island.

Jackson pens solo dissent as Supreme Court vacates abortion ruling.  The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a federal court ruling upholding the right for a minor to go to court to get permission to undergo an abortion, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penning a solo dissent in the case.  The ruling from the court on Monday vacated a lower court ruling that a state court clerk could be sued for telling a pregnant teenager that the court must notify her parents of her attempt to get a court order to allow her to obtain an abortion without the consent of her parents.  Jackson's dissent focused on the use of Munsingwear vacatur, in which a case is vacated because it has become moot while pending review by a higher court — unless the party adversely impacted by the initial decision is not to blame for the "mootness."

Supreme Court requests more funding to protect justices.  Why won't the DOJ do its job?  It is a violation of a federal statute to protest outside of the Supreme Court justices' homes, yet protests regularly happen.  Ever since the decision on Dobbs was leaked, indicating that Roe v Wade would be overturned, there have been protests in the neighborhoods of conservative Supreme Court justices.  Attorney General Merrick Garland is a Democrat.  Is it a partisan politics thing?  If so, Garland is a petty and spiteful man.  If not, he is inept and incompetent.  There is no middle ground here.  It's one or the other.

Supreme Court Slashes IRS Penalty Against Taxpayer for Not Reporting Foreign Bank Accounts.  The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in a fractured opinion on Feb. 28 that the IRS imposed an excessive fine on a businessman for failing to report foreign bank accounts, reducing the financial penalty to $50,000 from $2.72 million.  The decision came after the House of Representatives, now controlled by Republicans, voted in January to repeal a congressional provision allotting almost $80 billion to the IRS over the coming 10 years for increased enforcement.  Democrats say the IRS has long been underfunded, but Republicans say the extra money would have been used to harass taxpayers.  Only 4 percent of the additional funding would have been devoted to improving taxpayer service, while 58 percent would have gone to escalating enforcement efforts, the New York Post reported in August 2022.

There Is No 'Expert' Clause in the U.S. Constitution.  [Scroll down]  There is no provision within the United States Constitution that accords unlimited power to bureaucrats simply because some people consider them to be well-credentialed.  As for Sotomayor's suggestion that, by superintending this statutory matter, the Court is taking it upon itself to set policy, "instead of leaving that decision in the hands of the person who has experience with these questions," that too is absolute rot.

A Legal Reckoning on Student-Loan Forgiveness.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in two cases challenging Joe Biden's power to spend a half-trillion to a trillion taxpayer dollars forgiving student-loan debt without the consent of Congress.  The president's abuse of "emergency" wartime powers passed in the 2002 HEROES Act is nothing less than lawless royalism.  It continues his effort to use the Covid emergency to assert unprecedented powers, such as the capacity to order the compulsory vaccination of the nation's workers and to prohibit the eviction of apartment tenants for nonpayment of rent.  At least vaccination is a Covid-specific policy, and the eviction moratorium was never designed to last forever.  By contrast, student-loan-debt forgiveness was a preexisting policy demand of progressives before the pandemic, its effect would be to eliminate existing debts permanently, and it was issued at a time when Biden himself was assuring the nation that the pandemic was over and the economy was in full recovery.

AG Garland Defends His Defense of Supreme Court Justices.  Protesters have been showing up at the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices ever since the leak of the draft Dobbs (abortion) ruling last year, but Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress on Wednesday he doesn't know if anyone has been arrested for breaking a law that bars picketing outside justices' homes.  "It's very clear that they're trying to influence in one way or another those serving on the United States Supreme Court," Sen. Mike Lee told a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  "And yet, not one person to my knowledge has been prosecuted for such things under 18 USC section 1507."  Lee asked Attorney General Garland why no charges have been brought against protesters under that section of the law.  Garland said he didn't know if anyone has been charged under Section 1507.  But he defended what he has done in light of the ongoing protests:  [Video clip]

Injustice of the Court.  In this corrupt nation, I don't expect the Supreme Court to rule on important issues of the day, that's not what they do anymore.  Today, they serve only to cover up for the unconstitutional acts of presidents and their administrations, weasels like Mayorkas and Garland, both running amok, violating every law they encounter, blind to criminal activity, unless there's some aspect of Trumpism involved, then they find their prosecutorial legs and the court can be relied upon to rule with vengeance, because they are no longer Americans, just people who live in America, who leech off of the hard work and good sense of its citizens while they defile and abuse them, traffic their children and dilute their culture.  It's a shame and I'm sickened by it, but it's true.  We are so corrupt that one's political affiliation leads to sentences of probation or life in prison for the same act, it's all in the definition and how they apply them.  This has gone on a long time.

The Unhinged Meltdowns Outside SCOTUS Over Student Debt Are Something to See.  There have been some pretty nutty meltdowns over the past day regarding the student debt forgiveness matter that is presently before the Supreme Court.  The reaction of Democrats and some in the media has been wild, showing that they don't care about the Consitution, all they care about is paying off their base for the bribe that was offered before the midterms.  They know they will likely lose since there is no support in the Constitution for Joe Biden's ability to unilaterally forgive student debt.  But they want to put on a show now so that the leftists base will blame SCOTUS and not who they should be blaming — Joe Biden and the Democrats who lied to them on this issue.

SCOTUS [is] Gearing up to Sink Biden's Midterm Bribe of Forgiving Student Loan Debt.  It was never up to President Joe Biden to forgive the student loan debt held by millions of Americans, yet during the midterms, the Democrats made it a party-wide campaign promise.  While the lie didn't fly well enough to stop the Republicans from taking back the House with an unforgivably slim margin, it sure gave young leftists something to rally around.  But despite Biden telling Americans he'd forgive the debt, even members of his own party were feeling uneasy about the promise.  New Hampshire Democrat lawmaker Chris Pappas didn't like the way Biden was sidestepping Congress and said publicly that this wasn't so much forgiveness as it was debt reallocation.

Biden will be playing defense on student loans this week at the Supreme Court.  President Joe Biden's $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan will finally get its day at the Supreme Court on Tuesday.  But some experts predict that by the time arguments end, the administration may wish it had been somewhere else.  Biden's proposal, which would forgive up to $20,000 for some borrowers, is almost certain to be in for a rough ride before a court with a 6-3 conservative majority and an increasingly skeptical view of agencies acting without clear approval from Congress.  "The case against him on the merits is very strong," said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University.

SCOTUS again denies hearing 2020 election case alleging Biden, Harris, lawmakers ignored fraud.  The Supreme Court announced Tuesday [2/21/2023] it will not hear a 2020 election lawsuit against former Vice President Mike Pence, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, 291 House members and 94 senators, after a petition to reconsider was filed last month.  The lawsuit alleges the respondents violated their oaths of office by refusing to investigate evidence of fraud in the 2020 election before accepting the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, allowing for Biden and Harris to be "fraudulently" inaugurated.  The court held a private conference Friday to vote to reconsider whether to hear the case, releasing its decision Tuesday.  Four of the nine justices must vote to hear a case for it to move forward.  After the Supreme Court initially declined on Jan. 9 to hear the lawsuit filed by Raland J. Brunson.  He filed a petition on Jan. 23 for reconsideration.

Supreme Court weighs whether to hold Google liable for terrorism-related death.  In its first case about the federal law that is credited with helping create the modern internet, the Supreme Court seemed unlikely Tuesday to side with a family wanting to hold Google liable for the death of their daughter in a terrorist attack.  In two and a half hours of arguments, the justices seemed concerned about upending the internet in their interpretation of a 1996 law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that shields Google, Twitter, Facebook and other companies from lawsuits over content posted on their sites by others.

U.S. Supreme Court cancels arguments in Republican bid to keep border expulsions.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday canceled scheduled arguments in a case in which Republicans sought to keep in place a policy introduced under former President Donald Trump that has let American officials quickly expel hundreds of thousands of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.  The policy, known as Title 42, was implemented by Trump's administration in March 2020 - early in the COVID-19 pandemic - as a measure tied to a public health emergency.

Real and Fake Worlds: Why the Trains are Failing.  In the olden days, you didn't need a college degree to get a real job.  You took an IQ test to get a job.  In Griggs v.  Duke Power Co, the far left wing Supreme Court all but outlawed these tests.  Employers thus started to required university degrees for jobs that a smart and ambitious 19 year old could have begun learning via on-the-job training and mentorship.  All the smart kids were forced to attend college.  Most of them realized, "If I am going to go through all this hassle, I may as well sell insurance for State Farm upon graduation."  Banning IQ tests for jobs, more than any other policy, hollowed out the middle.  Millions of smart kids got left behind.  We should care not for their sake, but our own.

Democrats want to impose a code of conduct on SCOTUS.  Stop me if you've heard this one before.  Congressional Democrats are unhappy with the way some things have been going at the Supreme Court lately, so they've decided to draft a bill telling the justices how they should conduct their affairs.  Citing "unprecedented" behavior from some of the justices (read: the conservative ones), the bill would seek to force the court to enact a "code of conduct" similar to the ones that guide lower courts.  Not only is this a baldly partisan shot across the bow based on the specious reasons being offered, but the ability of Congress to blatantly stick its nose into the operation of the court is constitutionally dubious at best.

A Supreme Disappointment.  Doesn't "one of the worst breaches" in the Court's history deserve a conclusion and naming of a culprit?  Apparently not.  In recent years, the left has waged an unrelenting war on the Supreme Court, demanding Justices work toward their political goals rather than upholding their oath to the U.S. Constitution.  When they haven't gotten their way, they've sent raucous and threatening protestors to the homes of Justices who voted to return abortion law to the states.  The White House encouraged this behavior, which eventually led to an assassination attempt outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  Remaining and staunch defenders of the institution deserve better than an inconclusive investigation about the grave breach of trust.  The lack of a conclusion and accountability severely damages the integrity of the Court and undercuts promises from Justice Roberts to take the leak, "the betrayal," seriously.  With no punishment or accountability for the leaker, that betrayal stands.  Not just to the Court but to the American people who still had faith in the institution — now, a damaged faith.

Supreme Court marshal says justices were part of investigation, but didn't sign sworn affidavits.  Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley said that justices were part of the investigation into who leaked a draft opinion to Politico last year.  "During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions.  The Justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine.  I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses.  On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits," Curley said in a statement on Friday [1/20/2023].  Curley's statement comes one day after the Supreme Court Marshal released a report stating that an investigative team hasn't been able to "identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence" who leaked the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization draft opinion.

Supreme Court Swears They Cannot Find Leaker of Dobbs Decision.  Yeah sure.  The Supreme Court of the United States asserts today that after a nine-month investigation they just cannot find the person who leaked the draft of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.  The draft opinion on the abortion issue was leaked to Politico from inside the court in May 2022 in what the court calls "one of the worst breaches of trust in its history."  However, despite their efforts to get to the bottom of the leak and find the leaker, they cannot find out who it was.  The court then delivers a two-page memo explaining the situation, and a 23-page report from former Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff.

Democrats Once Again Resist A Supreme Court Demand That They Respect Our Civil Rights.  Back in the day, Democrats reacted to the Supreme Court's Brown v.  Board of Education decision requiring that they respect all Americans' civil liberties with fury and a petulant campaign of massive resistance.  What is old is new again — the Democrat Party is back in form, furious that SCOTUS will not let them steal our rights.  This time it is gun rights.  The Bruen decision made it clear that blue states cannot deny your right to keep and bear arms on a whim.  And the libs have gone into overdrive to undermine it.

House Judiciary Committee To Investigate Dobbs Leak: report.  The House Judiciary Committee intends to continue investigating the Supreme Court draft opinion leak that surrounded Dobbs v.  Jackson Women's Health Organization, an anonymous source close to the committee told Fox News.  The Supreme Court announced Thursday that its investigation into the Dobbs leak had failed to find the person responsible.  The House Judiciary Committee is looking to pick up where the investigation left off, an anonymous source told Fox.  Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has previously indicated that the committee would investigate the leak, according to Fox.

Supreme Court Releases Final Report From Investigation Into Who Leaked Dobbs Draft.  [Scroll down] The Supreme Court released the report along with an unsigned statement that called the leak "one of the worst breaches of trust" in the court's history.  "The leak was no mere misguided attempt at protest," the statement said.  "It was a grave assault on the judicial process."  "The Chief Justice assigned the task to the Marshal of the Supreme Court and her staff," the statement continued.  "After months of diligent analysis of forensic evidence and interviews of almost 100 employees, the Marshal's team determined that no further investigation was warranted with respect to many of the '82 employees [who] had access to electronic or hard copies of the draft opinion.'"  "In following up on all available leads, however, the Marshal's team performed additional forensic analysis and conducted multiple follow-up interviews of certain employees," the statement continued.  "But the team has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence."

SCOTUS leak probe ends with a fizzle.  Who leaked the Supreme Court's draft decision on Dobbs, the case that overturned Roe?  It's been the biggest political whodunit in years, with scores of potential perps.  We have waited since early May to discover the identity of the thief and the true motive for leaking it out.  Chief Justice John Roberts promised a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of the crime.  What did he find out?  Well ... it was an inside job — which everyone pretty much assumed from the start.  And that's pretty much it.

The Editor says...
Good thing it wasn't a murder investigation!  It sounds like they know who the culprit is, but they can't really prove it.

Supreme Court rejects New York gun retailers' bid to block new concealed carry laws.  The Supreme Court rejected a bid by New York gun retailers on Wednesday [1/18/2023] to block a slew of new gun control laws in the state, which they argued violate their Second Amendment rights and hurt their businesses.  There were no noted dissents in the order or explanations from the justices for their decision.  "We are disappointed that not one of the nine justices saw fit to grant the plaintiffs some stay of enforcement of the new laws against them," Paloma Capanna, the lead attorney for the New York gun retailers, told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.

Supreme Court investigators have narrowed leak probe down to a small group of suspects.  I was thinking yesterday that we haven't heard much about this recently.  Today the Wall Street Journal reports there has been some progress in narrowing down the list of suspects but still no definitive conclusion. [...] The reference to investigators seeking cellphones from the clerks was revealed back in June by CNN. CNN also reported the clerks had been asked to sign affidavits, presumably attesting to their innocence. [...] The Journal's description of the brief interviews seems to jibe with the idea that investigators aren't looking for a confession so much as daring the leaker to lie to a direct question.  As the article points out, the leak itself probably wasn't illegal so there's no punishment in terms of arrest or imprisonment coming for whoever did this whether they confess or not.  However, there could be a case made for disbarment if the clerk can be shown to have lied to the Chief Justice or the marshal.  That would certainly be a blow to one of the top young lawyers in the country.

Over this weekend, a lot of very important legal happenings have occurred.  [Thread reader]  Last term, a case came before the US Supreme Court, where West Virginia sued the EPA for egregious changes to the clean air act that essentially rewrote the law with much tougher restrictions.  This was done at the Biden admin's direction to directly target the WV Coal industry.  In West Virginia v EPA, the crux of the matter was Exec Branch Agencies abusing Chevron Deference legal standard to exceed their regulatory authority to essentially rewrite laws for political reasons, by changing their regulatory definitions & rules.  In deciding WV v EPA, SCOTUS ruled that EPA exceeded its authority & that chevron deference DOES NOT permit an agency to make rule changes that effectly modifies existing laws or would create new law.  The Supreme Court ruled that in drastically changing the clean air act standards to punish coal & oil industries, the EPA was rewriting the law, which only congress can do.

Supreme Court Rejects Texas-Led Attempt to Protect Trump-Era Immigration Rule.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 9 rejected a Texas-led challenge to reinstate a Trump-era policy that blocked certain immigrants from gaining permanent residency status if they're deemed likely to qualify for government benefits.  The high court didn't say why it rejected the challenge, listing the case under its list of "certiorari denied" cases.  An appeal from 14 Republican-led state attorneys general, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, sought to rescind a lower court ruling against their request to mount a legal defense of Trump's "public charge" rule after President Joe Biden stopped defending the measure and later rescinded it.  The policy was put into effect by the Trump administration in February 2020 and was ended by the Biden administration in March 2021.

US Supreme Court Also Decides NOT to Look at Bonner Case on Legality of Mail-in Ballots.  The US Supreme Court not only decided not to look at the Brunson brothers' case, but also decided not to take up the Bonner case challenging the legality of mail-in ballots.  Such a shame.  The US Supreme Court is absolutely frightened to take up strong cases that challenge corrupt elections or corrupt practices.  Yet this is the biggest issue facing our country right now and the biggest threat to our Constitution.

A Mulligan for the Supreme Court.  Many would argue that the Supreme Court had a terrible "first shot" in regards to the election of 2020, when they refused to become involved in the many issues raised by the Presidential election.  Perhaps the most notable of these was Texas vs.  Pennsylvania, in which the State of Texas asked that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin not be allowed to certify their 2020 election results because changes in their election procedures made by courts, governors, and election officials violated the Constitution, which rests the power to define the "times, places, and manner" of federal elections solely in the hands of state legislatures, an argument commonly referred to as the "Independent State Legislature" (ISL) theory.  The Court refused to consider the case, not on the merits of its argument, but on a technicality, claiming that Texas had not demonstrated a "judicially cognizable interest" in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.  As a result, we have seen nearly two years of the rapid destruction of our nation, including fiscal irresponsibility that is led to staggering inflation, a steady decline in the stock market, enactment of policies that have reduced us from energy independence to a nation that must look to countries such as Venezuela and Iran to meet our basic needs and, perhaps most frightening, the politicization of the Department of Justice (including the FBI) into organizations resembling a third-world police state.  Fortunately, there are cases currently before the Supreme Court that offer them the opportunity for a "do-over."

Supreme Court Agrees to Keep Title 42 Border Policy in Place Temporarily.  The Supreme Court voted 5-4 on Tuesday in favor of keeping Title 42 in place while legal challenges around the Trump-era border restriction play out.  The decision comes about a week after Chief Justice John Roberts stayed a lower-court order that would have ended the pandemic-era policy on December 21.  Title 42 allows for asylum-seekers at the border to be expelled to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.  On Tuesday, the court agreed to keep that pause in place, granting an emergency request by 19 Republican attorneys general who warned that allowing Title 42 to expire would lead to an explosion of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border.  Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court's three liberals in voting against the request for a stay.

Jim Jordan Single Handedly Wrecked the Democrats' Attempt to Discredit the Supreme Court.  I'm sure that if many people were being honest with themselves, they'd rather find themselves at the business end of a loaded gun than be subjected to a line of questions by Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.  Sure enough, that's exactly where former anti-abortion activist and current Supreme Court whistleblower Rev. Robert L. Schenck found himself during Thursday's House Justiciary Committee Hearing.  Schenck was supposed to be the Democrats' star witness, but by the time Jordan was done with him, he was a smoking pile of ash.  Schenck was supposed to testify over his allegations that Justice Alito leaked court opinions in regard to the 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. case.  The reverend claimed he'd gotten information about the majority opinion on the case after Alito had dinner with mutual friends of Schenck's.  Alito denied this leak, yet the New York Times reported on a letter Schenck had sent to Chief Justice Roberts earlier this year making the claim that he had.

Dems' Star Witness In SCOTUS Hearing Deemed 'Not Credible' By SCOTUS.  The House Judiciary Committee majority is bringing conservative-turned-progressive activist the Rev. Robert Schenck as a witness to a hearing on Thursday over allegations that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito leaked court opinions in 2014, despite the Supreme Court in 1996 deeming Schenck "not entirely credible."  Thursday's hearing, entitled "Undue Influence: 'Operation Higher Court' and Politicking at SCOTUS" comes as a report of the allegations that Alito leaked information to a couple who had contact with Schenck.  The reverend is slated to be the Democrats' star witness during the hearing despite the Supreme Court's conclusion that Schenck was an unreliable witness.

The Supreme Court is preparing to strike down forced speech.  In a case argued at the Supreme Court this week, a Colorado website designer appealed a decision from lower courts requiring her to create wedding websites for gay couples in violation of her religious belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.  The Court is likely to reverse the lower court decision, and allow her to decline to create such websites.  The liberal minority on the Court and the liberal media argue that such a decision will lead to a new Jim Crow era where the providers of public accommodation are allowed to refuse services to people on the basis of their sexual preferences or skin color.  That argument is incorrect and probably not even sincere.  Here's why. [...]

Supreme Court smacks Trump.  Consider, please: the high court ruled, in Dobbs, that a right to abortion, created in Roe v. Wade, is nowhere found in the Constitution of the United States.  On November 22, half a year later, the high court stated, effectively, that a house of Congress has a right, found nowhere in the Constitution, to the tax returns of a president of the country.  To boot, the justices bestow such a right on a viciously partisan panel that was established to probe the four-hour disturbance at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 — and not the tax returns of the former president.  Not only should the justices have dismissed the action against Mr. Trump as the fruit of a poisonous House panel, but the Court should have denounced the subpoena demanding tax records as a bill of attainder — and noted that if tax records for a former president are subject to (unlawful) congressional subpoena, who among the people is protected against a tyrannical Legislature serving a dictatorial administration, with SWAT teams sent forth by a thuggish FBI to enforce totalitarian subpoenas?

Supreme Court declines to shield Trump tax returns from Congress.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday [11/22/2022] rejected an emergency appeal from former President Trump seeking to shield his tax returns from House Democrats, capping a multiyear legal battle and paving the way for the release of his tax returns.  The order — which had no noted dissents — was in response to an appeal Trump filed with the Supreme Court late last month after a lower court declined to reverse its ruling mandating that he turn over his tax records to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Amy Coney Barrett [is being] called on to recuse herself from upcoming gay rights case over faith group affiliation.  Former members of the charismatic Christian group, People of Praise, claim Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the community, can not be impartial in the upcoming 303 Creative LLC v Elenis case, which will determine if a graphic design firm must include same-sex weddings on the wedding websites it designs.  The ex-members, who consider themselves to be "survivors" of the People of Praise, are calling on Barrett to recuse herself based on her continued affiliation with the group, according to The Guardian.  Her involvement with the group, they argue, indicates that she has participated in anti-LGBTQ+ policies.  In 2015, Barrett joined the board of Trinity Schools Inc., a private group of Christian schools with ties to People of Praise.  A faculty guide published that same year stated that "blatant sexual immorality" — including "homosexual acts" — had "no place in the culture of Trinity Schools."

That 2014 SCOTUS leak may never have happened.  We're still hearing tales this month about a leak from the Supreme Court, but not the one from over the summer involving Roe.  In case you missed the latest one, it involved a letter sent to Chief Justice John Roberts from Reverend Rob Schenck, an evangelical activist who claimed that he knew about the outcome of the 2014 case of Burwell v.  Hobby Lobby.  He claimed to have been told about the pending decision by a family friend of Justice Samuel Alito and his wife.  The letter appears to be authentic, but the contents of it may not hold up under closer scrutiny.

Ketanji Brown Jackson sides with death row inmate in first Supreme Court opinion.  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sided with a death row inmate in Ohio in her first written opinion since joining the Supreme Court this summer.  Jackson, who was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote a dissenting opinion objecting to the Supreme Court's decision to reject an appeal from Davel Chinn, the death row inmate, who was convicted of a 1989 murder in Dayton.  Chinn's lawyers had petitioned the court to take his case, arguing that the prosecution withheld evidence that a key witness who identified him as the shooter was mentally disabled.

The Supreme Court Confronts the Left's Victimhood Consensus.  As George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley has shown, Harvard arguably manipulates the applicants' personality, likability, courage, and kindness scores to achieve its desired objective: race-based admissions levels.  This approach represents little more than the return of Plessy v. Ferguson's separate but equal doctrine, which is now hidden within contemporary diversity rhetoric.  Plessy v.  Ferguson was outlawed more than seventy years ago in the Brown v.  Board of Education decision.  The return of race-based admissions allows Harvard to rate Asian American applicants fifty percent lower on average than African Americans.  Harvard's percentage ranking allowed black students with lower scores on standardized tests to be admitted at roughly twice the rate of Asian American students.  This raises the question of why Harvard and other universities have decided to engage in subterfuge that is hidden in plain sight.

The Supreme Court Has A Chance To Save The Economy From The FTC's Wrecking Ball.  Next week, the Supreme Court will have a chance to save the free market economy from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Even as the court reins in the administrative state, the FTC is advancing new rules and novel theories that stretch the limits of its mandate.  Under its progressive chair, Lina Khan, the FTC wants to cancel the gig economy, cripple the ad-supported internet, and address racial justice, rather than simply protect consumers.  In Axon Enterprise v. FTC, the court could take a big step toward cabining the FTC within its statutory and constitutional authority. Axon itself involves a narrow procedural question of whether someone can raise certain constitutional challenges to the FTC directly in federal court, without having to wade through years of administrative processes.

A second attempt to block Biden's student-debt cancellation lands at the Supreme Court.  Opponents to President Joe Biden's student-debt relief took their legal battle to the Supreme Court on Tuesday in the latest attempt to get the nation's highest court to block the plan.  Indiana student-loan borrowers Frank Garrison and Noel Johnson are seeking to halt the program, claiming it's unlawful and requires them to pay more in taxes because the debt cancelation is considered taxable income under state law.  "The administration is attempting to erase half a trillion dollars in debt without any legal basis," Caleb Kruckenberg, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm representing the two applicants, said in a statement.  "The Court ought to put the brakes on this lawless action while it's considered by the courts."

Alito Channels Elizabeth Warren During Oral Arguments: 'I Identify As American Indian'.  During oral arguments in two cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, Justice Samuel Alito joined other conservatives on the bench to cast doubt on allowing the consideration of race in college and university admissions decisions.  In one exchange, Alito wondered what metrics were used for determining heritage.  "We rely on self-reporting," said North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park, who is defending affirmative action policies at UNC.  "One great-grandparent," Alito said.  "Are you going to make me continue to go on?"  "Right, I think that as we go on, I agree that it would seem less plausible that that person would feel that this is actually capturing my true racial identity," Park responded.  Alito then appeared to refer to Sen. Elizabeth Warren's claim of a Native American heritage.

Justice Roberts Puts a Hold on Democrat Attempts to Obtain Trump's Tax Returns.  Chief Justice John Roberts put a hold on the House Ways and Means Committee quest to obtain President Donald Trump's tax returns Tuesday morning.  Previously, the D.C. District Court ruled in favor of Democrats on the Committee prompting the IRS to release them.  [Tweet]  The move comes after an emergency appeal was made by Trump's legal team yesterday.  "The Committee's purpose in requesting President Trump's tax returns has nothing to do with funding or staffing issues at the IRS and everything to do with releasing the President's tax information to the public," the request states.  [Tweet]

Supreme Court Blocks Congress From Getting Trump's Tax Returns.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 1 blocked Congress from obtaining former President Donald Trump's tax returns.  Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, stayed an appeals court order that had ruled a congressional panel could gain access to the documents.  Trump filed an emergency application on Monday to the Supreme Court, asking it to halt the order.  Roberts' stay is temporary, pending further developments in the case.  Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, has for years been trying to obtain Trump's returns, asserting that they are necessary as the panel considers possibly updating how audits of presidents are done.  Trump said that the true purpose is to release the returns to the public.

Supreme Court poised to outlaw racial discrimination, again.  The Supreme Court on Monday considered the arguments of Harvard and the University of North Carolina justifying their racial discrimination in admissions.  The schools will probably lose.  They schools argue their racial discrimination (they refuse to call it that, of course) is just one of many factors they consider in admissions.  But the data show it's by far the most important one.  For example, at UNC a white person with a given set of test scores, grade point average and other factors, with 10% chance of getting admitted, would have a 98% chance with the same qualifications if he were black.  At Harvard, the case was brought by an Asian student group.  The data show that at Harvard an Asian needs an SAT score about 400 points higher than a black person with comparable other qualifications.  That 400-point difference is huge.

Supreme Court leans toward ending affirmative action in college admissions.  Conservative Supreme Court justices indicated Monday that they are willing to end the explicit consideration of race in college admissions as they weighed cases challenging affirmative action policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University.  Members of the court's conservative majority questioned the legal rationale for allowing the practice and probed to what extent colleges and universities could enact new "race neutral" admissions policies aimed at improving racial diversity.  Some justices, however, indicated they would be willing to allow applicants to discuss their racial identities in some form as part of essays touching upon their experiences, such as examples of overcoming discrimination.

Yes, please explain why.  (This ought to be good.)
Justice Kagan suggests gender-neutral college admissions could give unfair advantage to 'white men'.  Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan suggested that gender-neutral admission processes could give "white men" an advantage over people who have been "kicked in the teeth" during an oral argument Monday on a pair of lawsuits deciding whether affirmative action within Harvard University and the University of North Carolina (UNC) is constitutional.  During the oral argument for Students for Fair Admissions v.  President and Fellows of Harvard, Kagan suggested to Patrick Strawbridge, who is representing Students for Fair Admissions, that higher education institutions that use gender-neutral policies lead to unequal outcomes for men at universities.  Kagan noted that "white men" could get a "thumb on the scale" in university admissions if educational institutions sought to address the disparity.

The Editor says...
I thought all they wanted was a level playing field.

Justice Thomas Unloads on Lawyer Defending Affirmative Action: 'Diversity Seems to Mean Everything for Everyone'.  Justice Clarence Thomas pressed North Carolina's solicitor general to explain how the University of North Carolina defines diversity during oral arguments on Monday in a Supreme Court case centered around the use of race as a factor in college admissions.  "I've heard the word diversity quite a few times and I don't have a clue what it means," said Thomas.  "It seems to mean everything for everyone."  Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) has challenged the race-based admissions policies of both Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), accusing both schools of discriminating against Asian-American applicants.  The cases were initially merged, but are now being heard separately after Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case because she had previously served on the university's board of overseers.

Ketanji Brown Jackson won't shut up.  Ketanji Brown Jackson is without a doubt the biggest detriment to the female sex since Eve in the garden of Eden.  She's remarkably unintelligent, and she won't stop talking. [...] She's the epitome of the "women never shut up" stereotype, just yammering away like an idiot with nothing of substance to say — another mindless leftist that talks just to talk, loving the sound of their own voice to the pain of those listening.  Astutely pointed out by a colleague's spouse:  ["]She is the politician on the court, because she is simply arguing to the public principles and ruling that the court as currently constituted will not accept.["]  The same court that saw the appointments of men like Oliver Ellsworth and Antonin Scalia, now sees a token affirmative action recipient who is so wrapped up in leftist ideology, she can't (or won't) say what a "woman" is — and she's becoming even less impressive (how is that even possible?) as time marches on.

Astonishing call for censorship of Justice Amy Coney Barrett by publishing industry figures.  Even as they claim to oppose censorship, a group of almost 500 people (as of the moment) from the literary world — best-selling authors, publishing industry employees, and others — have signed on to a call for Penguin Random House to drop a forthcoming book by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.  Her crime?  Signing on to the majority opinion in the Dobbs case, overturning Roe v. Wade, and returning abortion to the states.

Supreme Court to decide if CA can use pigs to impose its left-wing agenda on America.  The state of California simply refuses to leave the rest of us alone.  Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard more than two hours of oral arguments (more than in the case overturning Roe v. Wade) concerning pigs and how much space should be allotted for a sow to give birth and wean her piglets.  In 2018, California voters approved a proposition that banned the sale of any pork not produced at a farm that provided at least 24 square feet of space per sow.  While there is always an argument to be made against animal cruelty, the problem here is a matter of practicality.  Only four percent of pig farms currently meet California's new standard.  Boutique pork — as it were — is available at stores like Whole Foods for around $8 a pound.  If applied nationwide, California's law would raise the price of pork by an estimated 9.2 percent; current record inflation and already-high food prices [notwithstanding].  Believe it or not, the Biden regime is reportedly siding with the pork farmers, not California.

Justice Barrett Rejects Emergency Request to Block Biden's Student-Debt Forgiveness Plan.  Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Thursday rejected an emergency request by a group of Wisconsin taxpayers to block the enforcement of President Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan.  Barrett, who typically fields emergency bids from Wisconsin, acted alone without referring the case to the rest of the Supreme Court bench or seeking a response from the government.  On Wednesday, the plaintiffs challenging Biden's student-debt wipeout, which would effectively erase up to $10,000 in loans for graduates who earn less than $125,000 a year, filed an emergency petition to stop the government from implementing the plan pending litigation in the lower courts.  Pell Grant recipients, under Biden's order, would be eligible to receive $20,000.

A conservative group just asked the Supreme Court to block Biden's student-loan forgiveness.  A conservative taxpayers group wants President Joe Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan blocked as soon as possible — and it's taking matters to the Supreme Court.  The Brown County Taxpayers Association in Wisconsin filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, asking to temporarily pause Biden's student-debt relief plan before Sunday, when the group expects the administration to start officially canceling borrowers' debt.  The conservative group, represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), initially filed a lawsuit against the debt relief on October 4, arguing that it has an "improper racial motive" by seeking to help Black borrowers and advance racial equity.  It said Biden exceeded his constitutional power by enacting the loan relief without congressional approval.  Two days later, a federal judge tossed out the lawsuit.  While that decision is being appealed, the group is now escalating the issue to the Supreme Court in an effort to block Biden's plan from taking effect.

U.S. Supreme Court refuses case on rights for the unborn.  After dismantling federal abortion rights in its previous term, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday [10/11/2022] turned away a case that would consider extending constitutional protections to the unborn.  The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on Tuesday without comment, CNN and CBS News reported.

Levin: SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is an 'Idiot'.  Conservative talk-radio host and best-selling author Mark Levin said the new Supreme Court associate justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, is an "an idiot," and added that she has "no respect for the other justices."  On his popular Mark Levin Show, Levin, a constitutional scholar, commented on Oct. 5, "Now we have a Supreme Court justice who I oppose.  I told you she's going be the most radical justice in American history.  On the first day, during oral argument, she demonstrated that she is.  She also demonstrated that she's an ideologue and I'll say an idiot.  That's right — I said it — an idiot.  KBJ — which is why she's celebrated on the left.  She is an idiot."  Levin continued, "She's lecturing the solicitor general from Alabama about the 14th Amendment.  And what she's basically saying is what the 14th amendment compels is discrimination — because it was born from discrimination, it was born to end discrimination, therefore it can be used to advance discrimination."

KBJ's case for 'progressive originalism' in Supreme Court debut draws rebuke.  Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argues the framers of the 14th Amendment adopted it "in a race-conscious way," a position some legal experts say is subject to debate.  Jackson, the first black woman on the Supreme Court, began her first two days on the nine-member bench by speaking more than any other justices, in addition to a full four-minute statement in which she said the 14th Amendment used "race-conscious" remedies to make freedmen equal to white citizens.  The issue at hand involved a challenge to Alabama 's 2021 congressional district map, which a lower court held was a racial gerrymander because it only contained one majority-black district out of the state's seven.

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Challenge to Health-Care-Worker Vaccine Mandate.  The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a legal challenge to the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for health-care workers at facilities that receive federal funds.  The justices rejected an appeal submitted by the plaintiffs, including ten mostly Republican-controlled states, after a lower court declined to hear their petition.  The vast majority of health-care workers nationwide, 10.4 million, are subject to the mandate, although there are medical and religious exemptions.  The case is Missouri v. Biden.

Next up on the Supreme Court's agenda: Affirmative action.  Progressives who are still reeling from the end of Roe v Wade are already expecting the worst from the Supreme Court's next term which starts next week.  One of the big issues the court will be considering in the next term is affirmative action in college admissions. [...] In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor predicted that the need for affirmative action for university admissions "will no longer be necessary."  It has been 19 years since she said it.

Finally, libs fear the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court reconvenes on Monday, and for the first time in my 69 years, liberals actually are afraid of the court.  That is a good thing because for decades, liberals have used the justices to enact legislation no Congress and few state legislatures would dare to make law.  Liberal justices have imposed their will upon the land by legalizing abortion and legalizing homosexual marriages.  Along came Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.  They appointed and confirmed three conservatives to the court to give the Constitution a 6-3 majority on the court.  Suddenly, liberals hate the court.

Retired liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer says Roe v.  Wade draft leaker STILL hasn't been found, despite huge probe.  Nobody knows anything.  Newly retired liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told CNN's Chris Wallace in an interview that, as far as he knows, the identity of the mysterious leaker of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion draft on the overturning of Roe v. Wade, is still unknown.  According to a transcript provided by the network, Wallace asked about the leak, which happened in May:  'Within 24 hours the chief justice ordered an investigation of the leaker.  Have they found him or her?'  'Not to my knowledge, but ... I'm not privy to it,' Breyer responded.  Wallace pressed: 'So in those months since, the chief justice never said, "Hey, we got our man or woman?" '  'To my knowledge, no,' said Breyer, who, despite being retired, maintains an office at the Supreme Court.

Equal Justice, They Said.  Is it a crime to threaten a Supreme Court justice?  Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) did just that in front of the Supreme Court doors, when he riled up protestors by threats to individual justices:  "I want to tell you Gorsuch.  I want to tell you Kavanaugh.  You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.  You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."  Had Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) done the same and warned both Justices Sotomayor and Kagan that the two "won't know what hit you," what would the Biden Administration have done?  [Is it] a felony to mass at a justice's home, and threaten his person, in attempts to warp a judicial ruling?  Attorney General Merrick Garland saw no problems when a left-wing mob descended on the homes of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.  No one was arrested or indicted.  No wonder an admitted would-be assassin later felt he could approach, with impunity, the Kavanaugh residence or that a mob could, with impunity, drive him out of a restaurant.  Again, would Garland have stood by had a MAGA crowd swarmed the home or the dinner table of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson?  For that felony, most would likely still be sitting in jail awaiting charges.

John Roberts says 'public opinion' can't be Supreme Court's 'guide' in post-Roe reversal speech.  Chief Justice John Roberts has defended the Supreme Court, but refused to comment further on the mysterious leak that has remained unsolved.  Roberts took aim at the court's critics in a speech Friday night, which marked his first public appearance since Roe v. Wade was overturned earlier this year.  "If the court doesn't retain its legitimate function of interpreting the Constitution, I'm not sure who would take up that mantle.  You don't want the political branches telling you what the law is, and you don't want public opinion to be the guide about what the appropriate decision is," Roberts said.

Justice Gorsuch Shares Update on SCOTUS Leak Investigation.  While speaking on a panel during a judicial conference in Colorado, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch reiterated again that the Court's investigation into the leak of a draft opinion earlier this year was continuing.  "The chief justice appointed an internal committee to oversee the investigation," Gorsuch noted on Thursday, adding the committee has "been busy" in the months following the unprecedented leak that stunned Court watchers and breached the longstanding trust within the Supreme Court.  "We're looking forward to their report, I hope soon," Gorsuch added, though he didn't say whether the investigation's findings about who leaked the draft or how it ended up published by POLITICO would be released to the public.  The Trump-nominated Gorsuch reiterated his colleagues' earlier condemnations of the leak, saying "improper efforts to influence judicial decision making, from whatever side, are a threat" to the Court's important work.

Supreme Court report on Dobbs leak coming soon, 'I hope,' Gorsuch says.  Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said Thursday that he hopes the investigation into the Dobbs v.  Jackson Women's Health Organization draft opinion leak will be completed soon.  It was Gorsuch's first public comments since the late June ruling striking down a nationwide constitutional right to abortion in Roe v.  Wade.  Gorsuch spoke before a group of lawyers and judges Thursday in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the 10th Circuit Judicial Conference.  "The chief justice appointed an internal committee to oversee the investigation," Gorsuch said. "That committee has been busy, and we're looking forward to their report, I hope, soon."

The Supreme Court is too silent on abortion case leak.  Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch did well to lift the veil, ever so slightly, on the investigation into who leaked the court's controversial draft decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization abortion case.  Still, the court hasn't hit the mark in terms of what the proper balance is between confidentiality and transparency about its inner workings.  The breach of trust occasioned by the leak was serious because the court's internal deliberations on cases before it really do merit confidentiality.  The status of the investigation, however, merits far more transparency than it has received, even after crediting Gorsuch's somewhat cryptic mention of it.

Shame of the Nation.  The Democrats' response to the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade is emblematic of the Democrats' corrosive view of the Constitution as an outdated and disposable instrument when it doesn't serve their immediate purposes.  The Court's decision to reject Roe v Wade was met not with legal counter arguments but with widespread calls to reverse the result whether by legislative measures or thuggish and illegal campaigns of intimidation against the justices who argued that Roe had been unconstitutionally decided.  The unconstitutional measures supported by the Democrats were accompanied by a long-planned and long-discredited campaign to have the party in power in the executive branch pack the Court with pro-Roe justices and turn it into an appendage of the ruling party.  This "nuclear" remedy would destroy the independence of the judiciary forever, and with it the system of checks and balances that is the heart of the constitutional order that has shaped this country's legal system and defended its freedoms for over 200 years.

Ketanji Brown Jackson will rule on one affirmative action case despite recusal pledge.  Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will be able to weigh in on a lawsuit surrounding alleged discriminatory college admissions practices after the high court decoupled a pair of cases surrounding affirmative action policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Jackson, who was sworn in as the first black woman on the high court last month, said in March that she planned to recuse herself from the previously consolidated lawsuits during her Senate Judiciary Committee hearings due to her role on Harvard's Board of Overseers, which concluded on May 26.  But last Friday, the Supreme Court made a procedural step to separate the cases, thereby allowing her to vote on the UNC case.

Backfire! Infamous Leak Of Supreme Court Draft Doomed Roe V. Wade, Sources Say.  [Scroll down]  The motivation of the leaker, it has been assumed, was that alerting the American public to the upcoming ruling would result in such outrage from the left in America that activists, and their compliant media, would apply so much pressure to those justices in the majority that they would change their minds and vote to uphold the deeply flawed Roe v. Wade.  Abortion-loving and science-denying novice protesters would yell, scream, and hold their breath until their faces turned blue unless the conservative justices reversed course.  The more radical and skilled objectors would patrol the fronts of justice's homes, make subtle but unmistakable violent threats, and even attempt to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  The pro-abortion leftists were going to get out in front of this unacceptable decision.  They were going to prevent it.  The Biden Administration applauded the radicalism, calling it an exercise of free speech and they refused to condemn the leaker.

Information or Disinformation?  CNN Report On SCOTUS Abortion Leak Seems Designed To Point Finger At Conservative Justices.  [R]emember the leak of the draft Alito majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade in the Mississippi abortion case (Dobbs), that looked a lot like the eventual official majority opinion?  That leak in early May 2022 led to several weeks of protests and attacks on the conservative Justices, including an assassination attempt on Brett Kavanaugh that has been memory-holed by the media and Democrats.  The standard speculation was that it was a law clerk for a liberal Justice.  But there were alternatives spread, such as that it was an attempt by one of the conservative Justices to keep the others in line by alerting the public that there already was a 5-vote majority.  That never made sense to me, because none of the Alito-5 was a surprise, and in so leaking, the Justices would be exposed to weeks of threats.  Despite Chief Justice John Robert's vow to investigate the leak, there has been no public information as to the status of the investigation or who was the leaker.

Dred Scott was popular, Justice Kagan.  Some things are so obvious that it surprises me that no one else says it.  I am surprised no one pointed out to Justice Kagan that we have a Supreme Court to do that which is unpopular.  The Court protects the Constitution from The Mob.  Miss Kagan said, "I'm not talking about any particular decision or even any particular series of decisions, but if over time the court loses all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that's a dangerous thing for democracy."  She should know better.  The worst decisions made by the Supreme Court are the ones that were popular at the time.

SCOTUS and media silence:  Whatever happened to the leak probe?  The leak rocked the federal judiciary, the American political scene, and led to an ugly campaign to intimidate Supreme Court justices, inspiring one assassination plot that thankfully went nowhere.  Chief Justice John Roberts promised an investigation to identify the leaker, and the pool of suspects seemed relatively small — the justices themselves and their clerks.  Almost three months later, though, the leaker has seemingly escaped detection and punishment.

Democrats Discover Another 'Threat to Democracy'.  Before departing for its summer recess, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up Moore v. Harper, a redistricting dispute between North Carolina's legislature and Supreme Court.  The latter struck down two congressional maps enacted by the former and then imposed its own redistricting scheme.  The North Carolina General Assembly petitioned SCOTUS to rule that this violated the U.S. Constitution.  Predictably, the mere fact that the justices agreed to hear the case at all has produced panic among Democrats and a deluge of dire predictions about the death of democracy.  Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe warns, "Adopting the independent state legislature theory would amount to right-wing justices making up law to create an outcome of one-party rule."  Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) predicts, "If accepted, this extreme theory would lay the groundwork to allow rogue state legislatures to overturn the will of the people in future elections."  The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State issued the following hysterical statement:  "The Supreme Court's decision to hear the 'independent state legislature' theory behind the Moore v. Harper case brings us one step closer to a judicial coup."

Elena Kagan Claims 'Legitimacy' of Supreme Court Is at Risk When It Strays From Public Opinion.  [H]ere we go again — with more ignorance of the role of the United States Supreme Court in the aftermath of the Roe overturn.  Only this time, the idiocy comes from within SCOTUS, courtesy of Elena Kagan, who on Thursday claimed the legitimacy of the Court is tied to its conformity with public opinion. [...] Silly me.  All this time, I thought the Supreme Court's role was that of final arbiter of the law, thus ensuring the American people with the promise of equal justice under the law and, thereby, as guardian of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Exactly the opposite is true.
Kagan claims Supreme Court has to follow 'public sentiment'.  The Supreme Court may lose its legitimacy if it strays too far from public sentiment, according to Justice Elena Kagan.  Kagan, a liberal judge appointed to the court in 2010 by former President Barack Obama, tied the standing of the court to its "connection to the public," noting it could be dangerous if people continue to view Supreme Court justices as increasingly partisan, likely an allusion to the recent contentious court term that saw the overturning of Roe v Wade and an expansion of gun rights.  "I'm not talking about any particular decision or even any particular series of decisions, but if over time the court loses all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that's a dangerous thing for a democracy," Kagan said at a judicial conference in Montana.

Supreme Court blocks Biden from implementing immigration policy but will hear case.  The federal government doesn't have the resources to detain and deport every immigrant in the country illegally.  Like previous administrations, the Biden administration sought to focus immigration enforcement on people it believes pose a threat to national security or public safety or who are recent border crossers.  The Trump administration, by contrast, sought to remove a wider category of immigrants without such distinctions.  A federal district court in Texas sided with the states and halted the policy's enforcement.  A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit — all three of whom were nominated by GOP presidents — declined to put the district court's ruling on hold while the administration contemplated appeal.  The Biden administration filed its emergency request in July asking the Supreme Court to review the 5th Circuit's decision.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Seeks to Strip the Supreme Court of Its Constitutional Role.  It is utterly unsurprising that Ocasio-Cortez and cohorts have concocted this naked power trap to suit their satanic plans.  While this doesn't stand a chance of getting through even the House, let alone the Senate, it stands as a stark warning that modern liberalism is as drunk on the notion of seizing all power to itself as it is intent on murdering children.

Will America Ever Find Out Who the Supreme Court Leaker Is?  Last Thursday, the Supreme Court officially ended its term after releasing final opinions on a number of cases.  But the Supreme Court still hasn't revealed who leaked the draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization at the beginning of May.  [Tweet]  Shortly after the leak, Chief Justice John Roberts tasked the Marshal of the Court to get to the bottom of the breach and called it egregious.

Who Are the Real Insurrectionists?  There is a revolutionary war now being waged against the Supreme Court, because it no longer characteristically legislates from the bench.  If the Court was once beloved as an iconic institution that was a sort of liberal judiciary, legislature, and executive all in one, it is now utterly despised as counterrevolutionary.  Indeed, it is declared illegitimate, and its rulings to be ignored.  Former law professor Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) screams about a need to pack the Court — an insurrectionary attempt to end 160 years of judicial law and custom, that would be impossible without first ending the 180-year filibuster.  Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called out Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanagh by name at the doors of the Court, issuing biblical warnings of violence to both:  "You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."

John Roberts:  An Enemy of the Rule of Law.  The conservative movement worked unceasingly for almost a half-century to undo Roe v. Wade, the 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that shocked the world by abruptly legalizing abortion from coast to coast in 1973.  Yet Roberts, who was nominated by a conservative president, chose not to take part in overturning the precedent that provided the angry Left with a power base and endless fundraising opportunities as it poisoned American politics for generations.  Roe seeped into everything and the abortion establishment vilified anyone seeking even the slightest rollback.  Out of a sense of left-wing solidarity, labor unions, community organizers, civil rights campaigners, open-borders advocates, Antifa, and environmentalists all mobilized whenever abortion rights created by Roe were deemed under threat.  It gave these sad, ornery people a reason for living.  Mind you, the court's June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, has been — surprise, surprise — grotesquely mischaracterized by the Left.  Read the opinion and you'll see it is not actually a conservative, right-wing, or Republican ruling, although people who identify as these things are praising it.  It takes no position on the morality of abortion.  It does not ban it.  It merely recognizes at long last that the purported right to abortion is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution.  It corrects the error of the Roe court and embraces federalism by returning the authority to regulate abortion to the states where it belongs.

Following Landmark Second Amendment Decision, SCOTUS Overturns Appeals Court Decisions in 4 States.  The Supreme Court followed up its June 23 landmark ruling that for the first time recognized a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, by issuing a series of rulings June 30 reversing federal appeals court decisions that upheld gun restrictions in California, New Jersey, Maryland, and Hawaii.  Courts will find it difficult to uphold the firearms laws in question after the high court's June 30 and June 23 rulings.  In unsigned orders, all four cases were remanded June 30 to lower courts "for further consideration in light of" the Supreme Court's June 23 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.  In that 6 [to] 3 ruling, the high court invalidated New York state's tough concealed-carry gun permitting system.

'Burning America to the ground': Liberals can't get over SCOTUS EPA decision.  Liberals lambasted the Supreme Court after the justices ruled the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exceeded its authority Thursday.  The high court issued a 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency Thursday that limits the power of government agencies.  Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the EPA exceeded its authority when it sought to impose caps on power plant emissions.

Supreme Court marshal asks police to enforce laws banning picketing outside justices' homes.  The Marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court has asked Maryland officials to step up the enforcement of laws she says prohibit picketing outside the homes of the justices who live in the state.  "For weeks on end, large groups of protesters chanting slogans, using bullhorns, and banging drums have picketed Justices' homes," Marshal Gail Curley wrote in the letters to GOP Gov. Larry Hogan and Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, which were dated Friday.

Did you see where the leftist Supreme Court justices voided the Constitution?  [Scroll down]  What's important to remember when thinking about the Constitution is that its principles exist irrespective of specific rules.  Think of it as the difference between navigating by instructions that tell you to "turn left" or "turn right" at specific intersections, versus instructions that tell you to "head north" or head south" at the same intersections.  Under the first system, if you're facing the wrong way, you're lost.  Under the second system, you will always know in which direction to travel.  The same is true of constitutional principles.  They don't spell out that this rule applies to men and this one does not apply to women or Asians.  Instead, like the compass points, they are overarching ideas that always apply.  But that's not how leftists see the Constitution.  Rather than seeing those optimal, overarching principles of liberty, they see rules that must be folded, spindled, and mutilated to dole out the benefits of liberty to some while denying them to others.

Ketanji Brown Jackson sworn in as Supreme Court justice.  Ketanji Brown Jackson on Thursday was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, officially making her the nation's first Black woman to serve in the role.  She will fill the seat being vacated by the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, whose previously announced departure after nearly 28 years on the bench took effect Thursday at noon.  Jackson thanked her new colleagues for "their warm and gracious welcome" and said she was "especially grateful for the time and attention given to me by the Chief Justice and by Justice Breyer."

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Announces Official Retirement Date.  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has announced when he'll officially retire from the nation's highest court.  In a letter to President Joe Biden, Breyer confirmed that his retirement will come into effect on June 30 at 12 p.m. ET.  "The Court has announced that tomorrow, beginning at 10 a.m., it will hand down all remaining opinions ready during this Term," he wrote in the letter.  "Accordingly, my retirement from active service under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. [Section] 371(b) will be effective on Thursday, June 30, 2022, at noon.  It has been my great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law."  Breyer, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1994, wrote that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is prepared to "take the prescribed oaths" to start her service on the Supreme Court.

The Editor says...
The nitwit who doesn't know what a woman is, may be prepared to take the oath, but she's not qualified to do the work.

Supreme Court sides with Oklahoma in battle over crimes on Native American territory.  The Supreme Court on Wednesday [6/29/2022] backed Oklahoma's years long struggle for jurisdiction over certain crimes that take place on Native American land, a decision with implications for prosecutions of other crimes on Native territory.  The 5-4 decision comes two years after the nation's highest court handed down a ruling that vastly expanded what is considered Native territory in Oklahoma.  Though Oklahoma officials had asked the Supreme Court to overturn that recent ruling, the high court declined to consider that request when it agreed to hear the case in January.  Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.  Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissent that was joined by the court's three liberal justices.

One more blockbuster Supreme Court decision could still be coming.  West Virginia vs. the EPA asks whether important policies that impact the lives of all Americans should be made by unelected D.C. bureaucrats or by Congress.  This SCOTUS could well decide that ruling by executive agency fiat is no longer acceptable.  The case involves the Clean Power Plan, which was adopted under President Barack Obama to fight climate change; the program was estimated to cost as much as $33 billion per year and would have completely reordered our nation's power grid.  The state of West Virginia, joined by two coal companies and others, sued the EPA, arguing the plan was an abuse of power.

A Big Win for Religious Liberty at the Supreme Court.  On October 23, 2015, high school football coach Joseph Kennedy knelt at the 50-yard line and bowed his head for a "brief, quiet prayer."  The game was over and Coach Kennedy prayed alone.  It was a quiet, reflective moment for the coach to exercise his religious beliefs.  The school district objected, informing him it was "unconstitutional."  Three days later, after a football game on October 26, Coach Kennedy "again knelt alone to offer a brief prayer as the players engaged in postgame traditions." Some adults joined him on the field as he prayed.  That would be his final game.  Shortly thereafter, the school district put Coach Kennedy on leave and prohibited him from participating in any capacity in "football program activities."

The Left Aborts Its Right to be Called Tolerant, or Intelligent.  Let's review the news since Friday's Supreme Court decision — a decision that gave power back to the people to decide what laws should apply when it comes to abortion.  Riots.  Arson.  Calls to assassinate a sitting justice.  Threats of violence against anyone who is pro-life. [...] The disconnect between the Supreme Court's decision and the reaction from the left is even more startling when you read Justice Samuel Alito's opinion, in which he argues clearly, forcefully, compellingly, and without apology that the Court made a grievous mistake in 1973 when it invented a constitutional right to abortion out of whole cloth, and then compounded that mistake with 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey.  Alito destroys the dissenting opinion and is brutal in his takedown of Chief Justice John Roberts' hair-brained attempt to split the difference.  Read it and see for yourself.  We guarantee that, if you are at all open-minded, you'll realize that the only question Alito leaves unanswered is how [...] the court let this disgrace stand for nearly 50 years.

Supreme Court sides with Bremerton's praying coach.  The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a former high school football coach in Bremerton, who prayed with his players and other students on the field, could legally do so under his First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion.  The high court ruled 6-3 Monday in Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District along ideological lines for Joseph Kennedy, a former part-time assistant coach.  Every Republican-appointed justice sided with Kennedy; every Democratic-appointed justice dissented.

The Return To Constitutionalism Is Hidden In Plain Sight.  Working through Heller, McDonald, Bruen, and Dobbs, the Court has made it painfully clear that the Constitution must be understood as it was understood by its framers.  This is called "Originalism."  Further, because the Court denied lower courts access to a second stage of legal "balancing of interests" in evaluating the impact of a restriction on Constitutional rights, this is "Textualism."  What the text says about a right in plain language is what it says.  No more, and no less.  No court gets to change this.  Under Originalism, a court must research the pertinent historical documents, preferably referenced in briefs.  It is not allowed to use secondary sources that support a preferred conclusion as the Left wing of SCOTUS does.  In both Bruen and Dobbs, their dissents demonstrate a view long on policy verbiage but devoid of substantive legal analysis.  Courts won't be allowed to do this anymore.  They must be courts of law, not another legislature.  We cannot allow the words to change in meaning over time.  The "Living Constitution" approach is over.

Making the Constitution Great Again.  For non-lawyers, such as myself, this is a no-brainer.  Any right or power not in the Constitution should be decided by the individual states and the people in those states.  This includes not only the right to abortion, but also same-sex marriage, prostitution, recreational marijuana, gambling, driving age, all of these now, turned over to the states to decide.  Same-sex marriage was a state issue until the 2015 Obergefell vs Hodges SCOTUS decision.  States can sort these issues through a ballot referendum or through their legislatures, elected by and representing the people in those states.  Each state can decide whether to and how to allow or restrict these and many other activities not expressly mentioned in the Constitution.  Again, this reflects the genius of the framers, leaving a mechanism for future issues to be adjudicated.

Justice Clarence Thomas Had Predicted and Aspired to Achieve This Exact Reaction From Leftists.  Justice Thomas is a staunch conservative and had been long before he was nominated to SCOTUS by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.  Thomas isn't casting votes with the goal of retaliation against political opponents, he's conducting himself as he would have even if he hadn't been brutally attacked during those Senate Confirmation Hearings over three decades ago.  But the vengeance in Thomas' heart isn't driving him to stick it the left with hate-tinted legal opinions, it's merely motivating his longevity.

Only the MAGA Movement Could Have Ended the Atrocity of Roe v. Wade.  If you consider yourself a pro-life Republican and weren't on the Trump Train in 2016, sit [...] down.  Had you and your precious "principles" won the day, Hillary Clinton would have appointed those three Supreme Court justices instead of Donald Trump, and the moral atrocity known as Roe v. Wade would still be a "constitutional right."  For decades, the Republican establishment ran around promising to overturn Roe, and for decades, they failed.  And instead of Trump all-stars like Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, we got Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, and David Souter.  Roe is dead for only one reason:  the MAGA Movement.

Roe v. Wade is dead.  Today, the Supreme Court overturned nearly 50 years of bad abortion law:  "We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled."  The issue of abortion will be left to the States.  In 1973, the Supreme Court legalized abortion under the auspices of the "right of privacy," which it held to "encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." While we do have rights that are guaranteed to us despite not being in the Constitution (those natural rights), abortion was never one of them.  Not until Roe, at least.  It is estimated that more than 63 million babies have been aborted since Roe.  That's more than the combined population of Florida and California.  Recent CDC numbers show nearly 630,000 abortions in 2019 — meaning 195 abortions per 1,000 live births.  Abortion has never been a rare procedure since legalization, and the activists who led the fight to legalize abortion for 50+ years prior to (and after) Roe would be proud of that fact.

Justice Thomas:  Supreme Court Should Reconsider Rulings on Same-Sex Marriage, Contraception.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote Friday that the high court should reconsider rulings on contraception, same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage in a solo concurring opinion released Friday that struck down Roe v. Wade.  The Republican-appointed justice argued that the Supreme Court should reconsider other cases that fall under prior due process precedents.  "I write separately to emphasize a second, more fundamental reason why there is no abortion guarantee lurking in the Due Process Clause," Thomas wrote.  "Considerable historical evidence indicates that 'due process of law' merely required executive and judicial actors to comply with legislative enactments and the common law when depriving a person of life, liberty, or property."  With Friday's ruling, the "court declines to disturb substantive due process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine's application in other, specific contexts," he also wrote, adding that cases like Griswold v. Connecticut — giving the right of married persons to obtain contraceptives — as well as Lawrence v. Texas — a ruling on the right to engage in a private, consensual sexual act — and Obergefell v. Hodges — the right to same-sex marriage — should be revisited.

Justice Restored — Roe Overturned.  In a stunning 6-3 opinion delivered by Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, with Chief Justice Roberts concurring, the Court simply holds:  "The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives."  Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented. [...] "Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided," the Court says.

United States Supreme Court Overturns Roe V. Wade; Leaves Abortion Restrictions To States.  The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the monumental Roe v Wade case that legalized abortion across the [sic] America.  The 6-3 decision in Dobbs v.s. Jackson Women's Health Organization on Friday followed the early May leak of a draft opinion indicating which way the justices would rule.  That leak prompted protesting across the nation, particularly in Washington, D.C. as well as dozens of attacks and vandalism of pro-life organizations, centers, and churches.  Justice Samuel Alito wrote that Roe and a subsequent case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe, both must be overturned, and the right to allow, deny, or restrict the right to an abortion must reside with states.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Roe v. Wade in Historic Victory for Pro-Life Movement.  The Supreme Court on Friday [6/24/2022] overturned Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, allowing a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks to take effect.  "The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives," Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the 6-3 majority.  Justice Alito was joined in upholding the Mississippi law by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts.  Roberts split from the 5-4 majority on overturning Roe, writing in a concurring opinion that he would have taken a "more measured course" stopping short of overturning Roe altogether, but agreed that the Mississippi abortion ban should stand.

Protesters plan to target Justice Clarence Thomas' home after he said SCOTUS should now revisit gay marriage and contraception.  Thousands of protesters took to the streets on Friday night to express their anger at the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade — the 50-year law that guaranteed access to abortion in every state.  In New York City, a crowd thousands strong massed in Union Square and Washington Square Park, and then marched up Park Avenue.  The crowd massed on Grand Central station, before walking past it and continuing through the Upper East Side.  In Washington DC, Union Square was the site of demonstrations, while protesters from Boston to Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit and Los Angeles marched in fury.

Roberts charts [his] own path in Supreme Court abortion ruling.  Chief Justice John Roberts issued a concurring judgment in the Supreme Court ruling Friday morning that revokes a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.  Roberts explicitly sided with his conservative colleagues in their majority opinion to uphold Mississippi's ban on abortions following 15 weeks of pregnancy.  However, in his concurring opinion, he expressed a difference in opinion with his colleagues on the matter of overturning the court's decades-old decision in Roe v. Wade, which gives women the constitutional right to abortion.

The Editor says...
In case you went to a public school, let me explain:  The Supreme Court is not the source of our rights.  The Supreme Court does not have the authority to manufacture rights.  The Supreme Court does not write laws.  Sometimes, Supreme Court decisions can be found to be in error, and can be overturned.  That's what happened on Friday.

The Greatest Living American Issues His Career-Defining Court Opinion.  On Thursday [6/23/2022], the single greatest living American used the occasion of his 74th birthday to remind of his greatness.  He did so by issuing the single piece of writing that, at least thus far, best encapsulates and defines his career as one of the most towering constitutionalists in the history of the republic.  It is unfortunate that Justice Clarence Thomas, an intellectual trailblazer of an originalist constitutional interpretive methodology who celebrated his 30-year anniversary on the Supreme Court last fall, had to date failed to pen a Court majority opinion that law students and legal practitioners could readily point to as his signature achievement — his juridical magnum opus.  Much of Thomas' most impactful, and certainly culturally salient, writings have come in dissent.  He has of course had ample opportunity to write majority opinions over the span of his illustrious Court tenure, but those majority opinions have typically come in more arcane legal realms, such as habeas corpus.  All of that changed with Thomas' 63-page majority opinion in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen case, this Supreme Court term's marquee Second Amendment case.

Supreme Court Hands Down Biggest Second Amendment Victory Since Heller.  The Supreme Court on Thursday handed down its opinion in a landmark Second Amendment rights case, the biggest win for gun rights since the court's Heller ruling holding that "New York's proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense."

SCOTUS tosses "may issue" firearm carry permit laws in Bruen, 6-3.  A blockbuster extension of Heller and McDonald has tossed out state requirements to demonstrate a need to carry a firearm, and on the expected 6-3 split.  Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, holding that states demanding a special reason to grant access to the right to bear arms violates both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

Clarence Thomas Delivers the Second Amendment's Greatest Victory Yet.  The Supreme Court on Thursday recognized a constitutional right to carry firearms for self-defense for the first time, a sweeping victory for Second Amendment rights.  The justices struck down New York State's restrictions on concealed carry in a far-reaching ruling poised to undo remaining limits on the right to carry.  Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the majority opinion for a 6-3 Court over dissents from the liberal trio.

Supreme Court strikes down New York gun law.  The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a New York law that placed strict restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in public for self defense, finding its requirement that applicants seeking a concealed carry license demonstrate a special need for self-defense is unconstitutional.  In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision upholding New York's 108-year-old law limiting who can obtain a license to carry a concealed handgun in public.

Libs Have Full Blown Meltdown After SCOTUS School Choice Ruling.  As Katie reported, the Supreme Court sided with school choice advocates on Tuesday in a 6-3 decision regarding voucher programs in Maine.  [Tweet]  Predictably, as with any victory for individual freedom — and especially in dealing with parents' choice of where their children get an education — the mainstream media and liberal activist organizations have not been taking the Supreme Court ruling well.  Most of the unhinged wailing centers on the supposed "separation of church and state," which is invoked dubiously to claim that allowing parents to choose where their children attend school means that religion is being forced by the government.  But, that's just not true, as the Court's ruling made clear.  When in full meltdown mode, though, libs never let the facts get in their way.

Thomas, Alito Author Blistering Dissents In SCOTUS Decision On Gun Crime Sentencing.  Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito released blistering dissents Tuesday after the high court limited the reach of a federal statute requiring harsh penalties for certain crimes involving guns.  The case centered around Justin Taylor, who authorities said was a marijuana dealer in Virginia in the early 2000s.  Taylor and an accomplice planned in 2003 to rob money from a buyer, and the accomplice shot and killed the buyer during the robbery, according to CNN.  Taylor was subsequently charged with "attempted Hobbs Act robbery," which is a federal crime and has a maximum sentence of 20 years.  Taylor was sentenced to a total of 30 years, however, because of a federal statute that requires a mandatory minimum sentencing for using a firearm during a violent crime.

Would A Fanatic Have Tried To Murder Brett Kavanaugh If Merrick Garland Had Enforced Federal Law?  Federal law is quite clear about pickets or parades that seek to interfere with the administration of justice or influence a judge in the administration of his duty.  Such action is criminal, punishable by up to one year in prison.  If the pickets were a peaceful assembly of people who support abortion in a public place, such as the Supreme Court building, this would be political activity protected by the First Amendment.  But the protesters are bringing their demonstrations to the front yards of Supreme Court justices' private residences.  They come in large numbers; they shout through bullhorns; they utter profanities.  Since this is in response to a leaked draft of an opinion that the Supreme Court justices have not yet voted on, there is no conceivable intent of such behavior other than to influence the decision.  This is a federal crime.  Federal crimes should be prosecuted by federal authorities.  Attorney General Merrick Garland was silent about these protests at the justices' homes when they began.

Justices seem poised to hear elections case pressed by GOP.  The Supreme Court seems poised to take on a new elections case being pressed by Republicans that could increase the power of state lawmakers over races for Congress and the presidency, as well as redistricting, and cut state courts out of the equation.  The issue has arisen repeatedly in cases from North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where Democratic majorities on the states' highest courts have invoked voting protections in their state constitutions to frustrate the plans of Republican-dominated legislatures.  Already, four conservative Supreme Court justices have noted their interest in deciding whether state courts, finding violations of their state constitutions, can order changes to federal elections and the once-a-decade redrawing of congressional districts.  The Supreme Court has never invoked what is known as the independent state legislature doctrine, although three justices advanced it in the Bush v. Gore case that settled the 2000 presidential election.

Leftist Groups Join Together to Blockade Supreme Court on Monday.  Monday, June 13th, is listed as one of the Supreme Court decision days.  The much anticipated Roe v Wade decision is expected sometime this month.  It could be tomorrow.  In anticipation of this historic decision far left groups are joining together in a planned insurrection and blockade of the US Supreme Court.  The far left group Shut Down DC announced last week that they will shut down and blockade the streets around the Supreme Court on Monday.

Democrat Senators Unveil a Dangerously Asinine Plan to Subvert the Coming Abortion Ruling.  Though we can't know for sure, Monday [6/13/2022] could finally mark the day that the Dobbs decision, which is reportedly going to overturn Roe v. Wade, is released by the Supreme Court.  As RedState reported on Saturday, far-left groups are already planning to commit what I've been assured is an insurrection, surrounding the Supreme Court in an effort to stop it from functioning.  Were they tipped off?  I don't know, and even if the Dobbs decision takes another week or two, it's just a matter of time before the Democrat Party descends into absolute insanity.  A preview of that happened last night after Democrat senators, including Maggie Hassan and Elizabeth Warren, unveiled a dangerously asinine plan to undermine the coming abortion ruling.

Supreme Court rules noncitizens not entitled to bond hearings.  On Monday, the United States Supreme Court ruled that unlawful migrants to the United States are not entitled to a bond hearing.  The opinion stems from the migration of Antonio Arteaga-Martinez.  Arteaga-Martinez, a Mexican Citizen, came to the United States unlawfully on four occasions without inspection until May 2018, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a warrant for Arteaga-Martinez's arrest after he had been living and working in the United States for almost six years.  ICE's detention of Arteaga-Martinez did not come with the opportunity for a bond hearing and he was set to be removed from the United States.

Sports Illustrated says SCOTUS ruling for praying coach 'erodes democracy'.  Sports Illustrated is taking heavy fire over a tweet suggesting that a Supreme Court ruling in favor of a former high school football coach who was fired for kneeling in silent prayer after games would be a blow against democracy, the latest example of the sad decay of a magazine that was once an American institution before it became a propaganda vehicle for radical leftist ideology.  The nation's highest court will decide the case of Joe Kennedy, a retired USMC gunnery sergeant and combat veteran who in 2015 was fired by the Bremerton School District in Washington State for honoring God at the 50-yard-line at the completion of games.  He was unceremoniously dumped from his job after refusing to obey orders to cease and desist resulting in a long legal battle that has made its way to the SCOTUS.  SI, which has celebrated cop-hating, anti-American heel Colin Kaepernick as its sportsperson of the year and specializes in evangelizing for the "woke" left, has a serious problem with the bedrock principle of religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution and decried a ruling in Kennedy's favor as a danger to "democracy" — a term that has been hijacked by power-drunk Democrats and the cultural revolutionary left.

John Roberts' Refusal To Release Dobbs Opinion Is Jeopardizing The Lives Of His Colleagues.  Since the infamous leak of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization last month, Americans have waited with bated breath for the high court to issue its verdict on the constitutionality of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which federally legalized abortion in the United States.  Despite high expectations that the court would release its final Dobbs opinion — which is expected to deem Roe unconstitutional — on Monday SCOTUS instead issued a series of less contentious opinions, once again leaving millions of Americans in limbo.  The high court is set to release more legal opinions on Wednesday, with notable cases pertaining to gun rights, school choice, and the regulatory power of the Environmental Protection Agency also awaiting publication.

Unity And Healing?  Pro-Abortion Group Targets Amy Coney-Barrett's Kids And Church.  This past week we became aware of an attempted assassination by a leftwing activist of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. [...] Did Biden do anything to unite, heal, or even lower the temperature after the news?  Has anyone heard a peep from Biden about the planned killing of Kavanaugh?  Or have we heard crickets?  This brings us to this bit of news.  The pro-abortion group known as Ruth Sent Us has been militant in its rhetoric, and downright threatening.  With the exception of a temporary suspension of the group's TikTok account last month, there's been virtually no accountability for the group.  Their Twitter account is still active and as extreme as ever, and no prominent Democrats have come out and denounced the group.  Then on Tuesday, we became aware of the radical group's targeting of Justice Amy Cone-Barrett's family and church.

The Kavanaugh Assassination Plot is a Leftist Inside Job.  After police arrested a California leftist on a mission to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh, the Biden administration finally condemned the campaign to intimidate the Supreme Court.  "As the president has consistently made clear, public officials, including judges, must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety or that of their families," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre falsely claimed.  After leftist activists had posted a map of the homes of Supreme Court justices to harass them, Jen Psaki had retorted.  "I don't have an official U.S. government position on where people protest."  There is in fact such a position and it's illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 1507 which states that anyone with "the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness" "pickets or parades in or near a building.... or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."  Biden just decided not to enforce these laws in order to allow his leftist allies to intimidate the justices.

The Democrats: 'A Criminal Organization'.  More than a decade ago, Michael Walsh dubbed the Democrats, "A criminal organization masquerading as a political party."  I once thought this was overstating the matter, but I no longer do.  If you can't fully accept this characterization, recent events surrounding the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, should unshutter your eyes and let in the light.  Democratic leaders are encouraging lawless, threatening behavior against Supreme Court justices, and their attorney general refuses to enforce the law against such behavior.  This criminal organization has a huge public relations outfit working around the clock for it, the Major Media, which is why you may have missed this.  It's hard to ignore the fact that the leaders of the party are openly inciting violence in an effort to force the Court to decide cases based on fear of the mob, instead of the law. [...] Not one single Democratic leader has spoken out in opposition to the terroristic actions against the Court.

Supreme Court intimidation has taken justices to a dark place.  [Scroll down]  Notice how little we have seen of the pro-Roe side relying on efforts to get their way through legitimate and obvious channels — to argue their position on its legal merits.  Perhaps on some level they know what has long been clear to pro-choice and pro-life legal thinkers alike — that the Constitution simply does not include a right to abortion.  For those on the Left, legal analysis has given way to political platitudes.  Principled debate has given way to raw intimidation tactics.  All of this only bolsters the conclusion that those who seek to subvert the court are on the wrong side of history.  Today we see the toll taken by these intimidation tactics — and by ostensible leaders who keep appeasing the radicals in their party.  This is why leaks of Supreme Court opinions are dangerous.  This is why doxxing justices is a bad idea.  This is why justices' homes should be off limits.  This is why the court must release the Dobbs opinion as soon as possible.

Someone Just Tried to Kill Brett Kavanaugh.  Welcome to the New Normal.  Early Wednesday morning, police arrested an armed man near the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Chevy Chase, Maryland.  The man told investigators he'd traveled all the way from California to break into Kavanaugh's house and kill the justice, then kill himself.  The man apparently told police that he was driven to kill Kavanaugh because he was angry that the justice likely had voted to overturn Roe.  The would-be assassin also was reported to be upset over the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.  He believed Kavanaugh planned to vote to loosen gun laws, and his eliminating the justice would avoid that. [...] As my colleagues have noted on multiple occasions, these ongoing assaults on the justices' neighborhoods are clearly illegal and go past mere protesting.  Cully Stimson, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation who happens to be a neighbor of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, explained a federal law that clearly has been broken by these protesters.

The Eerie Silence Around Kavanaugh Assassination Attempt.  Just consider how when then-Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in 2011, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was blamed for inciting violence with a map with a series of political targets — despite there being zero evidence tying Giffords' shooter to Palin.  Yet in 2017, when a gunman shot five people at a Republican lawmakers' practice baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia, there was little in the way of a national conversation.  It looks like 2017, not 2011, is the road map for what will happen in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Kavanaugh, despite there being clear evidence Kavanaugh's would-be shooter was motivated by politics.  As noted in the criminal complaint, Roske told police "he was upset about the leak of a recent Supreme Court draft decision regarding the right to abortion as well as the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas." In light of Roske's motivation, it seems relevant to remember the remarks of then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2020 when, amid a discussion of abortion, he said in part, "I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price."

Democrats Put Out a Contract on Justice Barrett.  Would-be assassin Nicholas Roske failed to carry out his mission of assassinating Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  This isn't surprising: the sort of person who acts on incitement from the likes of Chuck Schumer is more or less deranged, and more or less incompetent.  Yet there are more where Roske came from, and one of them may succeed.  What do the Democrats think about attempted assassinations of Supreme Court justices?  To my knowledge, neither Schumer nor Joe Biden's handlers have commented.  I surmise that the Democrats are hoping for one or more assassinations to take place before Biden is hustled out of the White House, so that his handlers can appoint a successor.

How Democrats and dark money are plotting to blow up the Supreme Court.  After Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump, Brian Fallon needed a job.  Fallon had served as Clinton's national press secretary during the campaign, and before that he had done the same job for my colleague Chuck Schumer in the Senate.  For a while, his reputation around Washington, DC, was stellar.  He was, according to a lengthy profile in the Daily Beast, "one of the most sought-after operatives in Democratic politics: a brass-knuckle brawler with experience at the highest levels of government, a cellphone filled with the top journalists in town, and a reputation for being preternaturally on message." But something changed in Fallon after Clinton's loss to Donald Trump.  He became less interested in traditional politics, giving up a role as a commentator on CNN, and more interested in ways of putting pressure on Democrats to take radical action.  By 2018, two years into President Trump's first term, Fallon and his friends in Democratic politics had seen some of their party's core ideas repudiated time and time again at the ballot box.  They had lost the game of electoral politics.  So, they figured, they would change the rules of the game to give themselves a better chance of winning.

Should SCOTUS issue a ruling in Dobbs immediately as a matter of self-protection?  When you have reason to believe that five justices have signed onto overturning Roe but the decision hasn't been handed down yet, that's an incentive to take one of those votes away by any means necessary.  Especially since a Democratic president would get to fill the vacancy. [...] The way to handle the leak isn't to have the Court change how it operates, it's to give the justices extra security. [...] As a matter of political self-interest, Democrats should want that security in place ASAP.  If someone harms one of the justices, God forbid, they'll never be able to explain why they dragged their feet even after the reality of the threat was made clear last night.  And the country would be rendered ungovernable by the thought of Democrats benefiting politically from a murder which they might have prevented if they had acted sooner to protect the Court.

Democrats Block Bill Providing Additional Security for Supreme Court Justices.  House Democrats on Wednesday stalled a bill that would have provided additional security for Supreme Court Justices on the same day a man was arrested for attempting to murder Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made a unanimous consent request on the House floor to bring up S. 4160 for a vote.  S. 4160, which passed the Senate by a unanimous vote, would have allocated additional security for the justices' family members.

A decision bigger than guns and abortion looms.  The Supreme Court case that matters the most this year is West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency.  Republican state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey challenged the EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide, which is a nutrient not a pollutant.  The decision will make Poca, West Virginia, the center of the universe for one news cycle because the John Amos Power Plant (named for a local politician, not the actor) serves as a backdrop to the Home of the Poca Dots.  The plant runs on coal.  Morrisey is protecting the right of West Virginians to mine coal and burn it to make electricity.  The New Republic summed up the case through the lens of the hysterical left.  TNR said, "The justices heard oral arguments in March in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency.  At issue in that case is a phantasmal back-and-forth battle between the EPA, power plants, and red-state attorneys general over a defunct carbon emission rule drafted two presidencies ago.

Man With Gun Arrested Near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Home; Told Police He Was There to Kill Kavanaugh.  A California man was arrested overnight near the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  The man reportedly told police he was there to kill Kavanaugh.  After the story broke, the Supreme Court issued a statement confirming the incident.  Kavanaugh has been targeted by protesters at his home since the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. [...] Two years ago Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) threatened Kavanaugh by name.  [Tweet]

California Man Charged with Attempted Murder after Traveling to Kavanaugh's Home with Gun.  Nicholas John Roske was charged with the attempting or threatening to murder or kidnap a Supreme Court Justice Wednesday after traveling to Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home armed with a Glock handgun intent on killing the justice over his expected rulings in ongoing cases related to abortion and the Second Amendment.  Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif. was identified as the suspect in an affidavit unsealed Wednesday afternoon.  Roske told law enforcement that he called 911 to turn himself in because he was having suicidal thoughts, also telling the operator that he intended to kill a "specific" Supreme Court justice, according to the affidavit.  Roske was subsequently arrested, and officers found a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines, as well as a tactical knife, pepper spray, and other items such as a hammer and screwdriver.

The Editor says...
This story already has holes in it:  The article above says the suspect called 911 to turn himself in.  The article below says a couple of US Marshals spotted him getting out of a cab.  How could both stories be true?  Did he go to Justice Kavanaugh's house to turn himself in?  Why would he take a gun and a knife and a screwdriver when he turned himself in?

Armed man arrested near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home.  An armed California man incensed about the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion expected to overturn Roe v. Wade was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Maryland home Wednesday after he hatched a plan to kill the jurist to "give his life purpose," prosecutors said.  Nicholas John Roske, 26, was arrested by the Montgomery County Police Department at about 1:50 a.m. near Kavanaugh's home in Chevy Chase and was charged later Wednesday in Maryland federal court with attempting to kill or kidnap a US judge, court records show.  Roske, who was dressed in black clothing and carrying a backpack and a suitcase, was spotted getting out of a cab in front of Kavanaugh's home around 1:05 a.m. by two deputy US Marshals, who were stationed outside the residence, court papers state.

CNN Denied Attempted Kavanaugh Assassin Was Armed, Cries 'Both Sides'.  After taking over an hour to get to the major breaking story of the day Wednesday [6/8/2022] — the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home earlier that morning — CNN's At This Hour tried to downplay the incident by suggesting the man wasn't armed "at all" and tried to claim there were threats from "both sides" of the political spectrum.  Despite reports that the would-be assassin was armed with a gun, a knife, and pepper spray, and was angered by the leaked draft decision that could overturn Roe v. Wade, CNN law enforcement correspondent Whitney Wild tried to downplay the entire situation, even denying he had any weapons on him.

Will the Supreme Court put a stake through the heart of gun control?  Old Joe Biden, floundering in the polls and needing a distraction, seized on the recent mass shootings to launch a gun control push. [...] Meanwhile, the constitutional conservatives on the Supreme Court are going to hand down another important decision on self-defense and the Second Amendment.  The looming SCOTUS decision everyone knows about is the expected overturning of Roe v Wade in the Dobbs case.  But also coming this June is the Bruen case, which should strike down the granddaddy of all American gun control laws:  New York's 1911 Sullivan Act.  Sullivan was a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, and there are many scholars who think Sullivan's motives in essentially disarming law-abiding citizens of their pistols was to make life easier for his many criminal compatriots.  The Sullivan Act is a discretionary permit law, allowing the police arbitrary power to decide to whom they issue a pistol permit.  In New York City, for example, it's often been easy to get one if you are wealthy or famous, like Robert De Niro.  Yet ordinary people who live and work in dangerous neighborhoods are routinely denied gun permits, like the plaintiffs in Bruen.

Is This Proof Ketanji Brown Jackson Lied About Second Amendment Rights at Her Hearings?  After the majority draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was leaked, the left quickly mobilized with the talking points that Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett lied about Roe v. Wade being "settled precedent."  It was a garbage argument, of course, as there is no such thing as "settled precedent."  If there were, slavery would still be legal.  Nevertheless, it's an argument that was endlessly repeated after the Dobbs opinion was leaked.  So, my question is:  Will the same people who accused Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett of lying also accuse Joe Biden's recently-confirmed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of lying about the individual right to keep and bear arms being under the Second Amendment?

The Editor says...
If it can be proven that she lied during her confirmation hearings, and the Justice she's supposed to replace hasn't retired yet, can her confirmation be rescinded?  Or would that require too much backbone?

The Structural Legal Rot Runs Deep.  [Scroll down]  The leaking of the Alito draft memo in which a majority (in draft form) overturned Roe v Wade was shocking, a breach of the confidentiality rules on court deliberations, a sound policy that has existed as long as memory.  Chief Justice John Roberts has initiated an investigation, and initially there was considerable discussion of the consequences to the leaker.  The NY Post is one example of the debate on the legality of the leak.  No clear criminal law seemed to cover it, and the most likely crimes it was suggested would be false statements to a federal investigator or hacking if that's how it is determined the leak occurred: [...] Of course, if a crime did occur it would have to be prosecuted by the Department of Justice and heard in a D.C. court.  Probably before a judge who wouldn't find it reason to strike from the jury panel officers of Planned Parenthood or NARAL and the partner of the leaker.

Supreme Court hands Biden admin major win for climate agenda.  The Supreme Court denied a petition from 10 Republican-led states Thursday requesting it to block a key Biden administration climate policy.  The decision ensures that President Joe Biden's so-called "social cost" of carbon policy — which assigns an estimated dollar value or cost to every ton of carbon emissions, according to the Government Accountability Office — can remain in place and be used for future federal permitting processes.  The high court rejected states' April 27 petition without giving a reason or listing which justices opposed it, according to a one-page filing published on the Supreme Court docket.

Will the Supreme Court Leaker ever face any consequences?  It has been over two weeks since Politico published a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that provides the rationale on why Roe v. Wade (1973), which legalized abortion nationwide, has to be overturned.  The document that was leaked to Politico by an unnamed 'source' launched a thousand protests all over the country.  Law enforcement was compelled to place barricades before the Supreme Court building in Washington and U.S. Marshals had to provide around-the-clock security at the homes of Supreme Court Justices because of relentless intimidation from the 'protestors'.  However, that wasn't all.  'Protestors' vandalized Catholic churches and pregnancy centers.  Hoodlums tossed a Molotov cocktail into the offices of a Wisconsin pro-life group.  The rapidly moving news cycle and the pace at which the Democrats mobilized their hooligans could cause people to forget how it all started.  The starting point was the leak.

The Collapse of Trust.  Looking at the issues facing our country, there seems to be something pernicious for which we don't seem to know what to do to correct the downward trajectory that is shaking us to our core. [... For example,] The Supreme Court Leaker:  let's not deal with the leak itself; just the fact that the sanctity of the court was broken.  No one seems to want to do anything about it and the likely effect it will have on future deliberations and decisions.  Why has this traitor not been outed?  I say "traitor" because the individual wants to effectively substitute his/her opinion over that of the Supreme Court.  Think about that for a moment.  My understanding is that the list of suspects contains about 40 individuals.  Three weeks in and the suspect has not been identified.  That person must be found and outed.  The Supreme Court cannot stand if we, as a country lose faith in the deliberative process, which is foundational to the functioning of our country.  That's really what's on the line.

Is The New Deal Unconstitutional?  Well, duh — the obvious answer is YES.  But that hasn't been a winning argument in the Supreme Court since 1935 unfortunately.  In the aftermath of the leaked Dobbs opinion, the left has been in a panic about what other "rights" the Supreme Court might take away, like the right to same sex marriage, inter-racial marriage, contraception, and watching European soccer in the middle of the night.

Rand Paul calls for the Supreme Court to use a lie detector test to find out who leaked the Roe v. Wade draft.  Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to use a lie detector to uncover who leaked an explosive draft opinion that suggests the judicial body could overturn federal abortion protections.  GOP lawmakers have for weeks demanded consequences for whoever was responsible for leaking the draft to Politico earlier this month.  Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the draft's authenticity on May 3 and vowed to open an investigation into who committed the 'betrayal of the confidences of the court.'

GOP Lawmaker Says Liberal SCOTUS Justices 'Know' Who Leaked 'Roe' Draft.  A Republican member of the House said during an interview on Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court's liberal-leaning justices are very likely aware of who engaged in an unprecedented leak of a draft decision written in February overturning the landmark 1973 abortion legalization ruling known as Roe v. Wade.  In an interview with Newsmax TV, Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana said he was certain at least some of the justices know the leaker's identity.  "We all could probably agree that the justices that were appointed by Democrat presidents know who the leaker was," he said.  "What bothers me, it's not only the undermining that it did of the institution and the trust factor that these folks have with each other," it's that now that the trust is broken, "it's very difficult to restore it."

Conservative justice sides with liberal judges in 5-4 SCOTUS ruling on illegal immigrant deportation.  In the case of an illegal immigrant seeking to avoid deportation, a ruling of 5-4 against found the United State Supreme Court in disagreement as to their specific role within the constitutional framework and Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with his liberal peers.  Pankajkumar Patel had entered the country illegally in the 90s with his wife Jyotsnaben and had endeavored to adjust his status in 2007 with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).  However, when seeking to obtain his Georgia driver's license, Patel had erroneously indicated that he was already a citizen and so his discretionary adjustment had been denied.  The case of Patel v. Garland was heard by SCOTUS after Patel had appealed to the 11th Circuit Court following the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attempting to deport him and his wife.  Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh in ruling the matter was outside their purview because Congress had set forth the rules Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department was required to follow.

The end of the Supreme Court's authority?  As the days go by since the leak of the draft Supreme Court ruling that might overturn Roe v Wade, we're seeing a variety of responses in both the private and public sectors.  Most revolve around one of several declarations that the world is about to end in some sort of cataclysm.  This doomsaying is coming from private activist groups promising a "summer of rage" and elected officials who are closing in on branding some of the Supreme Court justices as "dangerous" rogue agents of destruction.  But a truly interesting interpretation popped up today in an editorial board piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  Rather than attacking the Supreme Court as an institution, they fret over the possibility that the court may be close to losing its relevance and authority, perhaps disappearing as a legitimate third branch of the federal government.  And how might this happen?  Through decisions by various states to simply ignore their rulings, rendering them irrelevant.  And, of course, they're talking about state laws restricting abortions.

Justice Thomas warns that leak of abortion draft judgment could herald the END of the Supreme Court.  Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday compared the leak of fellow Justice's Samuel Alito's draft opinion, which would overturn abortion protections under Roe v Wade, to 'infidelity.'  Thomas, 73, said at a conference that the leak would weaken the public's trust in the Supreme Court as an institution, calling the unauthorized disclosure of deliberations 'tremendously bad.' In his remarks, the conservative justice, who has long called for overturning Roe, hinted that a liberal clerk may have leaked Alito's draft opinion, and lamented that partisan rancor has grown more entrenched on the high court.

AG Garland Orders U.S. Marshals to Protect Supreme Court Justices.  The man who was all too eager to protect school board officials from "terrorist" parents by ordering the FBI to investigate them had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do his job and send U.S. Marshals to protect the private homes of Supreme Court justices.  Attorney General Merrick Garland "directed the U.S. Marshals Service to help ensure the Justices' safety by providing additional support to the Marshal of the Supreme Court and Supreme Court Police," the DOJ said.  The AG's reluctant assistance came after a huge outcry from Republicans in Congress who were concerned that protesters violated the law by demonstrating in front of the homes of Justices Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Alito following the leak of the draft opinion rescinding abortion protections in Roe v. Wade.

Youngkin Steps In to Offer Security for Supreme Court Justices as Biden DOJ Is AWOL.  Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin appears to be stepping into a gap created by the Biden administration's Justice Department to help ensure the safety of Supreme Court justices and their families.  Protesters have gone to the homes of conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh in Virginia and Maryland following the leak of a draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.  Alito, who wrote the draft, Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas have reportedly signed on to the opinion, which would overturn the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.  Roe struck down all state laws banning abortion, making it a national right.

The Editor says...
[#1] The Supreme Court does not make laws or create rights.  [#2] Homicide is not a right.

Media's Spin On Who Leaked SCOTUS Opinion Doesn't Hold Water, Legal Experts Say.  Efforts in the media to blame a conservative at the Supreme Court for leaking Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion revealing the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade are "misguided," according to legal experts.  Several media personalities have claimed the leading theory for the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion was that a conservative clerk shared it with the media to cement the non-binding majority vote.  Legal experts pointed to ways in which the leak has already benefited Democrats and argued that comments on who may have leaked the draft opinion were purely speculative.  "The most likely leaker was someone on the left — whether a clerk, staffer, or family member of someone at the Court — who wanted to create public protests and otherwise scare Justice Kavanaugh or Barrett away from joining Justice Alito's majority," Georgetown Law professor Ilya Shapiro told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Let the leaker pay for all the overtime incurred!
Garland directs U.S. Marshals to ensure safety of Supreme Court justices.  Attorney General Merrick Garland has ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to ensure the safety of Supreme Court justices amid protests sparked by a leaked draft opinion that would overturn Roe vs.  Wade.  "The Attorney General directed the U.S. Marshals Service to help ensure the Justices' safety by providing additional support to the Marshal of the Supreme Court and Supreme Court Police," the Justice Department said in a press release Wednesday.  The statement did not add further details about the security measures, noting that Garland "continues to be briefed on security matters related to the Supreme Court and Supreme Court Justices."

Democrat politicians support protesting outside of justices' homes.  The official Democrat party line, from Biden on down, is in place:  It's irrelevant that federal law explicitly bans conducting protests in front of judge's homes (or during church services, for that matter).  Democrats approve of those protests and, when asked to explain, they'll tell you that it's because conservatives have protested around Democrat politicians.  By saying that, they show their total ignorance about the difference between politicians, who must be responsive to the people, and judges, who shouldn't be.  Abortion bullies have been on the move, protesting at the homes of Supreme Court justices and attacking churches.  Both those activities are illegal.  Regarding the protests in front of the justices' houses, 18 U.S.C. § 1507 is clear.  It makes it a federal offense to conduct a protest "in or near a building or residence occupied or used by [a] judge," for the purpose of "interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge...in the discharge of his duty."

The perils of mobocracy.  A week ago, Politico leaked a draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that provides the rationale on why Roe v. Wade (1973) which legalized abortion nationwide, had to be overturned.  It was merely a draft, not an official ruling or a press release.  Drafts often evolve and so do judges' votes.  So what actually happens if Roe v. Wade is indeed overturned?  Will abortions be illegal across the nation?  Will abortionist doctors and women suffering miscarriages or seeking abortions be arrested?  Will women be compelled to apply primitive methods to abort their children? [...] The overturn merely leaves that decision on abortion to individual states.  This is how federalism works.  This is exactly what the Founding Fathers intended.

Senate unanimously passes bill to protect families of Supreme Court justices.  The Senate unanimously passed a bill to provide top-level security services to Supreme Court justices and their families amid threats against conservative court members who look likely to strike down Roe v. Wade.  Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Chris Coons (D-DE) introduced the bill as protesters threaten and picket the homes of Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and other justices after the leak of a draft opinion that, were it to become final, would return the issue of abortion to the states.  "Threats to the physical safety of Supreme Court Justices and their families are disgraceful, and attempts to intimidate and influence the independence of our judiciary cannot be tolerated," Cornyn said in a statement.  "I'm glad the Senate quickly approved this measure to extend Supreme Court police protection to family members, and the House must take up and pass it immediately."  The Supreme Court Police Parity Act, which now heads to the House, would offer justices similar security to other top-ranking government officials.

Left's Intimidation of Justices Is Illegal, but Will Biden Enforce the Law?  Irony doesn't begin to explain why pro-choice activists chose Mother's Day weekend to picket the homes of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, who appear ready to overturn Roe v. Wade.  In an age when there appear to be fewer consequences for violating moral or statutory laws, demonstrators and protesters outside the Supreme Court building seem to have violated at least two federal laws.  In the abortion-at-anytime Biden administration, which refuses to enforce immigration laws, it seems unlikely these laws will be enforced.  Here are excerpts from two federal laws, should the Justice Department need to be reminded of them.  The first, 18 U.S. Code 1507 "Picketing or Parading," states,  ["]Whoever, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.["]  That seems clear, doesn't it?

After Roe, Here Are Seven More Precedents the Post-Trump Supreme Court Should Smash.  Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is, to quote a certain sitting U.S. president, a "big [...] deal."  It's not just that the decision is a huge victory for conservatives that cleanses us of one of America's gravest moral taints.  Justice Alito's decision matters because of the potential it unlocks.  If Alito's opinion is issued unchanged, it will represent the full reversal of one of the foundational decisions of the Warren and Burger Courts of the 60s and 70s.  It is no exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court of those two decades created the modern left-wing hegemony we are currently groaning under.  Repeatedly, the justices of the Court invented new constitutional rights where none were even suspected to exist before.  They imposed new and ridiculous mandates on cities and states.

NPR's Nina Totenberg: 'Leading theory' is conservative clerk leaked abortion opinion.  One of the Supreme Court's longtime reporters said the "leading theory" is that a conservative clerk leaked the majority draft opinion indicating the high court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.  Nina Totenberg, a legal affairs correspondent for NPR, said the only theory that makes sense is that the leak came from someone who "was afraid that this majority might not hold."

To Defeat Mobocracy, Justices Must Plow Ahead and Overturn Roe.  The scandalous leak of a full draft of Justice Samuel Alito's five-justice-strong majority opinion in this term's marquee Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, is an event without precedent in the court's history.  If Alito's coalition holds, the leaked majority opinion, a February-dated first draft whose authenticity has been confirmed by Chief Justice John Roberts, would represent the culmination of a half-century of pro-life efforts to overturn 1973's Roe v. Wade atrocity.  Roe, which was the court's worst decision since 1857's Dred Scott v. Sandford due to the cases' similar fundamental lies about human anthropology and human dignity, should have been overturned in 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Justice Alito and family [have been] moved to an undisclosed location.  US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson, which is expected to overturn Roe v. Wade, has reportedly been moved to an undisclosed location with his family due to concerns for their safety.  [Tweet]  Earlier in the week, Alito canceled an appearance at the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals' judicial conference.  According to multiple outlets, far-left activists, including a group called Ruth Sent Us, are attempting to intimidate the five justices who are expected to sign the final version of Alito's leaked opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which could overrule Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.  The other four justices include Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Reports Indicate Justice Alito and His Family Have Been Moved to a Secure Location.  Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is paying a price for authoring a draft opinion that was leaked last week in which he and four other justices appear to be on the verge of overturning the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.  For the sake of safety, Alito has reportedly been moved to a location that will not be revealed, according to Breitbart.  Last week, Alito canceled an appearance at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' judicial conference.  Although no official reason was given for the cancellation, the move came only days after fierce protests greeted the leak of the opinion.

Abortion is Dred Scott Redux.  [Scroll down]  There is no happy solution to any of this.  Why?  Because society cannot agree on the basics.  Roe v. Wade was a disaster in 1973.  It forced all states to be Abortion States, just as the Dred Scott decision forced all states to be Slave States.  A proposed national Abortion Rights law by the Democrats would be just as devastating.  That would be Dred Scott III, as Roe v. Wade was already Dred Scott II.  The country would unravel.

What I Saw When Protesters Marched to Supreme Court Justices' Homes.  Dozens of furious marchers made their way through a Washington, D.C. suburb Saturday evening [5/7/2022], hellbent on demonstrating their rage towards conservative Supreme Court justices.  "No uterus, no opinion!" they cried as they disrupted the quiet streets, days after a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito indicated that five Supreme Court justices planned to strike down Roe v. Wade.  The protestors gathered outside a local market in Chevy Chase, Maryland.  Initially, it seemed like the poor weather was going to dent the number of marchers.

Losing the People?  Then Change the Rules.  The tradition of a nine-person Supreme Court is now 153 years old.  The last attempt to expand it for political gain was President Franklin Roosevelt's failed effort in 1937.  FDR's gambit was so blatantly political that even his overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress rebuffed him.  Yet now "court packing" is a law school cause celebre.  It is hailed as a supposedly quick fix to reverse the current 5-4 conservative majority.  Recently, a rough draft of an opinion purportedly overturning the Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion in all 50 states was leaked to the media by someone inside the court.  That insider leak of a draft opinion was a first in the modern history of the Supreme Court.  It violated all court protocols.  Yet it was met with stunning approval from the American left.

The Roe Demonstrators:  Where Did They Get That Idea?  Much has been written this week about the pro-abortionists' plans to picket the homes of the six Republican-appointed justices over the egregiously leaked Alito draft overturning Roe v. Wade.  Those criticisms, which I summarize below, are certainly valid.  If we had an attorney general who cared about enforcing the law, he'd seek injunctive relief and criminal penalties for such conduct. [...] The relevant statute is 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1507 which reads:
  [1]   Whoever, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or
  [2]   with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty,
  [3]   pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or
  [4]   in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer, or
  [5]   with such intent uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence,
  [6]   shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Dangerous Scene as Pro-Abortion 'Protesters' Gather at Justices' Homes, Attempt to Pressure Them.  Things are growing more and more dangerous after a draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked.  Several of the Justices' have been doxxed, and now protesters are gathering in front of their homes, attempting to pressure them to uphold the supposed "right" to the barbaric practice of abortion.  Videos show pro-abortion fanatics gathering at the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Biden is encouraging illegal intimidation of justices.  Passionate protests always have the potential to turn violent, which is why it definitely matters where they happen.  It is one thing to protest outside city hall, a police station, or the Supreme Court.  It is an entirely different act to protest outside a mayor's personal residence or a police officer's house.  In 2020, unfortunately, many Black Lives Matter protesters crossed this line, demonstrating in residential neighborhoods, especially outside of mayors' homes, many of which were vandalized.  This is why federal law prohibits picketing or parading in front of the home of a judge, juror, witness, or officer of the court under pain of up to one year in prison.  Efforts to intimidate people within the legal system are an offense against judicial independence, a key prerequisite to democracy.  If protesters want to demonstrate outside the Supreme Court, that is fine.  But going into a judge's neighborhood and marching in front of his or her home is too far.  It is a dangerous act of intimidation that should be roundly criticized.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas tells protestors that they won't influence final ruling on abortion.  Following protests sparked by the leak of a draft Supreme Court decision indicating the justices are poised to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas said on Friday that the court cannot be 'bullied.'  The leak set off a political firestorm, with abortion-rights supporters staging rallies outside the courthouse and at locations around the United States, as well as an internal crisis at the nation's top judicial body where an investigation into the source of the unprecedented disclosure is underway.  Thomas, one of the most conservative justices on the nine-member court, made only a few passing references to the protests over the leaked draft opinion as he spoke at a judicial conference in Atlanta.

There may have been a Supreme Court leak long before Alito's draft.  There's been quite the kerfuffle about the horrendous leak at the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on an upcoming ruling that may end Roe v. Wade.  That caused me to recall another case, just a decade ago, in which such a leak may have occurred, only that one happened under the radar. [...] Pay close attention to the timelines:  Sebelius was argued at the Supreme Court from March 26-28 in 2012.  The justices then held a conference on Friday, March 30, and voted on the outcome.  The vote then was 5 to 4 against upholding the individual mandate, with John Roberts siding in the majority with conservatives.  The very next Monday, April 2, 2012, President Obama made remarks about the case, although the actual vote would not be known for nearly three months.  Among other things, he stated that he was "confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law" because "it's constitutional."  Because the Democrats are masters at legislating from the bench and have always hinted at the veiled threat to pack the court, Obama's comments sounded to me more like, "Nice Court you have there, John.  Hope you can keep it."

A Human Event.  I must confess that when the news broke last night and I read Justice Alito's careful, exhaustive, impressive opinion, I fell into a mild despair.  For the Justice preserved, as one of the defining strands of his opinion, that the human standing of the child in the womb would be left as a matter merely of belief. [...] But it became clearer to me last night that any disappointment was overborne by the vast good that Samuel Alito accomplishes here. [...] Samuel Alito showed us here how a demanding moral reasoning on this matter would have to be tempered in what could only be called a consummate act of statecraft.  Alito does what I've complained for years that White and Rehnquist, the dissenters in Roe, never did:  he draws upon the precise facts about the development of that small human being in the womb.  Indeed, he supplied almost all of the substantive arguments that I'd want the Court to make.

Elizabeth Warren explodes on 'The View', claims police could investigate 'miscarriages' if Roe overturned.  Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has been "madder than hell" since the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion that overturns Roe v Wade.  The outspoken liberal politician continued her strong defense of Roe during a Friday segment on ABC's The View.  During her guest appearance, Warren offered several extreme hypotheticals on how the U.S. government could abuse women if Roe v Wade is gutted in the near future.  She fretted that miscarriages could be "investigated" by the police or that women might be punished for accidentally injuring their unborn babies while picking up packages in the mail.  She also worried that morning-after pills could disappear, in vitro fertilization could be limited, and women's "most personal choices" would be criminalized.

Do the Unhinged Protesters Know It's a Crime to Protest at a Supreme Court Justice's Home?  The Virginia Correctional Facility for Woman in Goochland awaits anyone who acts out their rage and shows up out of control at a Supreme Court Justice's residence in response to the unethical and unprecedented leak of a draft opinion in the Dobbs abortion case.  The people of Virginia have decided that it is a crime to protest at a Virginian's home. [...] In other words, civil society benefits by keeping homes about family, friends, and peace and not clowns in Handmaid costumes.  If you show up and protest a Supreme Court Justice near their home, you are committing a crime in Virginia.  And most of the Justices with any sense live in Virginia.

What If There Is No Majority To Overturn Roe?  An Alternative Theory Of The Supreme Court Leak.  At some point we will know who the leaker was of Justice Alito's draft Opinion overruling Roe v. Wade.  That Opinion, according to Politico, represents a court majority of five Justices which continues until recently.  The immediate and most obvious speculation (including by me) was that the leak was by a liberal/leftist, likely a law clerk, trying to create a firestorm of protest that would pressure one of those five Justices to wobble, much like Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly switched his vote on Obamacare in 2012.  That explanation makes sense on several levels, including how protests were ready to go from the moment the Politico story published.  Democrat politicians were ready to go also, making overheated threats and centering the 2022 election on the issue.  So at every level, it's logical and obvious that the leak was by a lefty law clerk or other staffer at the Court in an attempt to prevent the Alito draft from becoming the issued majority Opinion of the court.  (I'm discounting that a Justice him/herself was involved.)

White House Resists Condemning Protesters Descending on Supreme Court Justices' Homes.  The White House on Thursday resisted asking angry pro-abortion protesters not to descend on the homes of Supreme Court Justices after a draft judicial decision on Roe v. Wade was leaked to the press.  "I don't have an official U.S. government position on where people protest," White House press secretary Jen Psaki replied when asked if the president condoned the actions of protesters sharing information on the home addresses of originalist Supreme Court justices.  The protest group Ruth Sent Us announced plans to direct protests at the homes of six Supreme court justices — three in Virginia and three in Maryland.  Psaki also resisted calling the actions of some protesters "extreme," despite reported violence and vandalism by some of the angry pro-abortion protesters.

Chief Justice Roberts Speaks Out About Leak of Abortion Decision.  Chief Justice John Roberts commented for the first time publicly about the leak of the draft opinion on the abortion case out of Mississippi in which the majority of the justices voted to send all abortion decisions back to the states for voters to sort out.  If the draft decision holds, it would wipe from the books the Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood decisions.  At a federal judicial conference in Atlanta on Thursday, Roberts described the leak by a Supreme Court employee as "absolutely appalling."

Pro-Abortion Group Doxxes 6 GOP-Nominated Supreme Court Justices After Roe Leak.  A radical pro-abortion renta-mob has now doxxed — published the addresses and personal information of six justices of the U.S. Supreme Court — and offered to pay protesters to "peacefully" do a "walk by," camp out in front of their homes, and do "art."  One could safely conclude that mob rule has come to the U.S. Supreme Court, that is if the mob at the Kavanaugh hearings hadn't disabused you of that notion already.  A newly formed astroturf group called Ruth Sent Us, ironically referring to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who thought the Roe v. Wade decision was improperly based, has now threatened the very security of the six GOP-nominated justices of the Supreme Court:  Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito.

WH Has Shameful Response to Leftists Targeting Churches and Homes of Justices.  The White House has not condemned the leak of the SCOTUS draft opinion, an attack on the integrity of the Court, and an attempt to intimidate the justices.  They wouldn't even say if they would accept the decision of the Court when it ultimately came down.  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was given another chance on Thursday to do just that, and once again, she pointedly refused to do so on behalf of Joe Biden.  A reporter asked why they refused and Psaki got huffy, saying that the leak was a "distraction" that wasn't at the same level as the SCOTUS non-decision.  They want to whip the left into a frenzy over it, to help their chances in November.

Quick Look at U.S. Code Makes Jen Psaki's 'Answer' on Targeting Justices at Home so Much Worse.  On Wednesday, [White House press secretary Jen] Psaki gave a very troubling answer when questioned on whether the Biden White House would view a majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade as a "legitimate" ruling.  She refused to give a straight "yes" or "no" answer, and instead pivoted to how things would supposedly take a dire turn for women in at least "half" the states in America if the draft majority opinion held.  Things got even more shameful on Thursday when Psaki was asked about the admitted plans by the radical leftist group "Ruth Sent Us" to target and march outside of the private homes of some of the conservative Justices, whose addresses were partially shared complete with maps by the militant left-wing agitators in a clear attempt at intimidating them over the Mississippi pro-life case currently before the court.  Not only did Psaki decline to condemn the leak, but she repeatedly refused to condemn the planned "protests" outside of the Justices homes.

Roe v. Wade 'Insurrection' Reveals The Left's Deep Contempt For Our Constitution.  We don't know who leaked the draft of the high court's Roe v. Wade decision, but whoever it was, he or she was almost certainly a leftist Democrat.  How do we know this?  They, more than any other group, have a bred-in-the-bone hatred for America's constitutional order that borders on the pathological.  Most Americans don't know this.  Indeed, they believe that, whatever policy differences we have, we're all one in loving America's Constitution and the rights and freedoms it protects.  Yet, whenever the left is upset at a Supreme Court decision, it instantly calls for radical changes so it can win in the future.  It's the equivalent of saying, hey, if you can't win the game within the rules, just change the rules, as Victor Davis Hanson recently observed.

The Supreme Court Leaker Blew up an Intricate Chain of Custody — and Committed 'Obstruction of Justice'.  We don't know at this point who leaked the Supreme Court draft opinion overturning two major abortion decisions, but we do know that this "suicide bomber," as a former law clerk called them, is guilty of obstruction of justice and, in the words of another former law clerk, "violat[ed] like, ten different procedures."  Mike Davis, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, and who worked with the Senate Judiciary Committee on judicial nominations, spoke with me on KTTH radio and said, "You're supposed to be dealing with the youngest, smartest, young lawyers and law grads in the country, and they have ethical obligations as young lawyers, future lawyers."  Davis, who now leads the Article III Project, said each law clerk signs agreements with the Court not to snitch.  Plus, he told me, "There are federal statutes that prevent the misuse of federal property; there are federal statutes that prevent obstruction of justice."

Dobbs Opinion, If It Stands, Rights Supreme Court's Wrong.  The now infamous draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, leaked Monday, will overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in a rich, bold, and comprehensive manner.  The law at the center of the Dobbs case is a Mississippi statute prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.  Jackson Women's Health Organization — the respondent of the case — is an abortion center in Mississippi.  Respondents argued that no compromise measures were possible regarding the statute and prior abortion precedent.  Roe and Casey either stand or fall.  This is the occasion for the Supreme Court's ruling.  Justice Samuel Alito's opinion is a thorough cleaning of the stables of the court's 20th-century abortion jurisprudence.  Virtually every conceivable argument, fact, and shibboleth launched by pro-abortion legal forces has been considered, evaluated, and rejected.

What we know about the Supreme Court draft leak investigation.  Chief Justice John Roberts called on the recently appointed Supreme Court marshal, Col. Gail A. Curley, to investigate the leak of a draft opinion in an abortion case before the high court.  Best known as the person who announces the entrance of justices each session with the words, "Oyez, Oyez, Oyez," Curley is now given the high-priority task of investigating the leak of a draft opinion in Dobbs v. Women's Health Organization.  The draft decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, signals justices are prepared to return the question of abortion's legality over to the states.

Low-level domestic terrorism:
Liberal group calls for protests at conservative Supreme Court justices' homes.  Left-wing activist groups are planning to send protesters to the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices following a leak indicating the court may soon overturn Roe v. Wade.  The activists are organizing under the moniker "Ruth Sent Us" and have published the supposed home addresses of Justices Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.  "Our 6-3 extremist Supreme Court routinely issues rulings that hurt women, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights," the group's website reads.  "We must rise up to force accountability using a diversity of tactics."

Alito makes masterful argument to 'overturn' Roe v. Wade.  Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center is a masterful account of why Roe v. Wade was wrong from the start and why it should be jettisoned.  For liberals shocked by the prospective ruling, and for conservatives who thought it might never happen, it's worth taking a look at Alito's clear reasoning.  In 1973, the Court in Roe v. Wade imposed unrestricted abortion for any reason all the way up to viability (which was then roughly the end of the second trimester) and, under a malleable "health exception" in a companion case, even right up to birth.  Never mind that the text of the Constitution makes no mention of any right to abortion.  Never mind that abortion was a crime in every state at the time that the Fourteenth Amendment, the imagined source of the abortion right, was adopted in 1868.  In 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey botched the opportunity to overturn Roe.  It instead reiterated that states could not prohibit abortion before viability, and it invented an "undue burden" standard to assess abortion regulations before viability.

The Constitutional Crisis That Roe v. Wade Set In Motion Is Now Upon Us.  The leak of a draft majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood — and with it our 50-year regime of legalized murder of the unborn — has rightly captured the nation's attention.  It is without question the most important news story in the country, and, if the draft decision stands, the most important political development in a generation.  But it is also more than these things.  Whether the draft opinion stands or falls, this is a great moment of moral clarity for the nation — and a time of great peril.  Now we see, as we rarely have over the past five decades, the severity of what Roe inaugurated in 1973 and Casey sustained in 1992.

Betcha Ketanji Brown Jackson And Her Friends Know What A Woman Is Now.  Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated to the United States Supreme Court in large part because of her sex, said she couldn't define what a woman is during her confirmation hearings.  "I'm not a biologist," Jackson said in her exchange with Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn.  While conservatives criticized Jackson for failing to answer a simple question about human biology, one that was necessary to evaluate whether she would faithfully interpret the Constitution and adjudicate Americans' rights, Democrats rushed to defend the activist nominee who has ties to and endorsements from the abortion industry.  Jackson may not be on the SCOTUS bench yet but now that a leaked Dobbs v. Jackson opinion indicates that the Supreme Court is preparing to strike down Roe v. Wade, Democrats are scrambling to preserve what they have strictly labeled as "a woman's right to choose."  "How interesting that two weeks ago they refused to define a 'woman' and now today the only thing they want to talk about is protecting a 'woman's right to choose,'" Blackburn pointed out on Tuesday.

Aborti-mania — the perfectly planned meltdown.  Just as a wave of crucial midterm primary elections kick off around the country this spring, the conveniently scheduled leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade became America's new weapon of manufactured mass distraction.  Left-wing abortifa agitators descended on the Supreme Court steps in Washington, howling, "Fascist scum has got to go."  Unhinged TikTokers called for "riots," "gas" and "torches"; "burning it all to the ground" by targeting "all those old white men and the women who support them"; and "mayhem in the streets" that will dwarf the "global protests around George Floyd." [...] The aborticrats are not just nuts.  They're evil.  An "anarchist collective" is now instructing women (yes, all of sudden, the left has discovered that biological women are really a thing) how to concoct "do it yourself" abortion pills with horse ulcer powder, corn syrup and confectioners' sugar. (Yes, these are the same types who made it a punishable offense to talk about alternative COVID-19 treatment ivermectin, the anti-malarial drug used safely for three decades around the globe by humans and animals.)

The Hunt for the Suspect in the Supreme Court's Opinion Leak is Fully On.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation can no longer be trusted to investigate crimes — even devastating leaks that sabotage the nation's highest court.  The Department of Justice can no longer be trusted to deliver "justice," except as a mockery to Americans' constitutional rights.  The corporate news media can no longer be trusted to provide credible information in the interest of preserving the country's most venerated institutions.  Thus, Americans are taking it upon themselves to hunt down the leaker who undertook the extreme, unprecedented act of leaking Supreme Court documents pertaining to some of the most divisive cases and subject the culprits to further scrutiny. [...] The document leak was accompanied by the mobilization of protesters around the Supreme Court, whose police officers erected barricades to keep out the fomenting mob.  The Democratic National Committee dispatched fundraising emails — as if right on cue.  The entire imbroglio smacked of a sophisticated operation to penetrate one of the most secretive bodies in the world and expose its inner workings for crude political fodder.

The best argument that the draft decision was leaked by a progressive.  [Scroll down]  There are really a couple of ways to look at this question.  The first is cui bono?  Who benefits from the leak.  And as already mentioned, you really can make an argument for either side seeing some benefit in the leak.  But there's another way to look at this.  What type of person would be most likely to leak this?  And that's where I think [Bari] Weiss makes a compelling case that the most likely person is a young person on the left.

Leaker of Alito's draft opinion could face criminal prosecution: legal experts.  Whoever leaked Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion in a crucial abortion-rights case violated a key tenet of the Supreme Court — and might even have committed a crime, legal experts said Tuesday [5/3/2022].  "It is a core, central principle of working there to keep everything confidential," said Washington, DC, lawyer Bill Burck, a former federal prosecutor who clerked for former Justice Anthony Kennedy.  If the leaker is a clerk — or even one of the court's nine justices — "it's hard to see how a crime was committed" because the document isn't classified and they'd have a right to possess it, Burck said.  But amid the investigation ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts, others said the unprecedented disclosure of Alito's 98-page work in progress may have run afoul of a federal law that prohibits the theft of public money, property or records.

Roe will not be missed.  The leaked draft opinion that would overturn the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision remains a mystery in some respects.  But two things are certain.  First, the leak has damaged the court's credibility.  Chief Justice John Roberts is right to initiate a full investigation by the marshal of the court.  The Supreme Court's credibility stands to gain substantially if the culprit is identified and disciplined for his or her deeply unprofessional conduct.  Second, Roe, which established a constitutional right to abortion, justifiably appears to be on life support.  To be sure, as Roberts noted, the draft "does not represent a decision by" the court "or the final position of any member on the issues in the case."

Mark Levin on gravity of SCOTUS leak: 'All these institutions are going to collapse'.  As the fallout over the dramatic alleged Supreme Court leak to Politico continues, takes are coming in from every angle, and commentator Mark Levin hasn't missed out on an opportunity to weigh in either.  Speaking on "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday [5/3/2022], Levin attacked the leak itself as a "grave assault" on the integrity of the institution of the Supreme Court of the United States.  There's been speculation that the leak was intended to intimidate justices planning on overturning Roe v. Wade (1973), though as of writing there's no proof as to who the culprit is (but plenty of speculation), or even if the leak is legitimate.

Fact-Checking 6 Outrageous Claims About Leaked Supreme Court Draft Overturning Roe v. Wade.  Amid news reports about the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would end abortion on demand, critics wailed in the media, in speeches, and on Twitter about the proposed ruling.  The high court confirmed the authenticity of the draft majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that was leaked to Politico, but asserted that it is not the final version.  If the Alito draft from February essentially stands and at least four other justices sign on, it would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal across the nation.  If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, however, the ruling would not ban abortion nationwide but rather leave to elected state legislatures to determine whether or under what restrictions abortion is allowed in their states.

Who Leaked The Roe V. Wade Draft?  Some Big Clues Point To Obvious Culprits.  Violating hundreds of years of norms and ethics, a leaked memo from within the Supreme Court purports to show a majority of the nine justices having indicated a willingness to overturn the half-century-old Roe v. Wade decision.  If true, the leak itself is nothing short of blatant judicial intimidation and amounts to an insurrection in its own right, according to D.C. politicians and pundits.  The leaked draft dates back to February, written by Justice Samuel Alito, strongly hints at an overturning of the flawed 1973 decision of Roe.  He was joined by Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett.  Unknown was where the spineless John Roberts stood.

Another leak:  Roberts trying to save Roe while sacrificing Casey?  First someone leaks a draft opinion to Politico, and now insiders are leaking about SCOTUS deliberations and negotiations to CNN.  The issue of abortion has apparently transformed the Supreme Court into the Sieve Court.  With an apparent 5-3 lineup set to overturn Roe based on Justice Samuel Alito's draft majority opinion in Dobbs, Chief Justice John Roberts has reportedly argued to retain Roe while dumping Casey as a compromise position.  Or so CNN and its sources say, anyway.

Who leaked?  For starters, why now?  If the point is to inflame Democrats so that they'll turn out in force in November, it's idiotic to leak the decision early.  That'll give the country extra time to adjust psychologically to a post-Roe reality, risking that liberal passions will cool somewhat before the midterms.  If you want lefties energized to vote, you should keep quiet until the decision is released in late June, as expected.  That might be close enough to Election Day to matter.  Another question as to timing.  The draft of Alito's opinion says it was circulated on February 10. Presumably the leaker has had a copy in their possession since then.  Why not leak it sooner instead of waiting three months?  If the point was to ruin the justices' trust in each other and try to create a public stir to shift the outcome before it's finalized, an earlier leak would have worked just as well.  Maybe better, since it would have derailed the deliberation process at an earlier juncture.

People Are Pointing Fingers At A Certain SCOTUS Justice And His Clerk In Relation To SCOTUS Leak.  Following the unprecedented leak of a Supreme Court initial majority draft opinion to undo Roe v. Wade huge controversies begin to surface!  The document, first obtained by Politico, outlined the potential demise of the landmark 1973 ruling.  The revelation sent shockwaves across the nation.  Protesters gathered at the fenced-off Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on Monday night.  The leak is likely the product of an ideologically leftist law clerk seeking either to halt a nixing of the abortion ban or to engender support for court-packing, Alan Dershowitz told Fox News.

Decoding the leak from the U.S. Supreme Court.  These are desperate times for the Democrats in Washington.  The polls and the mood of the nation suggest that they will receive a shellacking during the midterms in November.  The Democrats have just around six months to act.  Desperate times demand desperate measures, so the Democrats are resorting to sneaky tactics such as "leaks," hoping it will benefit them.  They leaked messages between President Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and key GOP figures and Trump aides to portray Republicans as insurrectionists and fascists looking to subvert the course of democracy.  The New York Times leaked a conversation allegedly between House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Liz Cheney to cause a rift within the GOP and cause the impression that GOP is imploding due to conflicts within the leadership.  However, their most audacious leak occurred on Monday night, when Politico obtained a nearly 100-page opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, which Politico claims is a "full-throated" and "unflinching repudiation of constitutional protections of abortion rights."

Democrats Horrified by Draft Opinion Overturning Roe: 'Ripped Up the Constitution'.  Prominent Democrats reacted with horror to the Monday night leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that, if adopted, would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion on a national level.  The draft Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health opinion, which upholds Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban, was written on February 10 by Justice Samuel Alito, with Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Barrett and Kavanaugh concurring.  Chief Justice John Roberts does not plan to join the majority in overturning Roe, CNN reported.

Supreme Court Observers Demand Investigation of Leaked Decision to Reverse Roe.  Supreme Court experts decried the unprecedented leak of the Court's draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, in which justices reportedly voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.  The Supreme Court voted to overturn the landmark decision after oral arguments in December, according to a draft opinion leaked to Politico, but the vote is not final.  Legal experts said the leak would damage the trust and functioning of the Court and was likely politically motivated.  Legal scholar Jonathan Turley said the leak was likely part of a push to encourage liberal efforts to protect abortion rights through the Supreme Court or through the legislature.

Before Finally Overturning Roe, Supreme Court Must Block Yet Another Insurrection Attempt.  The Supreme Court is poised to relinquish its nearly 50-year stranglehold on abortion law and return the debate over whether states may protect unborn human life to the American people and their elected representatives, according to a draft opinion that was leaked to Politico reporters.  If the draft opinion authored by Associate Justice Samuel Alito stands, it would be a momentous course correction for the court.  Roe v. Wade, the radical decision that took the abortion debate away from the American people, has myriad legal, scientific, and constitutional critics.  Even abortion supporters complained about its weaknesses, as Alito mentions in his draft opinion.  Roe was issued in 1973, shortly after the end of the Warren Court, known for pushing through radical changes through the power of a majority of justices rather than on the basis of the Constitution.

John Roberts' Cowardice On Obamacare Is Why The Left Thinks It Can Bully and Extort SCOTUS.  In a matter of hours, Washington D.C. and the political world have erupted in chaos.  On Monday evening, Politico published a report of an alleged leaked draft of a majority U.S. Supreme Court decision that would strike down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court case that federally legalized abortion in the United States.  Writing for the majority in Dobbs v.  Jackson Women's Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito's alleged draft opinion describes the irrationality of the 1973 ruling, reportedly stating that "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start."

The Hunt for the SCOTUS Leaker Is On.  Chief Justice John Roberts released a statement Tuesday morning confirming that the Supreme Court was launching a full, formal investigation into the source of Monday's leak of the draft opinion showing an overturn of Roe v. Wade[.]

Supreme Court Chief Justice Releases Statement on Unprecedented SCOTUS Leak — Confirms Its Authenticity — Launches Investigation.  The US Supreme Court reportedly voted to end Roe v Wade in a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito according to a report leaked to Politico on Monday night.  The draft opinion was leaked to the press — something that is unprecedented.  Of course, most assume the leaker is a liberal clerk who hopes to change the outcome of the case.  On Tuesday morning Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts released a statement on the unprecedented leak.  Roberts reportedly confirmed its authenticity and called for an investigation.

Omar leads calls for court-packing after draft opinion in abortion case leaks.  Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is leading calls to expand the Supreme Court after a draft opinion leaked on Monday signaled the high court will undo the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion case.  Omar is a frequent advocate of congressional legislation allowing for court-packing.  Her latest call to expand the court of nine justices comes amid the revelation of a document authored by Justice Samuel Alito for the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, ruling that "the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives."

Ilhan Omar demands more Supreme Court justices.  Rep. Ilhan Omar is demanding the Supreme Court add more justices to override its conservative majority while other Democrats are renewing their calls to nix the filibuster and codify the right to an abortion after a leaked preliminary opinion revealed the court is looking to overturn Roe v. Wade.  'Overturning Roe would put the lives of women across the country at risk.  It would fly in the face of decades of precedent and the overwhelming majority of public opinion.  And they will not stop here.  Expand the court,' the Minnesota Democrat said on Twitter.  'Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW.  And if there aren't 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not, we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes,' Sen Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote on Twitter.

The Dobbs Supreme Court Leak.  It's shocking.  Not that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe, but that someone would presumably leak a draft opinion (we don't know if it is the current one) to change the ruling.  Chief Justice John Roberts reverences the integrity of the Court.  That a decision was leaked is abhorrent — and one so critical to who we are as a nation!  Someone was trying to undermine constitutional law by leaking it.  The Court has been wrong for nearly 50 years about abortion.  Some cheap stunt should not change matters.

SCOTUSBlog: Roe Leak Is the 'Gravest, Most Unforgivable Sin'.  The prominent independent U.S. Supreme Court analysis page, SCOTUSBlog, said Monday evening's [5/2/2022] leak of the Court's expected decision in Roe v. Wade is "the gravest, most unforgivable sin."  "It's impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff," SCOTUSBlog tweeted.  "This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin."

Democrats Pounce, Call On Congress To Immediately Abolish Filibuster In Wake of SCOTUS Leak.  If you thought you were going to have a nice peaceful start to the week, think again.  In a shocking development that is unfolding even as we write, someone has leaked information that SCOTUS may be preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade.  A leak like this is unprecedented, and some have surmised that it may well be a last-ditch effort for Democrats to motivate their base.  Not such a crazy notion, as Monday night brought word that Democrats from across the country have already been calling for the elimination of the filibuster to help them protect the most sacred tenant of their faith — abortion.

The Destruction of the Supreme Court.  I find it an amusing coincidence that, on the day students in AP U.S. Government and Politics across the country took their end-of-year exam, arguably the biggest scandal in Supreme Court history broke.  That scandal, the leaking of what appears to be an authentic initial draft opinion on the controversial Dobbs case, has left many in the legal community aghast.  Left and right, many agree that this is highly irregular and highly improper.  There's a reason it hasn't happened before.  Whether or not a person supports Roe v. Wade or wishes it to end, we should all be terrified at the prospect of even the Supreme Court succumbing to the most primal of partisan bickering.  The leaking of the draft opinion, which is in no way the final decision of the Court but a good indicator of where it's headed, marks the end of cordiality between judicial philosophies as exemplified by the friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia.

Unprecedented: Sources Say Justice Roberts Will Call On FBI to Investigate SCOTUS Leak.  As we reported earlier, the SCOTUS leak regarding the Roe decision is unprecedented in its scope.  As political as court appointments have become, there is a professional and moral standard at SCOTUS that has long been held in esteem.  Leaks are unheard of because justices and their staff take their judicial mandate extremely seriously.  This is the highest court in the land.  Their decisions have deep ripple effects throughout American life.  They take controversial cases and often make controversial rulings.

Astounding Leak from the Supreme Court.  Liberals love to bleat on these days about how Republicans have been breaching "democratic norms," but late today [5/2/2022] one of the most sacrosanct norms of our political order was breached:  Someone leaked a draft Supreme Court opinion striking down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in the pending case of Dobbs v.  Jackson Women's Health Association.  The opinion, drafted by Justice Samuel Alito, is 98 pages long, and I'm going to want to read through it carefully before offering conclusions or analysis.  But some of the language in the opinion on a first skim seems promising, such as "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start."  Heh:  The left has been saying for years now that a liberal Court could overturn precedents they hate such as Citizens United under the heading that it was "wrong the day it was decided."

Barricades Quietly Erected Around Supreme Court After Roe Draft Decision Leaks.  "Just minutes" after Politico reported that the majority of the Supreme Court's justices were leaning towards striking down legal abortion nationwide, barricades around the court building were being erected, according to a journalist with the Washington Examiner.  Cami Mondeaux said on Monday night [5/2/2022] that she received Politico's alert as she was passing the Supreme Court building, and that "barricades were going up right then."  The high court's leaked memo, an early draft decision penned by Justice Samuel Alito, labeled the landmark case Roe v. Wade "egregiously wrong from the start."

Roe v. Wade leak called an effort to intimidate Supreme Court justices.  The leaking of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion prompted outrage Monday night including accusations by Republican senators of a liberal-left effort to intimidate the justices into changing their ruling.  Legal scholars also were calling within hours of the Monday night report in Politico for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to find and punish the person who ended in the unprecedented leak.  Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, said Chief Justice Roberts "has an absolute obligation to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation."

The left's leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v.  Wade is unprecedented.  Politically motivated leaks are no big deal in today's partisan politics.  But something happened today that is utterly unprecedented.  A draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked.  To my knowledge, this has never happened before.  The leak was obviously by either one of the three Justices in the liberal wing of the Court, or one of their 10-12 clerks who have access to the internal deliberations of the Court.  It was presumably for the purpose of ginning up a public outcry to pressure one or more of the majority justices to change his or her mind.  Something somewhat similar happened in the Supreme Court's decision upholding Obamacare.  Chief Justice Roberts initially was on the side of four conservatives to invalidate the law, but he was persuaded to change his mind.  The outcome was a 5-4 decision upholding it.

Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows.  The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.  The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision — Planned Parenthood v. Casey — that largely maintained the right.  "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," Alito writes.

Politico Tries to Pre-Game SCOTUS by Publishing Leaked Draft Opinion Overturning Roe.  Since when do you leak draft opinions?  When you're trying to gin up the bloodthirsty pro-abortion crowd into a frenzy, that's when.  Between May and June is when the SCOTUS rulings on the cases of consequence — like Dobbs v.  Jackson Women's Health — begin to come down, and Americans watch with bated breath.  However, with the way things have been going for the Left and the Democrats (but I repeat myself), they are not confident that a Supreme Court with three Trump appointees will do their bidding; especially in light of their rulings on vaccine mandates and the Texas Heartbeat law.

Supreme Court Barricaded After Bombshell Abortion Leak, Leftists Start to Call for Rash Action.  The news is coming hard and fast after a bombshell leak out of the Supreme Court revealed a draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.  RedState reported on the initial details, noting that it is misleading to treat the draft as the final result.  Still, this is completely unprecedented, and it does appear that five justices were prepared at the time of the draft to overturn the landmark abortion precedents of Roe and Casey.  What happens next is where things get interesting, though.  Clearly, this leak was designed to gin up outrage and possibly violent threats against the justices in a last-ditch attempt to get them to change their votes.  Shortly after the leak was announced, barricades went up around the Supreme Court.

Hillary Alum Lauds Leaker: 'Brave Clerk' May Be Warning America of Roe Overturn in 'Last-Ditch Hail Mary Attempt' to Stop It.  As news of the possibility of infamous Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade being overturned is breaking, pro-abortion Democrats appear to be defending the possibility of a leak from the nation's High Court.  Lauding the potential "brave clerk" who may have leaked what appears to be a preliminary decision by Justice Samuel Alito to overturn Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, former national press secretary for Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 presidential campaign Brian Fallon said the apparent leaker took the "unpredecented [sic] step of leaking a draft opinion to warn the country what's coming in a last-ditch Hail Mary attempt to see if the public response might cause the Court to reconsider."

Jonathan Turley:  Supreme Court Abortion Decision Leak 'Original Sin for Judicial Ethics'.  Whoever leaked the alleged draft of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has committed the "original sin for judicial ethics," said Jonathan Turley, criminal defense attorney and Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.  Politico published an alleged draft on Monday [5/2/2022] of the Court's decision to overrule Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case.  The case revolves around Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban and is the most significant challenge in decades to the Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which declared abortion to be protected by the U.S. Constitution.  The draft was seemingly written by Justice Samuel Alito and has circulated inside the Court, the news outlet reported.

Supreme Court Rules Boston Violated First Amendment by Refusing to Fly Christian Flag outside City Hall.  The Supreme Court ruled on Monday [5/2/2022] that the city of Boston violated the First Amendment by refusing to fly a local organization's Christian flag in front of city hall, though it had flown other groups' flags.  The decision in Shurtleff v. the City of Boston was unanimous, with the Court ruling that Boston should have allowed the Christian group's flag because the flags did not represent government speech.  "We conclude that Boston's flag-raising program does not express government speech," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court.  "As a result, the city's refusal to let (the group) fly their flag based on its religious viewpoint violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment."  The Court said the city had created a public forum by allowing private organizations to use a flagpole in front of City Hall for commemorative events.  Therefore, the flagpole must be open to all because the government can't restrict speech based on a speaker's viewpoint in a public forum.

Is Chief Justice Roberts trying to turn votes to save Roe v Wade?  Writing at the Volokh Conspiracy site today, law professor Josh Blackman expresses some concern that Chief Justice John Roberts might be up to his old tricks again.  Specifically, Blackman parses the tea leaves from a Wall Street Journal editorial calling for an end to Roe v Wade (and Casey) and detects possible hints that Roberts is trying to save the decision by winning one of the two newest members over to the liberal side.

Justice Sotomayor poses bizarre question as SCOTUS hears arguments for school coach fired for praying.  On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in the case of Joseph Kennedy, a junior varsity head coach from Washington state's Bremerton School District who was fired in 2015 after praying at the 50-yard line after games.  The justices will reportedly be looking at two separate issues in the case before issuing their ruling.  First, whether the coach praying by himself within view of others including students amounted to unprotected "government speech," and second, if it is not, in fact, unprotected "government speech," would it still present issues under the First Amendment, specifically the Establishment Clause?

Supreme Court Signals Victory for Praying Football Coach.  The Supreme Court on Monday [4/25/2022] looked poised to side with a high school football coach who claims he was unfairly suspended for praying on the field.  The Bremerton School District in 2015 suspended coach Joe Kennedy, claiming his postgame prayers were designed to cause a spectacle.  Kennedy pushed back, claiming he was exercising his First Amendment rights.  During Monday's arguments, the justices seemed to take Kennedy's side.  Justice Brett Kavanaugh pushed back on the district's characterization of Kennedy as an attention-seeker and said it's hard for a head coach to do anything discreetly during an athletic event.  Justice Samuel Alito took issue with the district's rationale for suspending Kennedy.

SCOTUS to Hear Case Over Joe Biden Ending 'Remain in Mexico' Border Policy.  The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is scheduled to hear a case on Tuesday that will decide whether President Joe Biden illegally terminated the Migration Protection Protocols, known as former President Trump's "Remain in Mexico" program.  In 2019, Trump instated the Remain in Mexico program that helped effectively eliminate the policy of Catch and Release at the U.S.-Mexico border.  Rather than apprehending and releasing border crossers into the U.S. interior, the program required officials to return border crossers to Mexico while awaiting their asylum and immigration hearings in U.S. courts.  On June 1, 2021, Biden's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memorandum terminating Remain in Mexico.

Supreme Court [will] hear [the] First Amendment case of [a] high school football coach fired for praying at [the] 50-yard line after [the] woke mob complained.  A Washington high school assistant football coach who lost his job after praying at the 50-yard line while surrounded by students will take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, claiming the school district violated his First Amendment rights.  Joseph Kennedy, a Marine, said the Bremerton School District infringed on his religious freedom by refusing to let him continue praying at the midfield after games following an incident where students joined him in the prayer in September 2015.  Lawyers for the district said Kennedy was allowed to pray by himself, but following three more instances of the coach praying with students on the field and in locker rooms, he was placed on administrative leave and his contract was dropped in 2016, the New York Times reported.

It's Not Just Joe Biden.  The United States Has A Potemkin Government.  Joe Biden's shameful performance at the White House Easter egg roll Sunday was another strong visual indicator that he is not really governing this country.  And he's not the only sham authority in this country — our nation is replete with them. [...] About the only thing Congress can do right now is further inflate prices for working people by endlessly greasing politicians' corrupt cronies.  Oh, they can also elevate to final oversight of the people's Constitution a woman who believes our natural human rights must be destroyed.  That's a Potemkin Supreme Court justice, and if we get one more like her, or one of the current ones goes softer, it will be an entirely Potemkin Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Challenge From Teachers.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a New York City vaccine mandate challenge from teachers, meaning the mandate will be allowed to stand.  The nation's high court rejected the case without comment and provided no indication that any of the justices would take it.  The four teachers, who said the COVID-19-related rule violated their right to keep their profession, took their appeal to the Supreme Court after a lower court left the New York City mandate in place.  Those teachers previously asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees the state, to provide relief that would block the mandate from going into effect, which Sotomayor also rejected.

What Makes for A Qualified Supreme Court Nominee?  As Ketanji Brown Jackson ascends to the Supreme Court, it is valuable to assess how her nomination shaped our understanding of what it means that a judge is "qualified" to serve on the nation's highest Court.  Is Jackson qualified, as defined by her résumé and the path she has followed through the judiciary?  Of course.  But gone are the days of assessing potential justices on the basis of book smarts, pedigree and days spent on the job.  The obvious defining factor today is judicial philosophy, which is why Republicans not named Romney, Collins or Murkowski voted not to confirm Jackson.  Overwhelming Democratic opposition to Republican nominees is fueled by the same instinct.  No one can argue that the three Trump nominees — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett — or the George W. Bush ones — Roberts and Alito — lacked the background to be considered worthy.  But each came up against a wall of Democratic opposition because their views on the law were unacceptable to liberals.

Test for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson:  Actions Speak Louder Than Words.  The Senate voted 53-47 on Thursday to confirm President Joe Biden's nomination of D.C. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Three Republican senators — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah — joined all 48 Democratic senators and two independents in voting for Jackson.  At 51 years old, Jackson likely will serve for the next two or three decades.  Here are some things to watch for in the years ahead: [...]

Senate Confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court.  The Senate voted 53-47 to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Thursday [4/7/2022].  Jackson was nominated by President Biden after Justice Stephen Breyer announced in February that he will retire by summer.  Jackson will join Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in the Court's liberal minority.  Biden fulfilled a campaign pledge by nominating the first black woman to the Court.  Jackson will be the third African American justice confirmed to the Court, after Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas.

Senate votes 53-47 to CONFIRM Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first black female Supreme Court justice:  Biden hugs his.  The Senate voted 53-47 on Thursday [4/7/2022] to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, with three Republicans voting with all Democrats.  Jackson, a 51 year-old federal appeals court judge, will be the first black woman on the high court and the third black justice.  Her confirmation vote was not nearly as bipartisan as that of the justice she'd been chosen to replace, Stephen Breyer, and others.  But still, President Biden can tout a bipartisan win thanks to yes votes from GOP Sens. Mitt Romney, Utah, Susan Collins, Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, Alaska.  Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the Senate and banged the gavel to declare the final vote count and seal Jackson's confirmation, as Democrats throughout the Senate chamber broke out in raucous applause.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, Dave Aronberg And Jeffrey Epstein.  Federal election records show newly anointed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has given money to just two politicians, both Democrats:  Barack Obama and Dave Aronberg.  Obama was an obvious recipient of her largesse.  She worked on his 2008 presidential campaign, and he repaid the favor by appointing her to the U.S. Sentencing Commission followed by the D.C. District Court, while also commuting the three-strikes prison sentence of her cocaine-trafficking uncle.  But who is Aronberg?  He is a high school friend of Jackson from Florida, who, like her, has been accused of being soft on child sex offenders.  The two were also classmates at Harvard Law School.  Her financial gift to him is yet another data point indicating she is strangely not happy with laws protecting kids from sexual predators.  With the Senate Thursday [4/7/2022] voting to confirm her 53-47, she is now in a lifetime position to review the constitutionality of those laws.

Understanding the Progressive Mind.  How far have progressive criminals succeeded in subverting our system?  Ketanji Brown Jackson who is about to become a Supreme Court Justice is a believer in and promoter of Critical Race Theory, which means she considers the Constitution a "white supremacist" document that social justice warriors like her are bound not to respect.  And the entire Democrat Party thinks that's okay and is ready to support her.

The Left Is Melting Down Over Senator Tim Scott's Vote on Judge Jackson.  On Monday [4/4/2022] Republican Senator Tim Scott announced he will not vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.  "The historic nature of Judge Jackson's nomination reinforces the progress our country has made.  However, ideology must be the determining factor — not identity — when considering such an important lifetime appointment," Scott released in a statement.  "It is clear that Judge Jackson's judicial philosophy and positions on the defining issues of our time make her the wrong choice for the Supreme Court.  From leaving the door open on court packing to her multiple overturned opinions, I cannot support a nominee with her record of judicial activism.  I remain disappointed that President Biden missed the opportunity to unite the country with a mainstream nominee that could have received resounding bipartisan support.  For all these reasons, I will be voting no on Judge Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court."

Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown rejects America's very foundation.  America has two seminal documents:  The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  The former states the fundamental predicates justifying America's creation as an independent nation.  The latter is a contract that sees the federal government and the People define the government's function and limit its powers.  Both articulate principles that Biden's nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown, rejects.  Her rejection should instantly disqualify her.

Pro-Crime Party Nominates a Justice.  Presidents are entitled to nominate Supreme Court justices who represent their party and its values.  Using that as our guide, President Joe Biden picked the Democrats' perfect Supreme Court justice:  Ketanji Brown Jackson.  If you'd given me a thousand bucks to come up with a question that would stump a Supreme Court nominee, I never would have thought of:  What's a woman?  Democratic values.  As Sens. Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham amply demonstrated at the nomination hearings last week, Judge Jackson really likes defendants in child pornography cases.  She's partial to all criminals, but the child porn cases make the point bracingly.  In seven out of seven child pornography cases that came before Judge Jackson, where the sentencing was up to the judge, she imposed sentences that were a fraction of those recommended under the sentencing guidelines.  In all seven cases, her sentences were also far below those requested by the prosecutor.

Convicted child rapist nabbed for assault after lax sentence from Ketanji Brown Jackson.  Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson doled out a lenient sentence to a child rapist for violating probation — and he allegedly struck again during the time when prosecutors wanted him locked up, The [New York] Post has learned.  The Biden nominee's handling of sex offender Leo Weekes' case emerged in a tranche of court filings and transcripts sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday — just days before the panel is set to vote on whether to report her nomination to the full Senate.  While Republicans have previously highlighted Jackson's practice of giving the lightest possible punishments in child pornography cases, the Weekes case throws into question her treatment of rapists, as well.

LGBTQ+: Leftism's corruption of God's sacred gift to humankind.  [Scroll down]  Such subtleties are evidently lost on Joe Biden's pick for the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, currently a federal court judge, now nominated, in part, because she is (ahem!) a woman.  However, in sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Brown Jackson declared her inability to define "woman," citing her lack of training in biology.  Fox News host Tucker Carlson had a field day with this stupefying remark, then handily segued to Lia, the aquatic pretend woman.  "She" is the one whose "womanhood" is beyond question to the left's addled True Believers, but in a way that leaves a federal judge struggling for discernment.  The whole point of the "trans" movement, Carlson explains, is to force people to accept falsity as truth.

Biden's SCOTUS Nominee Excused Child Predators Possessing Graphic Pornographic Imagery.  A bombshell New York Post report and string of tweets from Jack Posobiec reveal even more reprehensibly lurid leniency from Joe Biden's SCOTUS nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson.  Her record on sentencing child molesters and predators had been made known earlier by Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) prior to and during her confirmation hearing, but these new details make Cotton's work look primitive. [...] It is nearly impossible to comprehend the level of depravity required to grant leniency to absuers of children.  Then again, these people advocate for the murder of nbabies and infants, so leneicny for preying on children seems par for the course.

A World Gone Mad.  Governments everywhere, including here in the USA, have abandoned God, good government, law and order, common sense, and traditional Judeo-Christian values.  They have jumped in with both feet into the dark and shadow without bothering to look back at seeing what they have already wrought. [...] We can include the hypocrisy Democrats have exhibited during these Supreme Court nomination hearings that they routinely turn into dog and pony shows.  They viciously attack any conservative nominee, regardless of race, while demanding respect be given their anti-constitutional nominees.  Poor Judge Jackson, she will always be remembered as the nominee who couldn't define the word woman, and just stared into the distance.

Ketanji Brown Jackson chose leniency even in baby sex torture cases.  In the eight child-porn cases that came before her court, former D.C. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson heard horrifying details of "sadomasochistic" torture of young kids — including "infants and toddlers" — yet challenged the disturbing evidence presented by prosecutors and disregarded their prison recommendations to give the lightest possible punishments in each case, according to transcripts of sentencing hearings obtained by the [New York] Post.  In some cases, she even apologized to some of the kiddie-porn perverts for having to follow the statutes, which she called "substantially flawed."  Over and over, the records reveal, Jackson made excuses for the sex fiends' criminal behavior and cut them slack in defiance of investigators and prosecutors — and sometimes even probation officers serving her court — who argued for tougher sentences because the cases were particularly egregious or the defendants weren't remorseful.

Democrats And Media Enablers Are Overlooking Child Sex Crimes To Protect Ketanji Brown Jackson.  [Scroll down]  The other child pornography cases overseen by Jackson do not involve teenagers.  They involve grown men actively seeking to groom children to have sexual intercourse, the distribution of sadomasochist pornography with depictions of young male children, and a case where a criminal distributed 102 child pornography videos and shared lewd photos of his 10-year-old daughter, among others.  In every single child pornography case handled by Judge Jackson, she went below the maximum recommendation, below the minimum recommendation, and below the prosecutor's request.  Now there is another case to consider — the details of which the Biden White House apparently "overlooked" when sharing records with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Navy ship to be named after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  A Navy fuel ship will be named for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in recognition of her efforts to advance women's rights and gender equality, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said Thursday [3/31/2022].  The future John Lewis-class replenishment oiler — a ship that transfers fuel to the Navy's operating carrier strike groups — will be the eighth such vessel to be named for an historic figure who fought for civil and human rights.  Others include former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojurner Truth, gay rights icon Harvey Milk and civil rights leader John Lewis.

Who will vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson and why?  Based on the torrent of information that has been made public about Ketanji Brown Jackson, it is shocking that any member of Congress would vote to confirm her to the SCOTUS.  Add to this that thousands of documents from her four years on the Sentencing Commission have been withheld, presumably by Dick Durbin.  Those four years of her record must be [really bad], for never before has a nominee's record not been made available to the Judiciary Committee.  Despite this breach of protocol, and thanks to Mike Davis of the Article3 Project, the members of the committee and the public have been able to familiarize themselves with her judicial history.  Just in the last few days, an eighth case has come to light, withheld by the White House, that again shows Jackson's penchant for handing out the briefest sentences possible.  In this one, the offender had 6,500 images of children being reprehensibly abused.  If confirmed, she would be the most radical justice ever to sit on the Supreme Court.

The Smearing of Clarence Thomas.  Democrats should not get away with their shameless political gambit to force Justice Clarence Thomas's recusal from Supreme Court cases based on the political activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas.  Supreme Court justices are not even subject to disqualification over their own activities that bear directly on cases.  This never upsets Democrats when the justices have been appointed by Democratic presidents.

Don't judge Clarence Thomas for wife Virginia's alleged 'insurrection' acts.  ["]We are long past the day when a wife's opinions are assumed to be the same as her husband's."  So argued Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, in 2013.  If the professor's name sounds familiar, it's because he's been cited by seemingly every major media outlet since news broke last week that Virginia Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, sent text messages to Donald Trump's White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to fight the 2020 election results.  The Los Angeles Times described Mr. Gillers as a "judicial ethics scholar," and The New York Times dubbed him "one of the nation's foremost legal-ethics experts."  But it turns out that the professor's ethics, like those of a lot of liberal Democrats these days, are situational.  In 2013 he was defending a decision by late Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals not to recuse himself from a case involving the American Civil Liberties Union, even though Reinhart's wife, Ramona Ripston, had served as executive director of the ACLU for Southern California.

Former Clarence Thomas Clerk:  Judges Are Never Asked To Recuse Themselves Over Political Views.  It's so predictable.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has now threatened Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign or else face impeachment.  Leftists in Congress and the media hyperventilate over every tidbit showing that Justice Thomas's wife, Ginni, is involved in national conservative politics — most recently, that she pushed for integrity in the 2020 election.  This isn't news, and it has nothing to do with Justice Thomas's ability to be a fair and impartial jurist.  Yet the Left breathlessly deploys false and double standards because they are desperate to attack the justice who has been faithful to the United States Constitution they are constantly trying to hijack for their own political agenda.  In a country based on self-government, citizens must be informed about what their government is doing.  Because the media won't report this nonstory accurately, here are the facts. [...]

Two Out Of Donald Trump's Three Supreme Court Selections Just Caved To The Left On A Major Ruling.  While many expected that Brett Kavanaugh, after his brutal treatment at the hands of the left during his mess of a confirmation hearing, would remain firmly entrenched on the right, that doesn't appear to be the case.  Instead, he just sided with the left on a major issue, setting the stage for Team Biden to start discharging unvaxxed Navy SEALs.  While conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented and argued that the SEALs should not be discharged for refusing the jab, Kavanaugh concurred with the leftist majority, [...]

Democrats Need to Be Destroyed.  Just 25 years ago, there was no question that Democrats knew what a "woman" was.  Do you really think Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy were confused by the concept?  No man has come forward claiming to have been sexually assaulted by them, so they either knew or managed to bat 1.000 with their guesses.  Nowadays, what a woman is has reverted to a mystery.  All the knowledge accumulated throughout all of human history on the subject has been tucked back, far out of sight, so as to obscure even a chromosome test.  Even God is confused, having made so many "mistakes" that even the angels in Heaven lost all understanding of what the other gender is.  There are now men and other people who may or may not be men, or they're something else, there's simply no way to know.  The nation's hotel doormat, USA Today, ran the dumbest piece ever written in any language in a desperate attempt to defend Ketanji Brown Jackson from criticism over not being able to define "woman."  (The answer, by the way, is: adult human female.  Pretty simple.)

Ketanji Brown Jackson should not be confirmed to the Supreme Court.  Supreme Court decisions not only change the legal landscape.  They can alter the culture in destructive ways.  Roe v. Wade was a cultural earthquake that led to the elimination of over 60 million nascent human beings.  Almost fifty years later, a majority of Americans believe that it was not only bad law, but evil.  Social upheaval ensues when Supreme Court Justices think they have the authority to make sweeping cultural changes by diktat.  Jackson as a devotee and admirer of Derrick Bell undoubtedly sees herself as a social reformer.  Bell is the "Godfather" of Critical Race Theory.  CRT says the law is based upon white supremacy.  Society is unjust and racist at its core, so goes the theory, and therefore, the law is as well.  It is not deserving of respect and deference, and ultimately, it must be overthrown.  Putting someone of this perspective on the Court is injecting poison into the heart of the American legal system.  She could be on the Supreme Court for thirty years, doing immense damage to our country.

Flashback: Ketanji Brown Jackson Had a Major Hand in 'Pizzagate' Trial.  In a rather interesting twist to the closely watched nomination of Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown to the U.S. Supreme Court, it turns out that President Joe Biden's pick for the high court happened to be the judge on a case involving a man who shot up the Washington D.C. pizzeria implicated by "Pizzagate" conspiracy theories.  Pizzagate arose in 2016, in the days leading up to the historic political standoff between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  It posited, based on allegedly covert language found among thousands of leaked emails, that Clinton and her Deep State cronies were involved in high-level child sex trafficking which involved the use of the restaurant Comet Ping Pong in Washington.  Jackson presided over the trial for Edgar Maddison Welch, who stormed the eatery with an AR-15 and a handgun.  Considering Jackson's lengthy professional history of advocating for lenient sentencing for child pornography offenders, this is certainly the sort of stuff that fuels Pizzagate-type conspiracy theories.

The Freeport Question of Our Time.  The "Freeport Question" refers to Abraham Lincoln's devastating question posed to Stephen Douglas in his second debate against Douglas on August 27, 1858, held in Freeport, Illinois.  The question was seemingly simple:  "Can the people of a Territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?"  Douglas's answer split the Democratic Party in half, and helped to assure Lincoln's victory in the 1860 presidential election.  Douglas's answer was Yes, a territory could exclude slavery prior to applying for statehood if the residents of the territory so chose.  But the Democratic Party's southern slave interest was demanding a federal "slave code" that would permit them to take slaves to any territory as a matter of federal legal right (a prospect made more possible by the lamentable Dred Scott decision), no matter what a majority of the residents thought.  As such, Douglas's answer was unacceptable, and so was his candidacy in 1860, which is why the Democratic Party split in half in the summer of 1860 and ran two tickets in the November election.

KBJ Hearings Typify Our Debased Political Discourse.  Since Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was chosen by President Biden to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, we've been encouraged by the White House, congressional Democrats, and the corporate media to celebrate her as the "first Black woman" nominated to serve on the Court.  Yet, when asked during her confirmation hearing to define the term "woman," she responded, "I can't ... I'm not a biologist."  The problem with this answer isn't just that it was unworthy of a serious SCOTUS nominee.  It is symptomatic of a debilitating disease that has infected our political discourse, rendering substantive policy debate all but impossible and endangering the republic.

Reject Ketanji Brown Jackson.  The issue with Ketanji Brown Jackson, the 51-year-old federal appellate judge who is our senile president's Supreme Court nominee, is not necessarily her on-paper qualifications.  By most traditional metrics, she is "qualified":  She has served as both a district court and appellate court judge, served as vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, formerly clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer (the man she has been nominated to replace) and is a double-Harvard alum.  In terms of "objective" criteria, this is an impressive resume.  Instead, the issue with Jackson is that she is a left-wing ideologue who, if successfully confirmed by the Senate, will devote the next few decades endeavoring to move the Supreme Court far to the left.  All relevant indications are that she will approach her job not like her (slightly) more pragmatic former boss, but like a leftist activist — in the mode of her possible future colleague, the midwit partisan flack Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  Worse, Jackson, due to the outrageous race- and sex-conscious nominating process in which President Joe Biden selected her, is uniquely unfit to render equal justice under the law for legal issues affecting race and sex.

Is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson humble, or just an idiot?  If Harvard Law School grads were paying attention to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's testimony in responding to Sen. Marsha Blackburn's simple but revealing question on defining "woman," they would petition the provost to rescind her diploma.  Judge Jackson purports not to know what a woman is:  "I'm not a biologist."  Thus, Judge Jackson would have to recuse herself from any court case involving human biology, sex and gender, equal protection, even women's right to vote.  The corollary fits Judge Jackson's competence in applying jurisprudence where she is not credentialed in any subject matter.  For example, she's not an agronomist or a hydrologist or a botanist or a bio-chemist, so she couldn't sit on a case involving the EPA and soil erosion, nitrous oxide leaching into water supplies, SuperFund sites, navigable waterways, or ethanol Renewable Fuel Standards.

Ketanji Brown Jackson's Big Lie to Sen. Blackburn Exposes Progressivism.  When Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to define the word "woman," during Jackson's U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she got the response "I can't."  When Blackburn responded with an incredulous "You can't?" Jackson replied:  "Not in this context.  I'm not a biologist."  It takes a biologist to define "woman"? Does Jackson think we're morons?  In a way, yes.  Or she doesn't care.  She's a progressive, and progressives have been redefining language — English and many others — to fit their purposes dating back to the Spanish Civil War and undoubtedly earlier.  Jackson very well knows what a woman is.  The nominee has known this all her life, as we all have.  But these days, in her part of the political world, she's not supposed to.  So she lied.

Even Republican Presidents Would Seem to Have a Right to Free Speech.  It seems to me that the point of the super partisan congressional January 6 Commission is to tar former president Donald Trump with inciting a riot ("insurrection" for the hyperbolic), an issue they raised and lost in the second impeachment battle.  Perhaps they hope to persuade the Department of Justice to institute some cooked-up criminal charges against him for his comments on January 6.  If I'm right about their objective, this week the Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion seems to have dealt them a setback. [...] The short form precis of this decision is that elected officials are free to criticize each other under the Constitution.  Blackman argues, and the Wilson case supports his contention, that while the First Amendment does not preclude some restraints on the free speech rights of civil servants, the same kind of restraints are simply inapplicable to elected officials.  This strikes me as self-evident.

'Wrong Direction' to Choose a Supreme Court Justice Based on Skin Color:  Ben Carson.  It's a wrong direction to choose a Supreme Court Justice candidate based on race and gender instead of merit and qualifications, said Ben Carson, the Housing and Urban Developing Secretary under the Trump administration.  "So many people fought for such a long time to make sure that we had equality of opportunity.  And a lot of blood was shed.  A lot of people went to prison.  Then we just turn around and sort of throw all that out, and start saying, 'We're going to make the qualification something over which a person has no control — their external characteristics,' and that's moving in the wrong direction," Carson told NTD's "Capitol Report" program in a recent interview, referring to President Joe Biden's pledge to send a black woman to the high court.  "We really have to stop that and start asking ourselves: what makes a person who they are?  Is it their skin?  Is it their hair?  Or is it their brain?"

KBJ's promise to recuse herself from the Harvard discrimination case is meaningless.  KBJ is the person whom biologist Joe Biden assures us is "a black woman" in accordance with his earlier promise to nominate a person of that sex and color as a great act of noblesse oblige for which he, as a non-black non-woman, we think, should be honored in history, especially in view of his dementia.  Surely he'll now join Barack Obama, Al Gore and Yassar Arafat in receiving a Nobel Peace Prize.  I wonder if he'll deposit the check into that joint checking account he shares with Hunter.  We have to take Joe's word for KBJ's sex and color.  Since she's not a biologist, KBJ herself is unable to confirm that she's a woman and it's not clear whether she's able to confirm that she's black.

Media Bias Works:  Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Widely Popular.  Gallup on Wednesday published a new poll showing that Americans just love Ketanji Brown Jackson and want her on the Supreme Court right away:  she is supposedly broadly popular, more so than anyone who has been nominated to the court since the 1980s.  The far-Left news aggregator BoingBoing is thrilled, gushing about "the first black woman nominated to the Supreme Court and the most popular Supreme Court nominee in modern history," but Gallup's poll is really less about Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom nobody had ever heard of before Old Joe Biden nominated her to the Supreme Court, than it is about the lingering power of the establishment media.  The Democrat party propaganda organs that masquerade as news organizations still wield considerable persuasive power, and that's not good news.

After Sen. Kennedy's Questioning, Constitutional Law Expert Reminds Us Who Really Chose KBJ.  In his live-tweeting of the confirmation hearings this week to decide if Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Committee for Justice (CFJ) President Curt Levey made a telling point about how Judge Jackson was selected as the nominee in the first place, which included considerable involvement from White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain.  [Tweet]

'Disqualifying' words from Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.  After four long days of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee, we are left with more questions than answers about what kind of justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would be if confirmed to the Supreme Court — and the answers the Senate received were troubling to the point of being disqualifying.  Judge Jackson repeatedly claimed to not have a judicial philosophy.  Instead, she suggested that she uses a "methodology" that she has developed throughout her time on the bench:  utilizing "the arguments of the parties, the facts in the case, and the law that applies in every case" as "inputs" that aid her decision-making.  The problem is that this "methodology" wholly lacks substance, and Jackson described more of a functional strategy used by every judge, rather than a philosophical lens through which she views the law.  A judicial philosophy is needed to inform how the law is read and how it applies to the facts of any case.

Court Strikes Down Democrat Gerrymander in Maryland.  It's been a wild, past few weeks, when it comes to surprise rulings on redistricting.  As RedState reported on Wednesday [3/23/2022], the US Supreme Court stepped in to overturn Gov. Tony Ever's district-level map in Wisconsin.  That left the left reeling, not because of the consequences of possibly losing a district or two, but because the precedent of the ruling took another big bite out of the Voting Rights Act, which Democrats have used for decades as a kind of "cheat code" to gerrymander in their favor while stopping Republicans from doing the same.

First Liberty Lawyer:  Ketanji Brown Jackson Can't Uphold Constitution if She Thinks It's Racist.  Keisha Toni Russell, a constitutional lawyer at First Liberty Institute, testified Thursday in opposition of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination for the Supreme Court, arguing that her support of critical race theory means she would not be able to uphold the Constitution if she believes it is racist.  "Every lawyer and judge promises to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution, but she cannot uphold this oath if she believes that the Constitution and the principles of America's foundation are racist and inherently flawed.  Neither can a judge remain impartial and administer justice independently if she holds a philosophy that correcting racism requires affording privileged classes less justice than oppressed classes," Russell said in her opening statement.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is a Trojan Horse.  Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson does have several attributes in common with the President.  For one, she's got a lousy memory.  Indeed, it was Senator Cruz's careful and repetitious questioning, that helped her to recall quite a few things about herself that she had previously forgotten.  Such a lack of self-awareness from one who anticipates setting precedent is disturbing.  She did independently recall "staring at the image on the cover [of Derrick Bell's book Faces At The Bottom Of The Well] when I was growing up."  She must have been a very late bloomer.  That book was first published when she was a senior at Harvard.  Judge Brown is no scholar.  She's a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law, yet couldn't recall the core arguments in the pivotal Dred Scott case.  How does she expect to converse intelligently with thoroughly prepared lawyers regarding precedent and relevance in cases that will appear before her in the Supreme Court?

The Editor says...
She may be incompetent, evasive, smug, and soft on child pornographers, but she sure is black.  Sadly, that's all that matters.

Tom Cotton Destroys Brown Jackson Over Support Of Suspected Terrorists.  Tom Cotton would already have earned an A+ for his digging into Joe Biden's affirmative action nominee Ketanjio Brown Jackson and her disgusting leniency toward and support for consumers of child pornography.  She is vile.  As if Cotton hadn't done enough already, now he's going after the judge and Supreme Court hopeful for her almost-as-bad representation of suspected terrorists and detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  Kudos to Cotton for having the stones to do what few GOP seem willing to anymore.  Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, John Kennedy, and Marsha Blackburn have been impressive throughout the hearings as well.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden's Supreme Court pick, reveals a lot with questions she won't answer.  Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats incessantly remind us that the historic milestone marked by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination is that she would become the Supreme Court's first Black woman.  Yet, how historically significant can it be if she can't say what a woman is?  For all her appeal — and in 12 grueling hours of testimony on Tuesday, Judge Jackson's intellect and charm were on full display — the nominee is dodgy.  Though a highly accomplished — indeed, a historic — woman, she testified that she can't "provide a definition" of what a woman is.

They're Really Going to Die on This Hill?  [Scroll down]  It's a certainty the judge will be confirmed to the court, but what is not at all certain is how much more damage Democrats will do to themselves before the hearings are over.  Republicans have appropriately stayed focused exclusively on Brown Jackson's public comments and previous court rulings as well as direct questions concerning her past opinions and philosophy.  How well has it gone?  Polling among the general population shows a mixed impression at best, despite most agreeing she'll be confirmed.  Not hard to understand when you discover the judge couldn't define what a woman is.  Brown Jackson said "I don't know" when asked when life begins.  Most disturbingly, the judge and her defenders tied themselves in knots this week explaining why she went so light on past sentencing of child pornographers and pedophiles.  Too much uncomfortable time was spent explaining and listening to her statements parsing what ages constitute actual child rape and what ages seem too close in age to be considered pedophilia.

Bongino: Ketanji Brown Jackson disqualified herself with this single claim.  During Tuesday's [3/22/2022] confirmation hearing, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., cited a decision from another liberal justice, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote in U.S. v. Virginia that "supposed inherent differences are no longer accepted as a ground for race or national origin classifications, physical differences between men and women, however, are enduring."  Turning to Jackson, the Tennessean asked if she agreed with Ginsburg that sexes are not "fungible" and asked her for a definition.  Jackson said she couldn't provide a definition for the word "woman" and argued it was because she was not a biologist.  Bongino said that claim was the cherry on top of an "absymal performance" by Jackson[.]  "I think it's clear at this point that Judge Brown Jackson is not qualified to be a Supreme Court justice — why, she said so.  I didn't say it, she said it.  I'm telling you, I don't think she's qualified, but she said [as much] too," he said.  "You can't hear this enough:  There is nobody on Planet Earth who should sit on the bench if they can't describe in simple terms what a woman is — How do you not know what a woman is?  How can you not define what a woman is?  Ketanji Brown Jackson is a woman.  I know that.  She doesn't know?  She's unaware she's a woman?" he continued.

The things they don't teach at Harvard — Black Woman Brown Jackson canot define "woman".  Joe Biden promised that in picking a nominee to fill the upcoming opening on the Supreme Court, he would not consider any white or Hispanic or Asian people and not consider any men at all.  He promised to consider only black women.  Only about 2% of American lawyers fall into that demographic.  In overtly discriminating against the other 98%, Biden committed an obvious violation of the Civil Rights Act, but I rather doubt Biden's Department of Labor will file suit.  True to his promise, Biden found a black woman lawyer to nominate.  Her name is Ketanji Brown Jackson.  It was Biden who touted his nominee as "a black woman" even before he chose her, and so I suppose we should honor that designation.  Henceforth, she is "Black Woman Brown Jackson." [...] In any event, I suspect that Black Woman Brown Jackson will decide on a definition of "woman" within seconds after she is confirmed by the Senate and will stick to that definition for her 30 or more years on the Supreme Court.  We won't like her definition, nor will any real biologist.  But the lying leftist wokerati will.  This is the same group that says Justice Clarence Thomas is not really black, because he's a conservative.To the left, what matters is ideology and power, not logic, honesty or truth.

Four times Jackson was rattled by GOP pressure during Supreme Court hearing.  Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has come out strongly against a strict line of questioning by GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee despite a select number of moments in which she became rattled during the confirmation process.  [#1] Defining what a woman is:  Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, asked Jackson on Tuesday night about a number of culture war issues, including efforts to permit or ban transgender student-athletes to compete on teams corresponding to their gender identity rather than their biological sex.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Denies Connection to CRT. Her Past Says Otherwise.  Under questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, at her Supreme Court hearing, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ran away from critical race theory as fast as possible.  Her record says otherwise, however.  The candidate's past embrace of some of critical race theory's leading proponents is concerning, and shows that she has so far gotten off easy during her hearing. [...] In her exchange with Cruz, Jackson insisted that she had never studied critical race theory.  "It wouldn't be something that I would rely on if I was on the Supreme Court," Jackson said to Cruz.  In 2015, however, Jackson said that she tries to convince her students that sentencing "melds together myriad types of law," including "administrative law, constitutional law, critical race theory," etc.  Jackson also has closer ties to critical race theory.  When Cruz asked Jackson whether critical race theory was taught in schools, she responded, "I don't think so.  I believe it is an academic theory that is taught at the law school level."  That is in itself a red herring.  As we never tire of pointing out, even if critical race theory is not assigned to K-12 students, it is likely applied, such as, for example, when teachers and trainers force students to perform "anti-racism" trainings that separate them by race or ethnicity.

Democrats Condone Child Porn?  The New York Times has published a lot of stupid stuff over the years, but this is one of the worst bits of analysis I've seen in a long time.  It comes from an article on Judge Jackson's confirmation hearing that is headlined "Judging a Judge on Race and Crime, G.O.P. Plays to Base and Fringe."  It includes this absurd smear: ["]By making the leniency allegations [re child porn sentencing], Mr. Cruz, Ms. Blackburn and Mr. Hawley appeared to be exploiting echoes of QAnon, which has a broad, almost cultlike reach among some members of the Republican base. [...] ["]

How Can Ketanji Brown Jackson Rule In Sex Discrimination Cases If She Can't Define 'Woman'?  Judicial confirmation hearings are rarely illuminating.  Since the introduction of television cameras, they mostly serve as a way for senators to say what they want their constituents to hear and for judicial nominees to say as little as possible.  Nothing is learned, at least not on purpose.  But occasionally, we learn something by accident.  At Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asked a seemingly innocuous question:  "Can you provide a definition of the word 'woman'?"  The nominee was unable to do so.  It might seem like a question that goes more to politics than to the job of a judge, but when sex discrimination is frequently before the court — including as recently as last year in Bostock v. Clayton County — it behooves a judge to have some inkling about what "sex" means.

Cruz: I'm Not Voting for Jackson, Who's Probably the First SCOTUS Nominee Who Can't Say What a Woman Is.  On Wednesday's broadcast of the Fox News Channel's "Jesse Watters Primetime," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he will not vote for the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and that Jackson is probably the first SCOTUS nominee in history who can't define what a woman is.  Cruz said, "Well, listen, she is probably the first Supreme Court nominee in the history of our country who is unable to answer the question, what is a woman?  And her record, unfortunately, I think, is far outside the mainstream."

GOP senators complain Durbin 'editorializing' during Supreme Court hearings.  At the start of the third day of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings Wednesday, a pair of GOP members complained that Democratic Chairman Dick Durbin is "editorializing" between Republican talking points.  The complaints began with Texas Sen. John Cornyn after Durbin claimed Jackson's hearings have become a "testing ground for conspiracy theories" against President Joe Biden's high court nominee, who is tapped to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer and would become the first black woman on the Supreme Court if confirmed by the Senate.

Supreme Court Decision on Redistricting Leaves Democrats Reeling.  Republicans were down a touchdown with one play left and half the field to go in Wisconsin regarding redistricting for the state legislature, but thanks to a shocker of a decision from the Supreme Court, overtime has just been forced.  Previously, Wisconsin's highest court had decided to use maps drawn by the Democrat governor after a months-long battle with Republican lawmakers.  In doing so, the process hurdled past several legal issues that the Supreme Court decided were improperly ignored.

Supreme Court tosses Wisconsin legislative voting maps.  The Supreme Court on Wednesday [3/23/2022] threw out Wisconsin state legislative maps that were preferred by the state's Democratic governor and selected by Wisconsin's top court, making it unclear what the boundaries will be for the fall election.  But while the justices in an unsigned opinion threw out voting maps the Wisconsin Supreme Court had selected for the State Assembly and Senate, they left in place state congressional maps.  The state's highest court selected the maps from a range of options after lawmakers and the governor couldn't agree.

The glib and unresponsive job interview.  Imagine interviewing for a job — in this case, the United States Supreme Court — and treating the interviewers with contempt.  Glib and unresponsive.  Two words that accurately describe the posture of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson while taking questions from Republican Senators at yesterday's hearing.  In what can only be described as a foregone conclusion with a bit of window dressing, Jackson's hearing was filled with shelter and protection from tough questions provided by Democrat committee chairman Dick Durbin.  Consistently giving lighter sentencing for convicted child pornography offenders than recommended by prosecutors was just a sample of the radical nature of Jackson's past decisions.  But what was more reveling during Senate questioning was Jackson's contemptuous smirk — knowing that a non-response held no consequences and would not interfere with her assured appointment.

If Ketanji Brown Jackson Doesn't Know What a 'Woman' Is, Why Does She Use the Word So Much?  Joe Biden's recent Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom the president has admitted was nominated in part because she is a woman, stunned listeners on Tuesday when she refused to give a definition of what a woman is.  "I can't. ... I'm not a biologist," Jackson said after Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked her to provide a definition of the word "woman."  But for not knowing what a "woman" is, Jackson loves to use the word.  Here are 14 times she invokes the fairer sex in just the first two days of her confirmation hearings, plus 34 times she's used the word in her legal opinions as a judge.

The Takeaway from KBJ: She Can't Define a Woman.  I haven't been paying much attention to the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and I suspect the American public isn't either.  In these kinds of low-salience cases, I'd guess that only one moment is really going to matter in the popular perception, and Republicans have created it.  The Democrat-allied media are underplaying or ignoring this exchange, but it was absolutely devastating.  In essence, the Republicans were poking around, somewhat ineptly, trying to make the judge say something that would sound extreme, shocking, bizarre, nonsensical, alarming, and ultra-woke to the average American, and Senator Blackburn finally succeeded.

A Big 'No' On Ketanji Brown Jackson.  As both President Joe Biden and the Democrats have made clear, Jackson was selected because she was, 1) African-American, 2) a woman, and (most important of all) 3) a leftist.  Unfortunately, none of those things are actual qualifications for the Supreme Court.  Despite her superficially sparkling resume, under tough questioning this week, she showed why she shouldn't be privileged with a seat on our nation's highest court.  On issue after issue, she whiffed, at times pretending not to have an opinion, or acting as if she didn't really know much about certain landmark legal cases and current controversies.  Indeed, it became very clear under questioning that Jackson has been disingenuous about her legal philosophy and extreme political beliefs that encompass race, gender, crime and culture, among other things.  Her answers were at times not believable.

Democrats Call Republican Senators Racist for Treating Ketanji Jackson Like Everyone Else.  Here we go again.  Democrats have found yet another opportunity to falsely label their political opposition as racist.  The Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson began on Monday [3/21/2022] and the left is already characterizing Republican senators as vicious racists for daring to question her qualifications.  Even Mr. Magoo could have seen this coming from a mile away.  Several members of the left-wing chattering class have already started lobbing erroneous accusations of racism at GOP lawmakers for questioning the nominee.  Professional race-baiter Elie Mystal wrote a piece for The Nation in which he predicted Republicans are going to do all kinds of racisms to keep Jackson from being appointed to the Supreme Court.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden's Supreme Court pick, reveals a lot with questions she won't answer.  Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats incessantly remind us that the historic milestone marked by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination is that she would become the Supreme Court's first Black woman.  Yet, how historically significant can it be if she can't say what a woman is?  For all her appeal — and in 12 grueling hours of testimony on Tuesday, Judge Jackson's intellect and charm were on full display — the nominee is dodgy.  Though a highly accomplished — indeed, a historic — woman, she testified that she can't "provide a definition" of what a woman is.  Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., even tried to help, spoon-feeding her the wisdom of an iconic progressive, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that "physical differences between men and women ... are enduring.  The two sexes are not fungible."  But Jackson was unmoved — if there is a difference between men and women, she's claims she is unable to discern it.

Ketanji Brown Jackson [is] getting the respect that Amy Coney Barrett was denied.  The famous "gonzo journalist" Hunter S. Thompson once said, "Politics is the art of controlling your environment."  The confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is about to vividly show what Thompson meant.  Less than two years after the abusive treatment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Senate is holding a hearing that is dramatically different in the treatment of the Supreme Court nominee and the issues considered relevant to her confirmation.  For those with memories going back to 2020, there have been striking differences in how the news media haved covered Jackson's nomination in recent weeks.  When Barrett was nominated, the media ran unrelenting attacks on her and her background.  Nothing was viewed as out of bounds, from her religion to her personal life to fabricated theories of prior assurances on pending cases.

The First Black Woman Nominated to the Supreme Court Can't Define 'Woman'.  In a situation almost beyond belief, the individual who's been heralded by the liberal media and Democrats for her historic status as the first black woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court is unable to define "woman," according to her testimony late on Tuesday night [3/22/2022]. The somewhat ironic if not tragic revelation came courtesy of a line of questioning from Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) who — even some 13 hours after the hearings started — was fired up and ready to roll.  "Can you provide a definition for the word woman?" Blackburn asked.  "Can I provide a definition?" Judge Jackson responded somewhat surprised.  "Mhmm, yeah," Blackburn responded.  "I can't," Jackson said.  "You can't?" Blackburn responded.  "Mmm, not in this context — I'm not a biologist," Judge Jackson said.

Supreme Court Nominee And Pedo Sympathizer, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Can't Tell You What A Woman Is.  As the confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson went into hour 13, Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked the Supreme Court nominee on Tuesday to define the word "woman."  "I can't — " Jackson replied.  "You can't?" Blackburn said.  "Not in this context.  I'm not a biologist," Jackson said.  [Video clip]

Pre K-12 School Where Judge Jackson Sits on Board Pushes Cultural Marxism on Kids.  Georgetown Day School, the private Pre K-12 school where Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson sits on the board of trustees, teaches radical critical theory pedagogy, and boasts on its website "everyone will engage in the work of social justice within all aspects of school life" — which Judge Jackson would be required to "support" and "promote" as a member of the board.  During her second day of questioning by senators on Tuesday, Judge Jackson took questions from a number of Republicans pertaining to her opinion on "Critical Race Theory" — and Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) specifically probed her on race-essentialist materials being taught at Georgetown Day School, such as "Antiracist Baby" by Ibram X. Kendi.  However, teaching "Antiracist Baby" is not the only radical material being pushed on children at the school where Judge Jackson sits on the board.

Biden's Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson refuses to define the word 'woman' because she's 'not a biologist'.  Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson refused to define the word 'woman' during the fiery second day of her confirmation hearing conducted by the Senate's Judiciary Committee.  The moment came during a tense exchange with Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) who pressed Jackson on sex and gender issues amid the fallout of biological male swimmer Lia Thomas storming to victory in the NCAA championships against female competitors.  Quoting late Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Blackburn said:  'Physical differences between men and women are enduring.  The two sexes are not fungible.  A community made up exclusively of one sex is different from a community composed of both.'  'Do you agree with Justice Ginsburg that there are physical differences between men and women that are enduring?' the senator asked.

Five Key Points from Ketanji Brown Jackson's Tough Day in the Senate.  Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had a tough day Tuesday, as she faced the first serious questions about her record and her judicial philosophy.  Judge Jackson came across during the introduction hearing on Monday as a personable, likable and accomplished attorney and jurist, with a beautiful family.  On Tuesday, however, she was unable to satisfy concerns that she harbors deeply radical political views, and that she has a record of being too soft on sex offenders.

Ketanji Brown Jackson's anti-constitutional, pro-child predator views.  Today was the second day of hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, a person Joe Biden nominated to the Supreme Court because she's a leftist Black woman.  It revealed that she is anti-constitutional, anti-White, and has a weird fondness for child sex predators.  Democrats' statements today boiled down to three things:  (1) We are so excited that you're a Black female.  (2) Republicans are racist for daring to inquire into your credentials and views.  (3) Regarding those racist questions, we would never treat a Supreme Court nominee as disrespectfully as the Republicans are treating you.  (Their disgraceful treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Comey Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork has been memory-holed.)  The real focus was on Jackson's disturbing views about child sexual predators, the Constitution, and race.  Her answers revealed that she's either very dumb or very dishonest.

Why do Democrats Hate Children?  Every time there's a headline involving Democrats and children it is evident that as a group, Democrats hate children.  Not only do they appear to hate them, they appear to enjoy, support and promote sexually and mentally abusing and killing them.  They want to abort them, even when a fetus is shown to probably be viable after 24 weeks.  Even if that means crushing the baby's skull and tearing that fetus apart limb by limb in order to "deliver" it.  That's what a late term abortion is. [...] If an adult sexually assaults, abuses, penetrates or traffics a child, that's okay by them, too.  Just ask Biden's SCOTUS nominee, Kentanji Brown Jackson who thinks that even basic sentences for child rapists and abusers are "too harsh."

Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin Leaps to Defend Ketanji Brown Jackson from Accusations of Leniency in Child Porn Possession Cases.  Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) leaped to the defense of President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee on the second day of her confirmation hearing, favorably questioning her record of "lenient" sentences for defendants who were caught in possession of child pornography.  Durbin, who is the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, started off the hearing by raising questions about Ketanji Brown Jackson's record of sentencing "non-production" cases below federal guidelines — a line of questioning which was in direct response to Sen. Josh Hawley's (R-MO) Twitter thread last week.  In these tweets, Hawley detailed Jackson's rulings, interviews, articles, and speeches and accused her of "having a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes."

The Greenhouse Effect at the Supreme Court.  It goes without saying that leftists have perfected the art of situational ethics.  The basic operating rule for the left is: "'Democracy' means getting what we want; if any institution doesn't give us what we want, that institution must be destroyed," though they will always call it "reform." [...] We now see this in the case of the Supreme Court, which is infuriating liberals because it no longer serves as a policy-making body for the left to use as an end-run around the branches of government accountable to voters.  Look no further than the primal scream in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books from long-time Supreme Court "reporter" Linda Greenhouse.  Sober Court watchers have long noted the "Greenhouse Effect," which in this case has nothing to do with climate change.  It refers to the supposedly soothing, no-ideology-to-see-here persona Greenhouse has affected for decades.  Her article is predictably entitled, "Should We Reform the Supreme Court?"  In other words, should we add more Justices or change it around in some way so as to "restore" it as a Progressive battering ram.

Judge Jackson in brief.  Judge Jackson is easy to read.  Her tone of voice in response to unfriendly questions is insufferable.  She talks down to the unenlightened.  She looks down on conservatives.  She buys every chapter and verse of the rapidly evolving progressive dogma.  The rapidly evolving progressive dogma is to be incorporated into the Constitution as the opportunity presents itself.  Her merits are entirely superficial.  She makes a good appearance if you don't look too closely.

Senator Kennedy Stumped Biden's Supreme Court Nominee with One Question.  As Tuesday's Supreme Court confirmation hearing dragged into the evening hours, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) raised a simple question about when constitutional protections for life — or even just life itself — begins.  "When does life begin, in your opinion," Senator Kennedy asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for starters.  "Senator... um... I don't... know," Judge Jackson replied, followed by an uneasy, awkward laugh. [...] Senator Kennedy pushed further on the point, asking Judge Jackson an important follow-up, "When does equal protection of the laws attach to a human being?"  "Well Senator, um... I believe that the Supreme Court... um... actually I, I actually don't know the answer to that question — I'm sorry — I don't," Judge Jackson responded, again with an ill-timed grin on her face as her initially confident answer turned to another know-nothing response.

Ignorant:
Ketanji Brown Jackson 'Did Not Know' Joe Biden Twice Filibustered Black Nominee Janice Rogers Brown.  Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson "did not know" former ranking member of the Judiciary Committee Joe Biden twice filibustered black nominee Janice Rogers Brown for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.  "Do realize she was filibustered for two years when she was appointed to the D.C. circuit judge?" Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked.  "I didn't know that," Jackson responded.  "Did you know that Joe Biden filibustered Janice Rogers Brown?" Graham asked.  "I did not know that[,"] Jackson again said.  "Now that you know that, how do you feel about it?" Graham asked to which Jackson had no response.

Evasive:
SCOTUS pick Jackson won't say whether she backs court-packing push.  Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson refused to say Tuesday whether she would support increasing the number of justices on the high court, invoking a statement by current Justice Amy Coney Barrett.  Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) posed the court-packing question to Jackson during the second day of her Senate confirmation hearing by suggesting that Barrett had said that she "could not opine" on the issue when she appeared before the committee in October 2020.  "I agree with Justice Barrett and her response to that question when she was asked before this committee," Jackson said.  "My North Star is the consideration of the proper role of a judge in our constitutional scheme," she added.  "In my view, judges should not be speaking to political issues, and certainly not a nominee to the Supreme Court."

Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Refuses to Join with Ginsburg, Breyer in Opposing Court-Packing.  Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday refused to join with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer in opposing court-packing.  Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked Jackson where she stood on court-packing, noting that although it is a congressional decision, justices have weighed in on the subject before.  Grassley specifically asked her if she would side with liberal justices Ginsburg and Breyer, who opposed court-packing.

Incompetent:
Supreme Court nominee Jackson doesn't 'quite remember the basis' for Dred Scott decision.  Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who President Biden nominated to the Supreme Court to become the first ever Black female justice, admitted Tuesday that she could not recall the basis for the infamous Dred Scott decision, which in 1857 said that a Black person whose ancestors had been slaves could not be an American citizen.  The case came up during Jackson's confirmation hearing on Tuesday, when she faced questioning from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.  Cornyn brought up the concept of substantive due process, a legal doctrine utilized to expand the Constitution's due process clause to protect various rights not enumerated in the Constitution.

Sen. Josh Hawley Presses Judge Jackson For 'Apologizing' To Child Porn Offender.  Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley pressed Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on allegedly "apologizing" to a child pornography offender at Tuesday's [3/22/2022] confirmation hearing.  Hawley raised the case United States v. Hawkins, where Jackson sentenced an 18-year-old child porn offender 3 months imprisonment, despite sentencing guidelines recommending up to 10 years.  He read a transcript in which Jackson allegedly told the convict there is "no reason to think" that he is a pedophile.  "Didn't you apologize to him?  And I just got to tell you, I can't quite figure this out," Hawley said.  "You said to him, 'This is a truly difficult situation.  I appreciate that your family's in the audience.  I feel so sorry for them, and for you and the anguish this has caused all of you.  I feel terrible about the collateral consequences of this conviction.'  And then you go on to say 'sex offenders are truly shunned in our society.'  I'm just trying to figure out, judge, is he the victim here?"

Senators [are being] kept from seeing Sentencing Commission records on Supreme Court nominee.  The Biden administration is keeping more than 48,000 pages of records about Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson from senators reviewing her nomination, including documents about her time at the U.S. Sentencing Commission that she has made a central part of her professional story.  Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is "hiding" records from Jackson's time as vice chair of the Sentencing Commission, where she championed leniency for child predators, says Michael Davis, former chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Monday that 16,000 pages of substantive content has been released on Jackson, compared to the 48,000 pages withheld by the White House under the Presidential Records Act and FOIA exemptions.

Secrecy Shrouds Key Jackson Documents Despite Durbin's Sunshine Week Praise.  Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was among the bipartisan group of signers of a March 16 Sunshine Week letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro declaring that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) "is crucial for ensuring transparency and accountability in government, but persistent challenges continue to limit citizens' ability to access information under the statute."  Sunshine Week is the annual celebration of the FOIA by journalists, transparency advocates, and some elected officials.  Durbin and the other signers asked Dodaro, who heads the Government Accountability Office (GAO), to investigate why there is a huge, and growing, backlog of unanswered FOIA requests at federal agencies.  But, as Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the top Republican on the judiciary panel, made clear during the first day of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, private citizens aren't alone in having trouble getting government agencies to produce copies of official documents the FOIA requires to be made public.

Dick Durbin blocks documents showing Ketanji Brown Jackson's judicial record.  The Senate hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination are not going well.  Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin is blocking the release of documents showing Brown Jackson's actual record as a judge, taking a page from the tactics of impeachment-obsessed Rep. Adam Schiff.  That's how Democrats do hearings these days. [...] Which signals that there is something they are trying to hide.  According to the Article3Project, Brown Jackson sentenced perverts, predators, and child molesters to less-than-recommended jail and prison time on a consistent basis. [...] She's also been strikingly soft on kiddie porn purveyors and viewers, despite the hard fact that 80% of viewers of child porn are likely to have molested a child in real life, according to a study from the Mayo Clinic.  She views hard punishments of these dirtbags as "stigmatization" and "revenge."  Any concerns for the permanently harmed children in these monstrous crimes?  Apparently not from her — and of course, a show of the records could correct us if we are wrong.  But Durbin wants no such records out there, which can only by default lead to the conclusion that they are worse than what people suspect.

Democrats Learn What Consequences Are During Ketanji Brown Jackson's Confirmation Hearing.  The confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson began on Capitol Hill on Monday.  The prior reactions in the mainstream media were what you'd expect.  Namely, endless, slobbering profiles and claims that any questioning of the judge's record would be racist and out of bounds.  When the time came, Sen. Dick Durbin opened the hearing by pleading with Republicans for "civility."  [Tweet]  Of course, Republicans owe Durbin and his party nothing of the sort.  After all, it's been less than four years since one of the most disturbing, disgusting congressional and media spectacles in US history:  The Brett Kavanaugh hearings.  We all remember the eleventh-hour letter brought forth by Sen. Dianne Feinstein that blew up Kavanaugh's nomination process.  We remember the fact that Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh's chief accuser, couldn't provide any corroborating details, including not being able to even say where the supposed rape occurred all those decades ago.  We remember the Julie Swetnick travesty where mainstream news outlets ran with wild tails of gang rape brought by a client of now-felon Michael Avenatti.  We remember the tortured performance of Sheldon Whitehouse talking about "boofing" and quizzing Kavanaugh on his high-school yearbook.  We even remember when Democrat protesters broke into and occupied the Senate office building, something that would have been labeled an insurrection had it been accomplished by Republicans.

A Trump-Hating Backer of Biden's Supreme Court Nominee Is Married to the Top J6 Prosecutor.  Confirmation hearings for D.C. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden's first U.S. Supreme Court nominee, began Monday [3/21/2022] before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  During an event in Washington, D.C. on Monday morning, activists gathered to rally on behalf of the nominee who could be the first black woman seated on the nation's highest court.  "It's also, for so many of us, a moment that is personal," Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, told the crowd.  "It is personal if you have ever been the only person sitting in a room.  It is personal if you have ever wondered, 'Is that for me?'"  Over the past several weeks, Graves, a graduate of Yale Law school, has given dozens of interviews in support of Jackson's nomination.  In a January column for CNN, Graves denounced "the current homogeneity of the legal profession and judicial system" and claimed "the perspective of White men has been treated as the default" in court proceedings.

Senator Josh Hawley Outlines Record of SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Being Lenient Against Pedophiles and Child Sex Abusers.  As the evidence in the Jeffrey Epstein case showed us, extremely powerful people participate in the horrific evil of exploiting children for sex.  The networks of politicians and rich billionaires are filled with people who participate in these evil endeavors.  Recently, the far-left sphere of U.S politics have embraced a culture of accepting child sex trafficking, and their deviant grooming objectives have now entered the classroom.  To present one reference, you might remember the dozens of female gymnasts who were sexually assaulted for years while the U.S. Olympic Committee and FBI did nothing to stop it {Go Deep}. Let us be very clear in that example.  The FBI didn't make a mistake in the cases, nor did the USOC fail in their responsibility; both the FBI and USOC intentionally, willfully and with expressed admissions facilitated the ongoing rape and sexual abuse of hundreds of pre-teen and teenage girls.

Cory Booker Embarrasses Himself by Gushing Over Ketanji Brown Jackson's Race and Gender.  Many criticized Joe Biden for promising during his presidential campaign that, if given the chance, he'd nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court, effectively making his eventual nominee an affirmative action pick.  This pick would forever have to live with the perception that she was chosen primarily for reasons of identity, not her qualifications.  And Biden came through on his promise, but Democrats don't seem to care about fixing that perception.  Senator Cory Booker, for example, can't even discuss the nominee's qualifications without mentioning her race and gender.

Vital Questions Ketanji Brown Jackson Must Answer.  Yes, there are and have been black justices and women justices, but never, ever a black woman justice!  Who would dare stand in the way of history? [...] Nevertheless, if Democrats want to at least give the appearance of fairness, they should ask Jackson the same questions they asked the last two Republican nominees to the court.  We're not talking about those silly questions that might reveal her judicial philosophy.  Although there is plenty there worthy of careful scrutiny.  Joel Pollak over at Breitbart News put together a handy list of such questions, ranging from:  Do you believe current penalties for sex offenders are too harsh?  What do you think of Biden's decision only to select a black woman as a nominee?  Do you support critical race theory?  Do you agree with the "1619 Project" that America was founded on slavery?  Do you support court-packing?  Can we have rule of law with an open border?  Democrats have already labeled such questions as racist.

Senators have every right to question Ketanji Brown Jackson's child pornography record.  What was once shaping up to be a sleepy Supreme Court confirmation process turned contentious this week when Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri took to Twitter to question Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson's record on child pornography cases.  Hawley raised a number of separate incidents that he claimed establish a pattern of Jackson being soft on defendants charged with child pornography, including her role in producing a 2012 United States Sentencing Commission report to Congress recommending that lawmakers reduce mandatory minimum sentencing for child pornography offenses.

Will Senate apply the Ginsburg or the Barrett Rule to Judge Jackson?  During [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg's confirmation, then-Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden told her that a confirmation is where a nominee is expected to "answer questions or to discuss your judicial philosophy."  He later expressed concern over how Ginsburg, "at least from my perspective, appeared to be reticent to answer some of our questions even more so than recent nominees."  Nevertheless, in her confirmation, Ginsburg declared that she refused to answer questions on her position on particular issues.  "I'm not going to give an advisory opinion on any specific scenario," she explained, "because as clear as it may seem to you, I think I have to avoid responding to hypotheticals because they may prove not to be so hypothetical."  What became known as the Ginsburg Rule meant that nominees could refuse to answer questions on how they interpret the Constitution on issues like abortion.  The rule has been given broader and broader meaning with each confirmation.  I have been a critic of the rule as reducing confirmations to largely contentless staged events where nominees avoid legitimate questions on their interpretative approaches in any given area.

'This Seat is Reserved': Quotas and the Supreme Court.  Just over a week ago, President Joe Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.  Jackson is a black woman, as were the other two leading contenders — J. Michelle Childs and Leondra Kruger.  Nobody except black women were seriously considered, which was intentional.  Two years ago, during the South Carolina presidential primary in 2020, Biden had pledged to nominate a "black woman" to the Court.  Though such a justice had never served before — making it, on paper, an unprecedented nomination — Biden's pledge was a clear attempt to shore up black votes in South Carolina at a time when his campaign was flailing.  However, Biden was hardly the first candidate to consider Supreme Court nominees based on their gender or race.  Later that year, then-president Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, to fill the seat vacated by Ruth Bader Ginsburg upon her death.  Though Ginsburg was a woman, she was neither the first woman nor the only woman serving on the Court at the time.  Two others, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were already on the bench, and Trump had made no prior pledge to keep the seat female.  Yet, when Ginsburg died at the height of the 2020 election, Trump vowed that only a woman would take her place.  Similarly, all the leading contenders — Barbara Lagoa, Joan Larsen, and Barrett herself — were women, and no judges except women were seriously considered at all.  Both nominations demonstrate that America's long-running politicization of its Supreme Court has finally met identity politics — the result being quotas on the Court.  In 'filling the shoes' of the previous occupant, nominees are now expected to match not only their qualifications but also their race and gender.

A Look at Ketanji Brown Jackson's Most Noteworthy Judicial Decisions.  On March 21, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing will begin.  Senators will be scrutinizing her past judicial opinions on critical issues from labor law to illegal immigration to presidential claims of executive privilege.  This brief overview of several of those key opinions provides some insight into her general approach to resolving legal issues.  Jackson has been through this confirmation process three times before — when she was nominated to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, to the district court, and to the D.C. Circuit — but it is safe to say that a lot more people are going to be paying attention this time.  The first day will be taken up with speeches by all the senators of the Senate Judiciary Committee and will conclude with an opening statement by the nominee herself.  The real fireworks, though, will take place over the next two days when senators ask a battery of questions of the nominee herself, many of which she will avoid answering, citing the longstanding rule that a nominee should not answer questions about legal issues that might come before the Supreme Court if she is confirmed.

The Editor says...
Can-of-Worms Alert!  Aren't these hearings highly premature?  There is no vacancy on the Supreme Court at this moment.  What if Justice Stephen G. Breyer changes his mind and decides to stay a while longer?  What is K. B. Jackson's status if she's confirmed by the Senate but Breyer refuses to leave?  Can an incoming President nominate a new Justice in the absence of any openings on the Supreme Court — just to send a message?

Biden Supreme Court pick backed by radicals who believe the Constitution is 'trash'.  Demand Justice, the secretive leftist group in the Arabella Advisors dark-money network dedicated to judicial nominations, has revealed a bit more about itself in recent tax exemption applications, which were obtained by Americans for Public Trust.  The filings include the first complete list of the board of directors of Demand Justice.  One name stands out in particular:  Elie Mystal, The Nation's justice correspondent.  He has long written far-left screeds about the law and recently declared on "The View," "The Constitution is kind of trash."  That was no slip of the tongue for Mystal.  In another recent interview, when asked if "the Constitution needs to be scrapped altogether," he replied, "Sure, but I don't think that's going to happen."

The hidden agenda behind Joe Biden's 'black female' Supreme Court pledge.  Ketanji Brown Jackson was raised in the orbit of government: her father was chief attorney for a school district; her mother was a school principal. [...] Throughout her career, there is one common thread:  a personal crusade to reduce the ability of the criminal justice system to impose real sentences on people convicted of crimes.  Our system requires both defense attorneys and prosecuting attorneys; it is fundamental to our system that the defendant is assumed innocent until proven guilty.  But once that guilt is proven, the American people need to be able to count on our system to remove the criminal from society, to keep him off the streets until he is no longer a threat.  In a nation in which the vast majority of crimes are committed by recidivists, there is no other issue more central to criminal justice than the ability to impose long sentences on those who are finally proven to be a threat to their communities.  Ketanji Brown Jackson is intended to be the pro-criminal, anti-LEO lobby's camel under the tent, to infect the Supreme Court itself with this malevolent attitude.

High Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Argued Against Free Speech — Near Abortion Clinics.  A woman walks up to you on a sidewalk in front of a department store — as you are headed into that store — and says she hopes you will not shop there because it sells products made in Communist China. [...] You may or may not agree with her request that you not patronize that store.  But does she not have a right, on a public sidewalk, to say what she said and hand you that brochure (which you are also free to decline)?  Suppose your state legislature were to pass a law declaring that people who share her point of view may not approach and speak to people on public sidewalks outside stores that sell products made in China.  Would that comply with the First Amendment, which denies government the power to make any law "abridging the freedom of speech"?  President Joe Biden's nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court argued in a federal court case that the government can in fact restrict the freedom of speech on a public sidewalk — in the vicinity of an abortion clinic.

Legal brief of Supreme Court nominee shows Left's double standards on protests.  A legal brief filed by Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson helps illustrate how leftists have an objectively disordered view of "protests."  It's a view in which rioters looting local stores, torching cars, and assaulting security guards are seen as "mostly peaceful protests," while nuns and old ladies praying outside abortion clinics are seen as frightening and dangerous.  The brief Jackson co-wrote against the latter has proved an early rallying point for conservatives against her nomination.  To be clear, Jackson has an admirable history of personally eschewing the more dramatic forms of protest.  Yet she has described that reluctance as a judgment of practicality and efficacy, not as a determination that vociferous protest somehow violates the rights of others.  Except, that is, when the protesters are opposing abortion.  In the case of McGuire v. Reilly, Jackson was a lead attorney for a NARAL state chapter and a consortium of other self-styled women's and reproductive health groups filing a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of a Massachusetts state law.

[The] Judicial system [is] 'unfair' to sex offenders, says Biden's Supreme [Court] pick.  President Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, acknowledged in a Senate confirmation questionnaire that she was the author of a paper published anonymously that charged the American judicial system was "unfair" to sex offenders.  The paper, which said sex offenders' punishments had been "excessive," "unfair and unnecessarily burdensome," was titled "Prevention Versus Punishment:  Toward a Principled Distinction in the Restraint of Released Sex Offenders."

Biden's Supreme Court Pick Shielded Top Clinton Aide Amid Email Scandal.  President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee shielded one of Hillary Clinton's top State Department aides from scrutiny about his use of a personal email account to conduct official business.  Then-U.S. district judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2015 denied Gawker's request for details about press aide Philippe Reines's stewardship of the account in the context of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, which sought emails Reines traded with 34 different media outlets.  Jackson blocked Gawker's request, calling it "extraordinary" and claiming there was no proof that Reines had acted in "bad faith" by using a personal email address.

Joe Biden SCOTUS Nominee Refuses to Use 'Illegal Alien,' Opts for 'Noncitizen'.  President Joe Biden's nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, apparently refuses to use the term "illegal alien" in her court opinions, opting instead for "noncitizen."  In a handful of immigration-related cases that Jackson has ruled on U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, she has made a note to employ the term "noncitizen" or "undocumented non-citizens" rather than the terms "alien" or "illegal aliens" that are regularly used in court and in federal statutes.

What Senators Must Ask Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson About Her Record, Judicial Philosophy.  Jackson's rulings and previous comments offer clues as to why Biden nominated her to replace Breyer.  She is a favorite of left-wing special-interest groups and was among the top front-runners for the seat. [...] Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Miami.  She has clerked for three judges, including Breyer, and also worked with major corporate law firms and as a federal public defender in Washington.  While in private practice, Jackson signed onto an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief on behalf of several pro-abortion groups defending a Massachusetts law that created a 6-foot "floating buffer zone" around abortion clinics, and another on behalf of former federal judges arguing that the Detainee Treatment Act was not an adequate substitute for federal habeas corpus (a position that the Supreme Court ultimately adopted).  As a public defender, she represented a Guantanamo Bay detainee seeking habeas corpus review to challenge his classification as an "enemy combatant."

Joe Biden Mispronounces His Own Supreme Court Nominee's Name.  Remember when WaPo's Jennifer Rubin claimed Republicans would mispronounce Ketanji Brown Jackson's name?  It turns out Joe Biden and his Press Secretary Jen Psaki are the ones who are struggling with Ketanji Jackson's name.  Joe Biden on Monday delivered remarks during a Black History Month celebration at the White House.  He struggled to pronounce his own Supreme Court nominee's name.

How RINO Paul Ryan is Connected to Biden's Radical Leftist SCOTUS Pick.  Think Paul Ryan, the RINO that used to be Speaker of the House and ran as Mitt Romney's VP is on your side?  Think again.  Not only is he trying to take down Trump, but he's deeply connected to Biden's far-left Supreme Court Justice nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson.  In fact, she's married to a man named Patrick Jackson.  Patrick is the twin brother of Paul Ryan's brother-in-law, William Jackson.  And while Ryan the RINO claims that their politics are different, he's done what he can to advance her legal career, a legal career that means advancing leftism in the courts.  As ABC reported back in 2016:  Ryan even testified on Brown's behalf when she was nominated to the district court in 2012, offering his "unequivocal" endorsement of her qualifications in recommending her for the bench.

Amy Klobuchar Says Its 'Offensive' for Republicans to Criticize Biden's SCOTUS Pick as 'Far-Left'.  Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said Sunday that she finds it "offensive" for Republicans to call President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson "far-left."  After "Fox News Sunday" guest host Harris Faulkner pointed out that some Republicans have taken issue with the Supreme Court pick for being "far-left," noting attorney Jonathan Turley saying recently that "this is a political deliverable, a good one for President Biden" because the other potential nominees were not as far-left, Klobuchar said the ideological term is "offensive" to her.

Wink-and-a-nod nomination:  Who really is Ketanji Brown Jackson?  For many liberal groups, Ketanji Brown Jackson is a supreme "deliverable" by President Biden.  Activist groups have pushed her nomination to the Supreme Court while opposing the consideration of fellow short-lister District Judge J. Michelle Childs.  These groups clearly did not like Childs and her more moderate take on legal issues.  Yet the interesting question is, what did they see in Judge Jackson that made her the preferred choice?  It seems to be widely understood but barely discussed.  Jackson received a rather unenviable start to her nomination.  Without any real pressure on timing, the White House announced its selection of the D.C. circuit judge even as Ukrainians were fighting street by street for their freedom.  The "now for something completely different" moment was quickly overshadowed by images of the agony abroad.  That decision follows Biden's unnecessary, unprecedented pledge to consider only Black females for a vacancy on the court — the very type of threshold criteria that the court has declared unconstitutional or unlawful for schools or businesses.

Biden Selects Jackson for Supreme Court From Left-Wing Donor 'Shortlist'.  D.C. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden's nominee for the Supreme Court, was among the names on a shortlist from Demand Justice, a liberal legal organization seeded with funding by mega-donor group Arabella Advisors.  Demand Justice pushed Biden to choose someone from its Supreme Court list during the 2020 campaign.  It heralded Jackson as a jurist who has "stood up for the rule of law, holding the Trump administration accountable for its rule-breaking."  And it credited Jackson for writing that "presidents are not kings" and that "no one is above the law."  "With the intended nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden has made it clear that his top priority is paying back the left-wing dark money network that spent over one billion dollars to help elect him and Senate Democrats," Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal group, tweeted.

Another Win for the Radical Left:  Graham Blasts Biden's Choice for SCOTUS.  Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, is blasting President Joe Biden for choosing D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown to replace Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.  [Tweets]  Meanwhile Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted against her confirmation to her current position on the D.C. Circuit, is also weighing in.  "I congratulate Judge Jackson on her nomination.  I look forward to meeting with her in person and studying her record, legal views, and judicial philosophy," McConnell released in a statement Friday [2/25/2022].

Biden's Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Is So Radical Her Major Decisions are Frequently Overturned.  The Biden Administration is expected to nominate radical activist judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the next Supreme Court Justice.  The Biden Administration stuck to its promise to nominate a black woman to be the next Supreme Court Justice. [...] We reported previously how liberals were pressuring Justice Breyer to leave the Supreme Court so they could insert a black woman in his place.  Biden then came out a month ago and announced he would be replacing Justice Breyer with a black woman.  Most Americans were not happy with Biden's resolution to place a black woman in the Supreme Court.  The reason is Americans wanted the best person on the court regardless of color or race.

Biden's SCOTUS Nominee Helped Strike Down Trump's Border Controls.  President Joe Biden's nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, previously struck down border controls sought by former President Trump.  Jackson, appointed by Biden to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last year, previously served on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where she ruled on a handful of immigration cases.

Gun Control Groups Applaud Biden's Nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson.  Gun control groups applauded President Biden's Friday nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).  Jackson is currently a justice on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.  Gabby Giffords' gun control outlet, the Giffords Law Center, was quick to "laud" the nomination of Jackson, and Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety praised Jackson's nomination as well.

Biden to nominate Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court.  President Joe Biden will nominate federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Friday to replace Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, which would make her the first black woman on the high court's bench should she be confirmed by the Senate.  Breyer announced his retirement last month after 28 years on the Supreme Court, effective when the current term ends this summer.  That paved the way for Biden to fulfill his 2020 campaign promise of nominating a black woman as a Supreme Court justice.

Biden's choice to help with his SCOTUS pick is a BLM board member, CRT promoter and defund-the-police supporter.  President Joe Biden touted his appointment of Clinton confidant and Kamal Harris-bestie Minyon Moore to help him choose the first black female Supreme Court justice, but he never mentioned that she's a Black Lives Matter board member, CRT promoter and supports the Defund the Police movement.  Moore's deep blue political credentials go all the way back to Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.  But when the president announced that he would be setting up a board of advisors to help him with his SCOTUS pick and confirmation strategy he soft-peddled Moore's history.

Supreme Court Takes Up Review of 'Remain in Mexico' Policy.  The Supreme Court on Friday [2/18/2022] agreed to hear President Joe Biden's request to terminate the Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy.  Formally called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), the program requires the federal government to send migrants back to Mexico while their asylum hearings are pending.  "The case will be set for argument in the second week of the April 2022 argument session," the Supreme Court wrote.  Biden's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) suspended new enrollments into the MPP during his first month in office last January.  A legal battle ensued when Biden's DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo terminating the program in June.  Then, Texas-based federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered Biden to "enforce and implement MPP in good faith" following a lawsuit from Texas and Missouri.

Biden's Popularity is Sinking Like the Titanic.  Joe Biden was never a force of intellect, statesmanship, or wisdom, during his decades in the U.S. Senate, eight years as vice president, or his first year in the Oval Office.  A recent example is how Biden, who now wants a black female on the U.S. Supreme Court, blocked the first black woman nominee to the court, Janice Rogers Brown in 2003, an inconvenient fact the corporate media and Biden's dwindling supporters choose to gloss over.

Supreme Court Rejects Effort to Block Vaccine Mandate for NYC Schoolteachers Without Religious Exemptions.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday denied a request to block the city's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees of the New York City Department of Education who were not given a religious exemption.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles cases from the region, denied the emergency injunction filed by a group of public school teachers, supervisors, and staff employed by the New York City Department of Education (DOE), the largest public school district in the country.  Her latest ruling comes the same day as the deadline for the teachers as well as other New York City public workers, firefighters, and police officers to get their COVID-19 vaccinations.  Those who do not have proof of vaccination will likely be fired or put on unpaid leave.

Alabama's first Black federal judge asks Biden not to tap Ketanji Brown Jackson for Supreme Court.  The first Black federal judge in Alabama sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking him to pass over a leading contender for the US Supreme Court, NBC News reported on Friday [2/11/2022].  U.W. Clemon — a former state lawmaker who served as a federal judge in Alabama from 1980 to 2009 — petitioned the president not to consider Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the vacancy that will be filled upon the departure of Justice Stephen Breyer later this year.  Jackson, who has been a frontrunner for the seat, currently sits on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.  In his letter, Clemon said that there were "several exceptionally well-qualified black female aspirants for the Supreme Court," but expressed a desire to see Jackson out of contention for the nomination.

Supreme Court Vacancy:  No White nor Male Folk Need Apply.  Our current president has promised (or was strongarmed by James Clyburn into promising, you might correctly say) that he would nominate a black woman as Supreme Court Justice before the formal selection process ever began.  As the Babylon Bee points out, Biden's desire for black representation in the Court should come as quite a shock to the esteemed Justice Clarence Thomas, against whom Biden attempted to carry out a "high-tech lynching" in order to prevent his selection just thirty years ago.  But, in general and in principle, there is so much wrong with this promise having been made that it's hard to imagine it ever occurred in the same country I was raised in.  Race doesn't matter in the slightest when it comes to the value one is able to provide in a free market of labor and ideas, after all.  If there was one central premise around the idea of race during most of my lifetime, that was it.

Biden narrows Supreme Court nominees shortlist to four Black female candidates.  President Biden on Thursday said his search for a nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer is focused on four Black women.  He started the search with at least a dozen Black women on his list. [...] "I'm not looking to make an ideological choice here," Mr. Biden said.  "I'm looking for someone to replace Justice Breyer with the same kind of capacity Judge Breyer had, with an open mind who understands the Constitution and interprets it in a way that is consistent with the mainstream interpretation of the Constitution."

The Supreme Court Drops the Hammer on Democrat Redistricting Games.  After several days of bad news on the redistricting front, including a bad decision in North Carolina for the GOP-drawn map there, a big win has been delivered to Republicans.  The US Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 to halt a lower court order in Alabama that it must redraw its previously passed Congressional map.  That means a 6-1 Republican to Democrat map will now go into effect in 2022, and given the makeup of the Supreme Court, there's no reason to believe it gets struck down at any point past that.

You Can Call White People Evil, But Don't Criticize Affirmative Action.  [Scroll down]  Georgetown's law school took a very different position after law professor Ilya Shapiro tweeted criticism of Biden's decision, one opposed by 76% of Americans, including a majority of Democrats and non-whites, to only consider black women for the Supreme Court.  Shapiro correctly pointed out that choosing a Supreme Court Justice based on race would lead to a lesser choice.  As the vast majority of Americans, Democrats and minorities, agree.  But Georgetown, which did not suspend a professor calling for the murder and castration of white men, decided that the constitutional professor's speech had to be condemned and prohibited.  Shapiro, who was to lead the law school's Constitutional Law Center, got a lesson in how Georgetown views free speech and academic freedom, when it placed him on administrative leave.  Dean William Treanor described Shapiro's tweets as "appalling" and insisted that they, "are at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown Law and are damaging to the culture of equity and inclusion that Georgetown Law is building every day."

Biden's Destructive Supreme Court Bungle:  Panderer In Chief.  When Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer retirement was leaked by leftist activists in order to force the issue, President Biden was immediately confronted by demands to honor his pledge during the 2020 presidential campaign to appoint a black female to his first vacancy on the Supreme Court.  When Republicans objected that this race and gender litmus test is unconstitutional, many of the Left replied that Biden is simply doing what Ronald Reagan did when he promised to appoint a woman to the court and later appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the court in 1981.  If one follows leftist "logic," if Reagan violated the constitution, we can too.  In fact, as Jonathan Turley has argued, what Biden has pledged to do is the opposite of what Reagan did.

Why Biden Will Pick a Radical Replacement for Breyer.  The Democrats are facing a grim November if they can't find some way to energize their increasingly disillusioned base.  Consequently, they regard the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer from the Supreme Court as a golden opportunity to rekindle enthusiasm among their voters.  President Biden, having already committed to replacing Breyer with an affirmative action hire, is all but certain to nominate a far left radical in order to provoke a confirmation brawl with the GOP as the midterms approach.  The Republicans, however, have little to gain by trading punches in such an altercation.  They would be wiser to employ a "rope-a-dope" strategy.  Biden will come out swinging with a nomination from the "Demand Justice" shortlist of leftist nominees — probably D.C. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — and Senate Democrats will respond to the most innocuous questions with cries of "racism."

Member of #TeamJackson Allegedly Edited Wikipedia Bios of Potential Supreme Court Nominees.  Politico reports that a former clerk to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was editing the Wikipedia bios of Judge Jackson and other potential nominees to replace Justice Stephen Breyer.  According to the story, the former clerk sought to make Judge Jackson's bio more appealing to progressives, and the other potential nominees' bios less so.

Biden's Supreme Court Tradeoff.  President Biden ignited a political firestorm last month when he announced that he would fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Stephen Breyer's resignation with a Black woman.  This was reportedly the result of a deal (political quid pro quo) that candidate Biden struck with Representative James Clyburn (D-South Carolina) in return for delivering the Black vote in the South Carolina primary.  President Biden did a huge disservice to both the integrity of the selection process in nominating justices to the high court and to the candidate that is ultimately chosen.  The fact that Biden would enter into such a pact with Clyburn strongly suggests that these vacancies are for sale.  It is worth noting that a former governor of Illinois (Rod Blagojevich) was impeached, convicted, and removed from office by a unanimous vote of the Illinois Senate (59 - 0) and spent considerable time in federal prison for "selling" the Senate seat that was vacated when Barack Obama was elected president.  It matters not whether the bribe is denominated in dollars or votes.

Schumer falsely claims Supreme Court 'was all White men' until 1981, ignoring Thurgood Marshall.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer falsely claimed Thursday [2/3/2022] that the Supreme Court was made up of "all White men" until 1981, skipping over the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was appointed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967.  "The president's pledge to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court is historic," Schumer said during floor remarks about President Biden's forthcoming Supreme Court nomination.

A shady liberal funding network is pushing Biden's hand for SCOTUS pick.  A secretive liberal dark-money juggernaut spent more than a billion dollars in 2020 to help President Biden win the White House, take the US Senate and hold the US House of Representatives.  This group, Arabella Advisors, isn't a household name, but if there is a liberal cause that you've heard of, Arabella is likely funding it.  And now the group is turning its attention to the Supreme Court.  Arabella, which former Clinton administration official Eric Kessler founded in 2005, manages a network of five nonprofit groups: the New Venture Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Hopewell Fund, the Windward Fund and the North Fund.  Each of these groups focuses on different policy issues, but they all operate under the Arabella umbrella.

Why GOP senators must reject Biden's 'diversity hire' Supreme Court justice nominee.  Last week, Joe Biden declared that he intends to nominate "the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court."  Joe Biden had reportedly promised House majority whip Jim Clyburn during the 2020 campaign that he would nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.  So what does one make of this declaration?  It is a grave affront to any candidate for any position to be openly declared as a "diversity" hire because it means that the primary criteria for her selection are genetics and not merit.  Besides being anachronistic, Biden's public declaration is an insult to the nominee.

White House Press Secretary dodges question:  Must Supreme Court nominee be 'pro-abortion'?  The White House refused to say whether President Joe Biden's pick for the next Supreme Court justice must be pro-abortion, during a press briefing on Tuesday [2/1/2022].  "I'm not going to outline a litmus test from here today," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Feb. 1.  Her comments came in response to EWTN correspondent Owen Jensen, who asked, "Will that person have to be pro-abortion?"  While Psaki declined to say more about the future Supreme Court nominee in regards abortion, she repeated to Jensen that the president "believes in a woman's right to choose."

Biden's Vow to Name a Black Woman to the Supreme Court Backfired.  Americans seem to be turned off by Joe Biden's Supreme Court nomination strategy.  In a new ABC News/Ipsos poll of U.S. adults, more than three-quarters of respondents said Biden should "consider all possible nominees" to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, rather than "consider only nominees who are Black women, as he has pledged to do."  Even 54 percent of Democrats said they'd prefer Biden take the wide-net approach.  This may come as an unwelcome surprise to the White House, but it makes perfect sense to those of us who've been following Biden's blundering attempts to discuss race and gender in politics over the past two years.  Though public support for affirmative action programs is on the rise, with 62 percent of U.S. adults in favor, the way Biden has talked about the value of diversity in political institutions is remarkably crass.  It's no wonder that the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of his own party, are chafing at it.

Biden's Possible SCOTUS Nomination Has a Curious Past, and Curious Advocates.  Fulfilling Joe Biden's pledge to nominate a Black female to the Supreme Court, the White House confirmed that Judge J. Michelle Childs is on Biden's list for consideration.

Biden's chief of staff leaked Breyer retirement to 'limited' group, Durbin says.  President Joe Biden's chief of staff leaked Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's plan to retire to "a limited group" on Wednesday [1/26/2022], a top Democrat told reporters.  Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin told reporters he received a "surprise" call on Wednesday morning from White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who "said that President Biden wanted [Durbin] to know that Stephen Breyer was about to announce his retirement from the court."  Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said Klain told him to keep the news a secret and that Breyer planned to make an official announcement on Thursday.  Breyer, 83, was apparently blindsided Wednesday when the news leaked about his retirement and was widely reported by the media.

First Black Woman Supreme Court Justice Could Be... a Man?  President Joe Biden has made clear he will keep his promise to elect the first black woman to the Supreme Court, following Justice Stephen Breyer's retirement.  But in a curious tweet announcing he will pick someone with excellent qualifications, he said, "And they will be the first black woman nominated to the United States Supreme Court."  They?  Yes.  Don't be surprised.  "Diversity and equity" are of paramount importance to the Biden administration.  He is making sure you remember it as he is making this announcement.  So why would you assume it is a "she"?  At least theoretically, the first black woman Supreme Court justice could be a biological male who self-identifies as a woman.  The move would go right along with current White House practice.  Recall that the Biden administration celebrated with great pride the appointment of Dr. Rachel Levine, a biological male who transitioned in order to appear as a woman, as the "first female four-star admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps."

You may have a solid racial discrimination claim against Joe Biden.  The White House last week leaked word of Justice Stephen Breyer's imminent retirement. [...] Attention has been diverted from Joe Biden's ongoing bungling of Ukraine, the economy, COVID, the border, Afghanistan and his plummeting poll numbers, by a renewed focus on his campaign promise to nominate a black woman for the next Supreme Court opening.  Indeed, the very next day Biden repeated that promise.  He explicitly stated that he would replace Breyer with a black woman.  Anyone not a black woman need not apply for the job.  Limiting the job applicants to black women, it should be noted, reduces the applicant pool considerably.  Black women are about 2% of American lawyers.  This is illegal racial discrimination under an array of federal and state civil rights laws.  Imagine if an employer announced in a job posting that they would refuse to even consider certain races for a job opening.

Majority of Americans want Biden to consider 'all possible nominees' for Supreme Court vacancy:  Poll.  A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that a plurality of Americans view the Supreme Court as motivated by partisanship, while President Joe Biden's campaign trail vow to select a Black woman to fill a high-court vacancy without reviewing all potential candidates evokes a sharply negative reaction from voters.  The ABC News/Ipsos poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel, comes days after the most senior member of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, announced his retirement at the end of the current term.  Breyer's announcement provides Biden the opportunity to change the demographic makeup of the conservative-leaning bench.

A Black Female SCOTUS Judge Won't Do Anything to Help Blacks.  When Joe Biden's earpiece expresses, through his mouth, its firm intention to nominate a black female Supreme Court candidate, critics will say that race and sex shouldn't matter in such things.  Well, don't worry — they won't.  Whoever Justice X ends up being, she'll almost assuredly vote in lockstep with white Elena Kagan and Hispanic Sonya Sotomayor.  She'll almost definitely vote just the way white ACLU baby Ruth Bader Ginsburg did.  This just underlines, too, how superficially made any "diversity" choice would be. [...] This is why it's so funny when commentators, black female ones included, of course, proclaim that with a black female SCOTUS justice black women's interests "will finally be represented."  Funnier still is that some thus opining actually believe it.

Biden's pledge to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court is an insult to minority groups.  This isn't the first time that Biden has used race and sex as his primary selection criteria for top government posts.  During his 'campaign', Biden proudly declared his vice president would be a woman of color.  The result was Kamala Harris, the most unpopular and perhaps the worst Vice President in recent history.  She has been a fiasco in handling tasks assigned to her.  She even struggles to construct basic sentences during friendly TV interviews and in public forums.  Biden has nominated 16 people to federal appeals courts, eight of his appointees have been Black women.  So what does one make of this?  Firstly, it is gravely insulting to any individual to be openly acknowledged as a 'diversity' hire.  How would the new Supreme Court Justice candidate feel knowing the primary criteria for her selection is not her experience or her aptitude or her knowledge of the Constitution but the pigment under her skin and her gender, both of which she was born with and had nothing to do with.

Republican pols preemptively surrender on Supreme Court, but Americans don't.  Biden isn't even pretending that anything other than race and sex are the most important metrics for his Supreme Court choice.  And of course, the usual RINOs couldn't agree more with quotas for the Supreme Court.  Perhaps these out-of-touch politicians would do well to pay attention to the American people, though, because Americans think it's a terrible idea to make intellectual qualifications the least important thing.  Lindsey Graham, a man of tremendous charm and no backbone, has already surrendered on the issue.  When he heard that J. Michelle Childs, a U.S. District Court Judge from South Carolina, was on the short list, Graham couldn't have been more excited.  "Michelle Childs is incredibly qualified," he said.  "There's no affirmative action component if you pick her."  No, Childs is not incredibly qualified.  She is simply another garden-variety leftist.  If you search for articles about her in the media before her name suddenly got picked up for the Supremes you learn that she has no record of extraordinary intellectual distinction.

Biden's Supreme Court Nomination Reveals Democrat Contempt for Black Americans.  If anyone doubted the contempt White Democrats, Black Democrats, and the mainstream media hold for Black Americans, I would refer you to President Bidens' announcement regarding his Supreme Court nominee and their giddy reaction.  Every president before Biden had proudly professed that each of their nominees for the Court was the most qualified jurist available in America.  With his declaration that his next nominee to the Supreme Court will be a Black woman chosen because of her race and gender, not her qualifications, President Joe Biden reinforced a 220-year Democrat Party message to everyone in the world:  Do not be confused — Black people remain inferior.  They cannot achieve because of merit. [...] Since the 1800s, it has been understood if the Democrats have any hope of maintaining power in the United States, this condescending line of thinking must be reinforced in the Black community.  The Black community must be made to believe that they can have nothing, achieve nothing, and do nothing without the grace and mercy of the White Democrat demi-gods.

The Democrats Make Their Own Racism Explicit.  This week the Democratic National Committee gave Justice Steven Breyer the hook, announcing that he was retiring before he'd firmly decided to do so.  When he finally responded, he made clear his intention to remain on the bench until Biden's nominee was confirmed, which at best likely will be sometime this summer if ever.  As part of a deal he made with congressman and House majority whip Jim Clyburn when he was on the ropes in the primaries, President Biden promised to nominate to this significant position a black woman, and three candidates' names — a weak bench if the suppositions are correct — have been bandied about in the press.  How odd to admit you are selecting a nominee on the basis of race and sex just as the Supreme Court is about to hear serious challenges to affirmative action in college admissions.  Moreover, he asserts this will be an "historic" nomination, but it won't be.  (Picking an Asian-American would be.)

This Senate Rule Could Stop Democrats From Confirming Biden's SCOTUS Nominee.  With Justice Stephen Breyer officially announcing his retirement on Thursday (a full 24 hours after the White House announced it for him), Senate Democrats will have a chance to fill a Supreme Court seat, likely before the 2022 midterm elections in November.  But ever since 2017, when Senate Republicans invoked the nuclear option to confirm Supreme Court justices at a simple majority, instead of at the usual 60 votes necessary to break a filibuster, there has been procedurally little minorities can do to prevent a nomination from moving forward (the outright lies, smears, and chaos tactics Senate Democrats employed against Justice Brett Kavanaugh notwithstanding).  This conventional wisdom, however, is true only of Senates that present a clear minority-majority differential.  The Senate of 2022 is tied, with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, which presents Republicans with an interesting procedural option:  denying a quorum in the Senate Judiciary Committee, thus preventing the nomination from being reported out of committee and placed on the calendar, and ultimately moved to the Senate floor.

Biden's Supreme Court pledge is not Reagan's nor Trump's — it's unfair.  With the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, President Joe Biden was immediately challenged by Democrats to make good on his pledge during the 2020 presidential campaign to only consider black females for his first vacancy on the Court.  When he made that pledge, some of us raised concerns that he was adopting a threshold racial and gender qualification for the Court.  That claims were immediately challenged by liberal commentators and their authority was somewhat surprising:  Ronald Reagan.  They insisted that Ronald Reagan made the same pledge to only consider a woman for his first vacancy.  The claim is false and indeed the Reagan example shows why Biden's pledge was both unprecedented and unnecessary.  In his campaign, Biden made two pledges to voters and asked his opponent to do the same to nominate only a black woman for the next open Supreme Court seat and to choose a woman as his vice president.

Joe Manchin Says No Rubber-Stamp for Biden's Supreme Court Nominee.  Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on Wednesday said he will not rubber-stamp President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer.  "I take my Constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on a nominee to the Supreme Court very seriously," Manchin said.  "I look forward to meeting with and evaluating the qualifications of President Biden's nominee to fill this Supreme Court vacancy."

In 2003, Joe Biden Filibustered and Voted Against Nomination of a Black Woman to the Federal Bench.  In 2003, then-President George W. Bush nominated Janice Rogers Brown, an associate justice on the California Supreme Court to serve as a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  She was the first black woman nominated for the federal bench.  But Rogers Brown had a problem; she was a libertarian-conservative and refused to play ball with civil rights organizations.  One of her major decisions was a dissent in the case of forcing cigarette manufacturers to put warning labels on packs and cartons.  A truly libertarian decision.  She also attacked the New Deal, which gave us Social Security and other programs as "the triumph of our socialist revolution."  You can imagine the anger of her liberal colleagues over that one.

Dems Itching to See GOP Senators 'Block a Black Woman' Seem to Be Forgetting Some Things.  With the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer being made official Thursday by the man himself just one day after some court snitch rushed to the media before Breyer was read to make it also came the expected news that President Biden would be nominating a black woman in hopes that she would be confirmed and make history in the process.  "While I've been studying candidates' backgrounds and writings, I've made no decisions except one," Biden stated during a press conference earlier with Breyer.  "The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity, and that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court." [...] [A]nother aspect of the confirmation process Democrats are eager to see play out is how many Republican Senators will go on record opposing a black woman for the nation's highest court.  For instance, Bill Clinton apologist and CNN analyst Joe Lockhart tweeted that he was looking "forward to watching every Republican Senator oppose the first black woman to the Supreme Court" before the midterms.

Leftists used to say vice presidents have no voice in Supreme Court picks.  Biden says he will nominate a Black woman for the Supreme Court seat that an old White leftist is vacating.  This is, of course, illegal because it discriminates against people of other races, as well as against men, but that's not going to stop Biden.  So far, all the names bandied about run the gamut from deeply racist women to, well, more deeply racist women.  But what if Mitch McConnell is able to fend off a vote by rallying all 49 of the other Republican senators to vote against this person, creating a tie?  Some might say that Kamala would break that tie but that leading leftist legal light, Lawrence Tribe, says not so fast.  Or at least, he said that waaaaay back in 2020.  In 2020, Laurence Tribe was very upset that Trump had nominated, and the tiny Senate majority was set to confirm, Amy Coney Barrett.  If even one Senator had switched sides, there would have been a tie.  William Jacobson reminds us that, when this was an issue, Alan Dershowitz noted that it wasn't entirely clear that the Vice President could step in to break that tie.

I'm rooting for Maxine Waters.  Or maybe Sheila Jackson Lee.
Psaki: Biden stands by pledge to nominate first Black woman to Supreme Court.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that President Biden stands by his commitment to nominate a Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.  Mr. Biden is expected to formally announce Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer's retirement and will have his first opportunity to install a new justice since taking office.  He pledged during the 2020 campaign that he would nominate the first Black woman to serve in the high court if a seat opened during his tenure.

The Editor says...
Mr. Biden is excluding whole classes of candidates because they're the wrong color.  Seems like there's a name for that behavior.

Kamala Harris Rumored to Be Biden's Top SCOTUS Pick, Hillary Clinton Waiting in the Wings.  The White House was handed a much-needed 'bombshell' on Wednesday to blow up the narrative that Biden's presidency is already a failed one.  Amid brewing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, soaring inflation, a border crisis, and endless Covid crisis-mongering, Biden desperately needed a distraction.  Then Supreme Court Justice Breyer signaled he would soon retire.  The New York Times reported the news, which does not make it a lock; but when it comes to progressive affairs, one can bet the grey lady has it right that the announcement is all-but-a-done-deal.  While Biden is certain to pick a fire-breathing leftist for the forthcoming vacancy, there is another option that would solve a lot of headaches for Team Biden.  Be rid of Kamala Harris.

The Editor says...
Here's how this will play out, if it happens soon:  Kamala is deposited into the Supreme Court, in much the same way that a barrel of radioactive waste is dropped off at Yucca Mountain, never to be seen again.  What a relief!  (No, not really.  Over the next 50 years, she will be a constant source of embarrassment, due to her Affirmative Action presence:  No matter how incompetent and intellectually useless she is at the Supreme Court, she will have been hired because of her race and gender, and impossible to fire because of her race and gender.  Not to mention the fact that Supreme Court Justices are untouchable anyway.)  Then the new VP nominee is either Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Lori Lightfoot, Maxine Waters, or Valerie Jarrett, but I'm still rooting for Maxine Waters.  Naturally, the spineless Republicans, with few exceptions, will just sit there without objecting, as usual.  Then Joe Biden resigns, and heads for the ice cream shop, on the way to the "memory care" wing of the nicest nursing home in Delaware.  Voila!  Now there's a radical-left president!  And suddenly everyone realizes that stolen elections have consequences.

JCN's Severino:  Stephen Breyer [was] 'Bullied' Into Retiring by 'Left-Wing Dark Money Groups'.  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was ushered into retirement by "left-wing dark money groups," according to a statement Wednesday by Carrie Severino, president of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network.  Breyer's retirement was reported by the press before he himself made it, leading to speculation that it had been leaked by a White House eager to appease left-wing critics after its recent legislative failures — and worried about Republicans winning the Senate in 2022.

Remember When Liberal Law Profs Said VP Can't Cast Tiebreaker On Supreme Court Nominations?  The working assumption in the media coverage in the hours since Justice Stephen Breyer's planned retirement was leaked is that getting Biden's pick confirmed is a done deal because Kamala Harris can cast the tie breaking vote and Democrats certainly will stick together.  Even Lindsey Graham reached that conclusion. [...] How it would be resolved is not clear, the courts generally can't rule on Senate Rules.  If Democrats ram through a 50-vote plus tie-breaker nominee, what's next?  Is it legitimate, can that Justice take the seat?  Would the other Justices in effect vote whether to seat the person?

Hirono: I Hope SCOTUS Pick Will Not Make Rulings 'Just Based on' Law and 'Will Consider the Impact' of Rulings.  On Wednesday's [1/26/2022] broadcast of MSNBC's "The Beat," Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said she wants Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's replacement to be someone "who will consider the impact, the effects of whatever decision-making is on people in our country so that they are not making decisions just based on" the law.

Oh My:  Breyer Wasn't Ready to Announce His Retirement... So Who Leaked It?  Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has not made an official announcement about retiring at the end of the current term but that hasn't stopped news of his departure from spreading like wildfire in Washington D.C. and around the country.  Reportedly, Breyer is "upset" about the way the announcement was made and did not plan on breaking the news today.  [Tweets]  The news was leaked, by who is still unknown.  [Tweet]  For months far-left activists have tried to push Breyer out in order for President Joe Biden to replace him.  [Tweet]  The White House continues to claim they were unaware of Breyer's plans to announce his retirement.  [Tweets]  Others aren't convinced.  [More tweets]

Biden's Supreme Court Short List:  Ketanji Brown Jackson, Leondra Kruger, Kamala Harris.  President Joe Biden committed during the 2020 presidential election to nominating a black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court[,] though he would not, unlike President Donald Trump, reveal a list of candidates for the public to scrutinize.  While there are many outstanding black female attorneys and jurists, there are still few on the federal bench or in senior judicial positions, making Biden's list of potential candidates an unusually short one.

Turley: Biden's Black, Female Supreme Court Requirement [is] 'Unconstitutional' in Other Contexts.  George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley noted Wednesday that President Joe Biden's criteria for a new Supreme Court justice — that she be black and female — are "unconstitutional" in other contexts, according to the Court itself.  Turley was commenting in the wake of news earlier in the day that Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, would be retiring at the end of the current Court term — an announcement that apparently took Breyer himself somewhat by surprise.  Biden promised during the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary to nominate a black and female justice to the Court at the first opportunity.

Justice Stephen Breyer just did Joe Biden and Senate Democrats a favor by announcing his retirement in January.  Joe Biden had been president for just three months, but Demand Justice was anxious.  The influential, courts-focused progressive organization wanted Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to step away so Biden could fill the seat with someone younger who could serve for decades to come.  So Demand Justice on April 9, 2021, marked the 11-year anniversary of the late Justice John Paul Stevens' retirement announcement by launching a "Breyer Retire" campaign and dispatching a black-and-neon-green billboard truck emblazoned with the message "BREYER, RETIRE" to circle the Supreme Court.  But Breyer stayed put.  His apparent intransigence frustrated progressives — and even some of his own past clerks — who wanted him to step down ahead of what is expected to be a difficult midterm election for Democrats.

Biden's Supreme Court Pick Sexually Assaulted Me 25 Years Ago.  The news that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring is still fresh.  He won't even officially retire until October, and the Biden administration will likely spend months vetting potential nominees.  But I can tell you right now, whoever Biden picks, they sexually assaulted me 25 years ago at a high school party.  I can't remember how I got there or how I got home.  So far, the people I know who were present are telling me it didn't happen.  I may have changed my story a few times too.  But, hey, look, you can trust me.  I have no agenda.  I should also let you know that Biden's nominee, whoever it is, might have a detailed calendar proving they weren't at the party.  Don't believe it?  Believe me!  I think I should be praised for my bravery in coming forward.  I think the media must tell my story without questioning the details, and Time Magazine should profile me.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to retire.  Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will retire.  As one of three liberal justices on the court, his vacancy, reported by several outlets Wednesday, will pave the way for President Joe Biden to make his first pick for the nation's highest bench.  "It has always been the decision of any Supreme Court Justice if and when they decide to retire, and how they want to announce it, and that remains the case today," White House press secretary Jen Psaki wrote in a statement.  "We have no additional details or information to share."

SCOTUS to rule on Harvard affirmative action scheme.  The conservative-dominated Supreme Court could put an end to the practice of factoring race into college admissions, after agreeing to take up a pair of court challenges claiming affirmative action is unfair to white and Asian American students on Monday [1/24/2022].  The high court said it will take up lawsuits claiming that Harvard University, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a state school, discriminate against Asian American applicants.  The suits claim that affirmative action gives an edge to African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans over Asian students.

Supreme Court to Hear Cases Challenging Affirmative-Action at Universities.  The Supreme Court announced on Monday [1/24/2022] that it will take up suits challenging the consideration of race as a factor in college admissions.  The Court will hear challenges by non-profit Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.  The group alleges that Harvard discriminates against Asian applicants, and that UNC uses race in admissions even though "race-neutral alternatives can achieve diversity."  Arguments will likely be heard in spring of this year, with a decision by June.  "We are grateful the Supreme Court accepted these important cases for review," SFA president Edward Blum said in a statement.  "It is our hope that the justices will end the use of race as an admissions factor at Harvard, UNC and all colleges and universities."

Supreme Court Refuses to Block Texas Abortion Law.  Texas abortion providers and advocates were dealt another setback on Thursday when the Supreme Court rejected their request for a federal judge to accelerate the legal challenge to the Lone Star State's six-week abortion ban.  Though no majority opinion was issued, the six conservative and moderate justices voted in lockstep with each other while the three liberal justices (Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan) dissented.

Supreme Court again declines to intervene in challenge to Texas abortion law.  The U.S. Supreme Court denied on Thursday abortion providers' latest request to intervene in the ongoing legal challenge against Texas' restrictive abortion law, cutting off one of their few remaining paths to a speedy victory.  The case is currently before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sent the case to the Texas Supreme Court.  That is expected to add months to the legal proceedings.  Abortion providers were hoping the U.S. Supreme Court would direct the 5th Circuit to send the case to federal district court, where a judge previously blocked the law.

The Supreme Court's Ruling On Vaccine Mandates Is Frighteningly Weak.  It's long been axiomatic in the legal profession that tough facts make bad law.  Yesterday's forked decisions from the Supreme Court in two vaccine mandate cases now add a corollary to that principle:  Quick cases make milquetoast opinions.  The Supreme Court heard the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Medicare/Medicaid mandate cases in tandem on an expedited basis last Friday.  Although court observers expected lightning-fast decisions, the opinions in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor and Biden v. Missouri didn't drop until Jan. 13.  The high court issued both decisions as per curium, or "by the court," unsigned opinions, with a 6-3 majority staying the OSHA de facto vaccine mandate in National Federation and a 5-4 majority in Biden v. Missouri allowing the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' rule requiring vaccines for medical facility workers to take effect.  Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh switched sides to join the court's leftist members in the Medicare/Medicaid case, with Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito issuing separate dissents joined by Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch in Biden v. Missouri.

The liberal justices' lies reveal the left's addiction to virus fears.  Democrats, Big Tech social media companies and the mainstream liberal media have spent two years raging about the spread of coronavirus misinformation, pointing their fingers at conservatives resisting government efforts to curb the disease's spread via lockdowns, mask requirements and vaccine mandates.  But it turns out the source of some of the worst pandemic myths wasn't right-wing podcasters booted from Twitter for the sin of disagreeing with Dr. Anthony Fauci.  They came from liberal Supreme Court justices.  On Friday, the high court heard oral arguments about the Biden administration's push to impose vaccine mandates on private employers.  The case involves a dubious effort to twist Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations meant to prevent health hazards specific to the workplace to include diseases that can be caught anywhere.  But this problematic expansion of government power over the private sector and the rights of individuals to govern what is put into their bodies — the mantra of "My body, my choice" apparently only applies to abortions — was not the main takeaway.

Supreme Court Amends Oral Argument Transcript After Liberal Commentators Claim Gorsuch Misstated Flu Death Toll.  The Supreme Court released an amended version of its Saturday oral argument transcripts in order to correct an error involving a question asked by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch.  During oral arguments against President Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for companies employing more than 100 individuals, Gorsuch asked why the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) does not mandate vaccines for other illnesses, such as the flu.  "We have flu vaccines.  The flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year.  OSHA has never purported to regulate on that basis," the justice noted.  However, an initial transcript of the oral arguments claimed that Gorsuch asserted that "hundreds of thousands of people" die of the flu every year, causing left-wing publications and commentators to accuse the justice of promoting COVID-19 misinformation.  The edited transcript was first reported on by The Hill.

SCOTUS Justices' COVID Ignorance Illustrates Why They Should Stay in Their Lane.  Aside from labeling herself an "affirmative action baby," Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor once suggested she was a "wise Latina."  Given this, apropos here is a line from ancient Chinese sage Confucius:  "Wisdom is, when you know something, knowing that you know it; and when you do not know something, knowing that you do not know it."  Sotomayor certainly failed this test during oral arguments on Friday over the Biden administration's COVID-19 "vaccine" mandates, making outlandishly incorrect claims that have brought her mockery.  "We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators," she stated matter-of-factly.  "We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, many on ventilators."  Both assertions are so distant from reality that one could wonder where the judge gets her information; even limiting oneself to just New York Times perusal shouldn't yield such profound ignorance.

The Supreme Court and Congress Humiliate Themselves.  Article III, Section II of the Constitution establishes the jurisdiction (legal ability to hear a case) of the Supreme Court.  The Court has original jurisdiction (a case is tried before the Court) over certain cases, e.g., suits between two or more states and/or cases involving ambassadors and other public ministers.  What this means in simple terms is that with rare exceptions when the court has original jurisdiction as detailed in Section II above, the court sits as an appellate court.  That means that it is not a trier of fact.  It must decide the legal issues based solely on the factual record.  Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of civics knows this, but apparently three justices do not, and in going beyond the scope of the trial court record, they not only exceed their constitutional role, but showed why this limitation is important.  They cited purported facts which are in substantial error in a forum where there is no opportunity to really contest them as would be the case in a trial court.

Leftist Supreme Court Justices Abandoned The Law And Made Up Facts.  In Supreme Court arguments on the OSHA COVID Vaccination Mandate case, the "Wise Latina" revealed at least Sixth Degree Stupidity for all to see.  One should not casually suggest that a graduate of law school who has ascended through the ranks to the highest Court in the land is stupid.  But that is the inescapable conclusion her performance requires. [...] The Wise Latina was not alone.  Justices Kagan and Breyer were equally adrift in the storm of panic porn unleashed on America by the Dark Lord of Disease, Anthony Fauci. [...] These three alleged jurists could not contain themselves in presenting egregious lies about the prevalence and severity of COVID-19. In doing so they perverted the judicial process in ways that could not be remedied short of immediate factual rejoinders.  Unfortunately, counsel for the plaintiffs in the case were unprepared for questions of fact and left great edifices of insanity standing without being challenged. [...] Mental incapacity was not restricted to the Wise Latina.  Justice Breyer claimed that "hospitals are full almost to the point of maximum," and "750 million" new cases were reported in the US yesterday.  I thought he was seated on the Supreme Court of a country with only 330 million people.

Even SCOTUS leftists have to lie to further the left's Wuhan virus narrative.  Make no mistake about it, leftists lie.  This is especially true of leftists in politics and the media.  In fact, on most any matter dear to the left's perverse agenda, one is safer assuming that the leftist you're hearing or reading is lying.  Thus, almost no one should've been surprised at the wild (and numerous) lies hurled by Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor during oral arguments over the Biden Administration's private sector Wuhan Virus vaccine mandate.  Early in the hearing, Justice Kagan called the Wuhan Virus "the greatest public health danger that this country has faced in the last century."  She added, "More and more people are dying every day.  More and more people are getting sick every day.  I don't mean to be dramatic here.  I'm just sort of stating facts."  I suppose "sort of stating facts" is like "sort of telling the truth," [...] Of course, Kagan's statements here are premised on the notion that we can even trust the U.S. Wuhan Virus numbers — we can't.

Supreme Court Just Heard Oral Arguments in Vaccine Mandate Cases.  Here Are the Takeaways.  [Scroll down]  Among other things, the justices emphasized that SARS-CoV-2 poses serious health risks to whomever it infects; that hundreds of thousands of people have been infected just since Jan. 1; that the disease it causes, COVID-19, is potentially fatal to some individuals; and that the issue itself is a simple one, to wit: whether the government's program should be allowed to go forward during the pendency of the litigation.  To the last point, those justices repeatedly questioned counsel about the harm that the public would suffer if the mandates were delayed "even for a second," as Breyer said.  In fact, most of the oral argument in the OSHA and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cases was devoted to a discussion of the facts rather than to the law.  This is significant because no provision in the Occupational Safety and Health Act or the Medicare and Medicaid programs' statutes authorizes OSHA or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to make medical decisions for employees by coercing them to be vaccinated, despite how dire such facts may potentially be.  In fact, no act of Congress expressly authorizes any federal agency to demand that anyone be vaccinated against any disease.

The Supreme Court will probably toss out the tyranical OSHA vaccine mandates.  Let's be clear what the issue is here.  The issue before the court is not whether vaccination is good or bad.  All nine of the Justices have been fully vaccinated and have also received boosters (as I have).  It's fair to conclude that the Justices all think vaccinations are good, at least for people of their demographic.  Nor is the issue whether state or federal government can impose vaccine mandates on the population.  They probably can, and occasionally have.  In oral argument yesterday, Justice Gorsuch noted in passing that he recently rejected a challenge to a vaccine mandate imposed by the state government of New Mexico.  Similarly, Congress could pass a law imposing a vaccine mandate or authorizing the Executive Branch to impose one.  What's at issue in this case is much narrower.  It's whether the Executive Branch via the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("OSHA") can impose vaccine mandates without specific authorization from Congress.  The six conservative justices signaled that they think the answer is no.

Justice Sotomayor Told a Huge Whopper About Kids and COVID.  The liberal wing of the Supreme Court embarrassed itself Friday [1/7/2022] with a slew of false claims about COVID-19 during oral arguments over Joe Biden's vaccine mandates.  For example, Justice Stephen Breyer claimed hospitals are at capacity because of unvaccinated Americans with COVID.  This is false.  But perhaps the most ridiculous false claim from a Supreme Court justice came from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who falsely claimed that 100,000 children are in "serious condition" from COVID.  "We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators.  We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators," Sotomayor claimed.  This false claim can be easily fact-checked thanks to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, which says that the current number of confirmed pediatric hospitalizations with COVID in the United States is 3,342.  Those are hospitalizations with COVID, not from COVID.

Despite Sotamayor's Absurd Lack Of Covid-19 Knowledge, USSC Seems Skeptical Of Biden Vaccine Mandates.  Aside from the utter lack of basic knowledge of Covid-19 exhibited by some of the USSC Justices, the court seemed skeptical of the Biden administration's claim that it has the authority to force vaccine mandates on over 84 million private sector employees.

Republican-Appointed Ohio Solicitor General to SCOTUS: The State Can Mandate Vaccines for 'All Individuals'.  There were a lot of head-smacking moments during oral arguments before the Supreme Court regarding Joe Biden's OSHA vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 employees.  Even though I know the left wing of the court is packed with totalitarians, it always takes my breath away to hear them opine about how the government should be allowed to exercise almost unlimited power over Americans, and their cavalier attitude about the rights of individuals.  What I did not expect to hear was Ohio Solicitor General Ben Flowers — a Republican appointee — arguing before the court that the state essentially has unlimited power to force individuals to take a vaccination.

The Oral Arguments on Biden's Vaccine Mandate Were a Total Disaster.  On Friday [1/7/2022], the Supreme Court heard arguments about the constitutionality of President Joe Biden's Wuhan coronavirus vaccine mandates for private companies with more than 100 employees.  In September 2021, Biden tasked OSHA with implementing and enforcing the mandates.  In the time since, the administration has been sued by multiple parties.  During questioning, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a number of false statements about the vaccine's ability to prevent transmission of the virus.  While it may protect against death or hospitalization, the vaccine does not prevent transmission.

New study of Pfizer's COVID vaccine has some disturbing findings.  I just read a disturbing study of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine's efficacy by the Canadian COVID Care Alliance.  This organization comprises over 500 independent Canadian doctors, scientists, and health care practitioners.  The title of the article, "The Pfizer Inoculations for COVID-19: More Harm Than Good," is disturbing.  The article itself, which discusses the many nuances of this study, is even more distressing.  You may recall the much-reported "95% efficacy" of the vaccine against COVID-19.  We all assumed that if we were vaccinated, we would then only have a 5% chance of becoming infected.  Sounds great, but the statement is misleading.  In the Pfizer study, only 8 out of 18,198, or 0.043% of participants who received the vaccine, contracted COVID, while 162 out of 18,325, 0.884% in the control group who received injections of saline became infected.  Therefore, while there was a Relative Risk Reduction of 95%, the Actual Risk Reduction was a mere 0.84%.  This disparity certainly changes one's perspective on just how effective the vaccine is.

The Pfizer Inoculations For COVID-19 — More Harm Than Good.  Our alliance of over 500 independent Canadian doctors, scientists, and health care practitioners is committed to providing quality, balanced, evidence-based information to the Canadian public about COVID-19 so that hospitalizations can be reduced, lives saved, and our country safely restored to normal as quickly as possible. [...] The federal, provincial and municipal governments in Canada have a responsibility to protect the health of Canadians as well as our Charter Rights and Freedoms.  Any medical interventions approved by Health Canada must first be proven safe.  Due diligence in research, as well as adherence to established protocols of the doctor/patient relationship, informed consent and scientific inquiry are essential to carrying out that responsibility.  Deviating from those practices, causing harm and failing to disclose risks of harm is negligent at best.

Leftist Supreme Court justices are trying to legislate their ignorance.  After reading about Friday's Supreme Court hearing the power of federal agencies to impose far-reaching vaccine mandates, a friend asked me how Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor could be so completely ignorant about COVID.  The snarky answer was that the "Wise Latina" was drawing on her inner wisdom, obviating the need for facts.  However, given that Justices Breyer and Kagan were just as ill-informed, and all three were pushing to define public policy rather than analyze the Constitution, the accurate answer is that leftist Supreme Court justices care nothing about the law.  They view themselves as an unelected legislature and are guided by their personal fears.

Supreme Court Seems Skeptical of Biden Vaccination Mandates.  The Supreme Court seemed skeptical of the Biden administration's bold claim that it has the authority to impose vaccination mandates applying to more than 84 million private sector employees and to workers in federally funded health care facilities.  In a rare Friday sitting the high court seemed broadly receptive to the idea that states have authority to impose vaccination mandates but questioned the ability of federal agencies to do the same.  The court decided Dec. 22, 2021, to fast-track emergency applications pertaining to challenges to the two mandates' lawfulness as those challenges work their way through the lower courts.  Various business groups, along with Ohio, Missouri, Louisiana and two dozen other states, want the federal mandates blocked.

Left-Wing SCOTUS Justices Spew COVID Misinformation To Defend Biden's Unconstitutional Vaxx Mandate.  The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Friday over the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for private employers during which several justices made repeated false claims about COVID-19 and the effectiveness of the jab.  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rolled out its emergency temporary standard demanding that private employers with 100 or more employees require vaccinations at the request of the Biden administration late last year.  The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay, however, preventing enforcement.  Challengers of the OSHA standard argued on Friday that the agency has no right to force a medical decision on workers, but several justices pushed back on this idea using false narratives about COVID-19 to justify the federal government's vaccine mandate.  Justice Elena Kagan suggested that getting the vaccine reduces the spread of COVID-19, a dubious claim that's contested by the rapidly rising number of breakthrough cases worldwide.

Liberal Supreme Court justices spread COVID-19 misinformation.  Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor confirmed during Friday's oral arguments that they are firmly in favor of President Joe Biden's private sector vaccine mandate.  However, the facts they relied upon to make their case were flat-out wrong.  Kagan began by claiming "the best way" to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is "for people to get vaccinated," and the "second best way" is to "wear masks."  Neither claim is true.  While the vaccines appear to slow the spread of COVID-19 and reduce the chance of death, there is absolutely no evidence that they prevent transmission, especially not against the much more contagious omicron variant.

Disappointed.  That's me — disappointed in how the mandate cases went before the SCOTUS.  I had cautioned for weeks that the legal issues regarding Administrative State were separate from the scientific and medical issues, but I held out hope that the scientific data that has emerged over the course of the two year Covid Regime would still inform the oral arguments.  Instead we got, as expected, outright lies from the liberal justices and surprisingly little informed challenges from the conservative justices.

The Supreme Court Can and Should Resolve 'Waters of the United States' Issue.  For decades, there has been major confusion regarding what waters are regulated under the Clean Water Act.  The United States Supreme Court can change this by agreeing to hear a case brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation.  In its petition asking the court to hear the case, Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Pacific Legal Foundation presents a simple question:  Should Rapanos v. United States be revisited to adopt the plurality opinion's standard for regulated wetlands?  In 2006, the late Justice Antonin Scalia in Rapanos provided much-needed clarity on what waters are covered under the Clean Water Act, and specifically what waters, including wetlands, should be considered "waters of the United States" (informally known as WOTUS) under the Clean Water Act.  This definition is extremely important because it clarifies what waters the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have jurisdiction over under the law.  Unfortunately, Scalia's opinion in Rapanos was a plurality opinion, not getting the necessary five votes for a majority.  As a result, the Supreme Court wasn't able to provide the clarity it could have 15 years ago.

High Noon at High Court for Vax Mandate.  The Supreme Court takes up the issue of vaccine mandates on Friday, holding a special hearing that is nearly unprecedented in its rushed timing.  At issue are two of Biden's mandates.  One compels the vaccination or testing of everyone who works at a 100+ employee company; the other requires vaccination of every staffer at every hospital, nursing home, or health care facility that receives funding from Medicare or Medicaid.  Will we become a country of haves and have nots concerning the Covid vaccine, whereby those who sensibly decline the vaccine are segregated in cities, schools, hospitals, and concerts?  The new year has rung in a slew of new "no vaccination, no service" rules in restaurants, bars, gyms, and even maintenance work in high-rise apartments.  This is not a fight in which the Supreme Court wanted to be, [...]

There Is No Radical Right, and There Is No Mainstream Left, Either.  [Scroll down]  Yet oddly, leftists claim the people's mandate in all their ends.  They claim it in their quest to overthrow the independent Supreme Court.  To do that, they seek to abolish the over 215 year-old requirement in the Senate that most matters pass with supermajority support in order to carry out their plan to pack the Court with leftist judges.  After using the supermajority threshold to their own advantage 327 times just last Congress, including at least nine times to block major bills, now leftists want a change.  Why?  Because too many Supreme Court Justices espouse what they say is an extremist judicial philosophy.  What is this philosophy?  That the Supreme Court should abide by the Constitution instead of making it up to enact laws too unpopular for the democratically elected Congress to pass.  It's the Constitution itself leftists seek to overthrow.  And our democracy along with it.  That's insurrection.

Will The Supreme Court Side With Individual Liberty?  The fact that there are more Republican-appointed justices than not bodes well for inherent rights and freedom in 2022's big cases, in particular the anon vaccine cases, but with Roberts the Squish and three neophyte Trump appointees coming into their own, anything is possible.  As an interesting aside, the three surviving retired justices (O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter) all joined the ranks courtesy of Republican presidents and subsequently tilted leftward.  Has any justice ever moved right?  When it's all said and done, the idea of an absolutely safe constitutional court is on par with the idea of an absolutely safe vaccine.  It is, of course, ridiculous to even think that the Supreme Court would even come close to upholding the mandates.  What legal argument could be made to support it?  There simply isn't one; likewise for arguing for the medical need.  The attorneys arguing against the mandate could highlight, among other things, that the vaccines are not even vaccines, they are closer to therapies.

Supreme Court Set to Convene Special Session on Vaccine Mandates.  On Wednesday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hold a special session in roughly two weeks to hear oral arguments regarding the Biden Administration's ongoing efforts to force vaccinations on private employees, federal contractors, and healthcare workers, according to Politico.  The special session will begin on January 7th, 2022, just several days ahead of the regularly-scheduled session set to begin on January 10th.  The decision comes after several high-profile rulings that have produced mixed results with regards to the constitutionality of the vaccine mandates.  Biden has ordered three different nationwide vaccine mandates:  One demanding that all private businesses with 100 employees or more mandate vaccines for their employees, or else face federal penalties; one ordering all healthcare workers, especially those affiliated with Medicare and Medicaid, to get vaccinated; and one forcing all federal contractors to take the vaccine.

Supreme Court will hear challenge to Biden Covid vaccine mandates.  The Supreme Court late Wednesday agreed to hear legal challenges to the Biden administration's Covid-19 vaccine mandates for large employers and health-care facilities.  The court, in an order, said that its consideration for requests to stay those mandates would be deferred until oral argument on Jan. 7.  The Supreme Court consolidated the applications of both challenges, which were considered by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, and both will be heard on Jan. 7.  Lower court orders, which allowed the employer mandate and partially allowed the health-care worker mandate, will remain in effect until then.

Democrats Use the Threat of Court-Packing to Intimidate the Supreme Court from Overturning Roe.  According to our Constitution, the judicial branch — of which the Supreme Court is the head — is intended to be an independent and equal branch of the federal government.  As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51 — part of a series of pamphlets from 1787-1788 that have shaped our understanding of the Constitution ever since — the essence of our republican system "consists in giving to those who administer each [branch], the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others."  Yet these days, two branches of the federal government, the executive and the legislative — both currently controlled by Democrats — are encroaching hard on the Court, which currently consists of six Republican appointees and three Democratic appointees.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Ends School Mask Mandate.  The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Friday affirmed a Commonwealth Court decision that said Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam did not have the authority to issue a mask mandate for everyone indoors at schools and childcare centers.  It means, effective immediately, school mask mandates are no longer mandatory, although many schools have a local rule that students who wish to wear a mask may still do so.  The suit was brought by Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, a Republican who is running for governor.  It was filed personally, as a parent, along with other parents, and not as part of a Senate action.

Supreme Court Refuses To Block Biden's Airline Mask Mandate.  Americans are relying on the Supreme Court to ultimately overturn the Biden administration's unconstitutional COVID-19 mandates.  But the same high court that refused to review the fraud-ridden 2020 election is standing by the illegitimate president's federal transportation mask mandate.  On Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts rejected an emergency request to block the federal mask mandate for air travel.  Florida resident Michael Seklecki, the father of a 4-year old autistic boy claims in court filings that he and his son are medically incapable of wearing a mask for a sustained period of time, but must regularly travel out of state for his son's specialized medical care.

The Dobbs Arguments Revealed Why the Supreme Court Should Stay Out of Abortion.  Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, involving Mississippi's ban on abortion after 15 weeks, is, of course, the most consequential abortion case to reach the Supreme Court in decades.  The arguments on Wednesday, as you would expect, featured plenty of intricate legal discussion about precedent and the like.  They also delved at length into questions of policymaking that aren't rightly in the ambit of the Supreme Court — and that the court never should have taken on in Roe and Casey, the abortion cases that are on the verge of collapse owing to their manifest constitutional shabbiness.  Indeed, the otherwise fascinating, substantive and wide-ranging discussion was relatively light on what is the supposed source of a constitutional right to abortion.  The advocates opposed to the Mississippi law located it somewhere in the 14th Amendment, even though, as Justice Samuel Alito pointed out, no one at the time of the Amendment's passage believed it guaranteed a sweeping right to abortion.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor even said at one point that the Supreme Court comes up with decisions all the time that aren't directly grounded in the Constitution.  This is a line of argument that, if taken seriously, would justify the Supreme Court swinging free of all restraint and rewriting the nation's laws on the fly.  Which is precisely what the court did in Roe and Casey.

Democrat Politicians Renew Calls to Pack the Supreme Court, Add More Liberal Judges.  Democrat politicians are renewing their calls to pack the Supreme Court following the oral arguments in the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban case that has potential to unravel Roe v. Wade.  The court is currently made up of six conservative justices and three liberals, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg — and the liberals are not very happy about it.  The court heard arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case on Wednesday and legal analysts believe the conservative-majority court is gearing up to strike down the precedent set in Roe v. Wade.

What's that you smell in the Supreme Court?  In Wednesday's [12/1/2021] Supreme Court oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Justice Sonia Sotomayor got a whiff of something she did not like.  She said many abortion opponents, including the sponsors of the Mississippi abortion law at issue, hoped her three new colleagues would allow for the reversal or reduction of Roe v. Wade.  With Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett listening, she asked, "Will this institution survive the stench" created from such political machinations — and then answered:  "I don't see how it is possible."  Of course, when justices begin to declare their disgust at the very thought of overturning precedent, there is another detectable scent in the courtroom. [...] Justices Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer insisted that overturning Roe in whole or in part would bring ruin upon the court by abandoning the principle of stare decisis, or the respect for precedent.  Yet neither showed the same unflagging adherence to precedent when they sought to overturn conservative doctrines.

Doctor Slams Sotomayor:  "To Compare an Unborn Child to a Brain-Dead Person is Wholly Ignorant".  Doctors and scientists corrected U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor this week after she compared unborn babies to brain dead people and claimed they cannot feel pain until at least 24 weeks of pregnancy.  Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a radiology specialist and senior fellow with The Catholic Association, said the justice's statements were "wholly ignorant" of basic scientific knowledge.  "To compare an unborn child to a brain-dead person or a corpse flouts science, which tells us that at 15 weeks gestation, a baby's organs are fully formed, her heart pumps 26 quarts of blood a day, and her lungs are already practicing drawing breath," Christie responded in a statement.

SCOTUS Oral Arguments:  Signs Point to Roe v. Wade Being Nuked.  I'm not sure I ever expected to write this article, and just a few years ago it would have seemed impossible to ponder, but signs are pointing toward Roe v. Wade, the vile politicized decision that legalized and protected abortion in all 50 states, being nuked.  The Supreme Court is currently engrossed in oral arguments, and the live stream of the event has offered some big clues to how things are going and where things are headed.  To start, I want to expose you to the arguments being made by the liberal Justices.  Sonia Sotomayor's commentary was especially disgusting and blatantly political, not even bothering to examine the actual legal issues at play.  At one point, Sotomayor actually argued that a baby in the womb feeling pain doesn't mean it's alive, which is completely counter to science.  She also insisted that the desire to protect the lives of babies in the womb is purely religious.

Fear for Roe:  Nets Ignore U.S. Abortion Laws Matching China, North Korea.  One of the major moments from Wednesday's [12/1/2021] blockbuster Supreme Court oral arguments on Mississippi's law banning abortion after 15 weeks was when Chief Justice John Roberts noted that because of Roe v. Wade, America found itself in the company of China and North Korea in allowing abortion after viability was reached.  This important point went completely unmentioned by the broadcast networks that took up the liberal position in support of the barbaric act.  "Roe v. Wade established a woman's constitutional right to have an abortion and if the court upholding the Mississippi law, it would undermine or overrule Roe altogether.  Today, it seemed clear the conservative justices are ready to do exactly that," sneered ABC senior national correspondent Terry Moran on World News Tonight.  "12 [states] have trigger laws that would automatically halt or nearly all abortions if Roe is overturned," noted correspondent Janet Shamlian on the CBS Evening News.  And on NBC Nightly News, they suggested women would become "second class citizens" if Roe was overturned.

Justice Thomas Tears Into Pro-Abortion Lawyers With Hard Opening Questions.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was sworn in on October 23, 1991.  Beginning in 1996, he would take a 10-year break from asking questions from the bench, until the first case before the Court following the death of Chief Justice Antonin Scalia, his ideological soul mate.  While still measured, Thomas has been known to take lawyers to the mat when he sees fit to do so.  Wednesday morning's oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case — that threatens to weaken Roe v. Wade if not overturn it — provided Justice Thomas the perfect opportunity to do just that, with a round of tough questions for the "pro-choice" lawyers.

Supreme Court Justice Thomas Rocks Pro-Abortion Lawyers With Tough Opening Questions.  The U.S. Supreme Court, which started out as a respected, non-partisan, and crucial protector of the Constitutionality of laws passed by legislatures, has become highly partisan, as former U.S. presidents, from both parties, have only nominated potential justices who reflected their world views.  Following decades of Democratic President's nominees getting confirmed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v Wade, on January 22, 1973, that abortion was a Constitutional "right".  This ruling was front and center in today's opening arguments concerning the legality of Mississippi's controversial 2018 law banning abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, before 15 weeks of pregnancy.  Justice Clarence Thomas has been a reliable Constitutional conservative on the Supreme Court for 30 years, but he has been known for his silence on the bench.  This week, Thomas broke his usual silence to ask a question that has pro-abortion activists unhinged.

10 Things You Need to Know About Today's Oral Arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.  It seems like both an understatement and overkill to call Wednesday a historic day, as the Supreme Court heard the oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case that could become a pivotal moment in the abortion debate.  The Court could overturn Roe v. Wade and return abortion policy to the individual states, and as I wrote yesterday, it could change the nature of the abortion debate altogether.

High Court Hears Arguments in Biggest Abortion Case Since Roe.  The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case challenging the constitutionality of Mississippi's Gestational Age Act.  The law bans most abortions after 15 weeks' gestation.  The time allotted for each side was extended so that newly appointed U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar could participate and include the Biden administration's opposition to laws protecting unborn children.  Most of the time for arguments was spent on whether the court's decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey should be overruled.

Justice Kavanaugh Just Boiled the Abortion Debate Down to Its Most Fundamental Core.  Today's [12/1/2021] oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court have been incredibly instructive, educational, and inspiring. [...] The live-streamed audio allowed interested Americans to hear exactly how well-suited each of the nine justices are for the weightiest of all topics they will probably ever hear.  It's a fine departure from the made-for-television Senate confirmation hearings that end up shedding hardly any light on anything. [...] Hearing the nine justices actually quizzing the attorneys charged with arguing the Dobbs v.  Jackson Women's Health Organization enlightened us profoundly on their intellect, empathy, and abilities to carry out the critical job they've been given for the rest of their lives.

The Supreme Court will probably uphold the Mississippi law limiting abortion after 15 weeks.  Keep in mind that oral argument at the Supreme Court is typically more theater than jurisprudence.  The Justices usually already have their minds made up from reading the briefs.  But it's worthwhile theater because it connects the public to the judicial process.  Also, it gives some insight into the likely decision which won't come till next Spring.  My first observation is that much of the public is confused about what the Court is deciding and what it is not.  Blame the media for that.  Clicks are generated and fires are stoked not by the media presenting cases, but by presenting parades of horrible.  Here, the Court is not considering whether to ban abortion.  That's not on the table.  What's on the table is whether the Court will uphold the law enacted by the legislature of Mississippi which limits abortion in that state after 15 weeks.

Court's Legitimacy Depends on Overturning Roe v. Wade.  When the U.S. Supreme Court takes up Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization today, it will be asked to overrule Roe v. Wade, the court's 50-year-old precedent that created a constitutional right to abortion.  Legions of commentators are turning out to defend Roe, claiming that the Supreme Court's legitimacy depends on reaffirming it.  They are wrong.  The majority's opinion in Roe has undermined the court's legitimacy for nearly a half-century.  Roe relied on dubious reasoning to remove a contentious policy issue from the reach of the American people, placing all abortion policy in the hands of the unelected and unaccountable judiciary.  As a result, Roe has politicized the court and poisoned the judiciary.  The most legitimate thing the Supreme Court can do is overrule Roe.

Supreme Court stepping into fight over 'welfare' immigrants.  On Oct. 29, the Supreme Court agreed to rule on whether 14 states have standing to challenge President Biden's decision to rescind President Trump's regulation barring immigration to anyone who might end up on the public assistance rolls, known as the "public charge" rule.  The California-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled the states did not have standing, but that decision was appealed, and the high court decided to weigh in.  They probably will hear oral arguments late this month.

If Kavanaugh And Barrett Betray Pro-Lifers, We Must Blow Up The Conservative Legal Movement.  Less than a handful of years after their hard-won elevation to the Supreme Court, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are sending a chill down the spines of conservatives with a string of bad signals from their seats on the court.  In July, Kavanaugh and Barrett joined the court's leftist majority in declining to hear Arlene's Flowers v.  Washington, a critical religious liberty case.  They again sided with the court's left in a similar decision to turn away a religious exemption challenge to Maine's vaccine mandate — which Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas took pains to note was staggering in its hypocrisy.  "A State may not assume 'the best of individuals engaged in their secular lives while assuming 'the worst' about the habits of religious persons," the trio wrote.

Supreme Court appears poised to overturn NY gun control law from 1913.  The US Supreme Court appeared poised Wednesday [11/3/2021 to overturn a New York law that limits someone's ability to legally carry a concealed gun in public.  The conservative-leaning high court listened to about two hours of arguments in a case brought by a New York chapter of the NRA and state weapons owners, who have sought to overturn a 1913 gun control law.  The suit, which was struck down by lower courts, seeks to expand the ability of New Yorkers to legally carry concealed weapons.  The panel's conservative justices — who outnumber its liberals 6-3 — questioned the current law during Wednesday's hearing.

SCOTUS Appears Ready to Strike Down Restrictive NY Concealed Carry Law.  The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a case involving an overly restrictive New York law concerning gun permits this week.  It's being called the most important Second Amendment case in a decade and would expand the definition of the "right to keep and bear arms."  The law requires a citizen wanting a concealed carry permit to show "proper cause" before obtaining such a license in locations typically open to the general public, even in rural areas.  Why would any citizen be required to "show cause" to exercise any right in the Constitution?  "The idea that you would need a license to exercise a right is unusual with regard to the Bill of Rights," remarked Chief Justice John Roberts.

What You Need To Know About Today's Gun Rights Case In The Supreme Court.  Today [11/3/2021], for the first time in more than a decade, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a case involving the Second Amendment.  While the appeal in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen concerns the constitutionality of New York's restrictive concealed-carry permitting system, the high court's analysis will prove as important as the ultimate outcome.

Gun rights showdown — Supreme Court case a potential big win for Second Amendment.  On Wednesday [11/3/2021], the Supreme Court will take up arguably the oldest and most controversial right in our history.  New York State Rifle Association v. Bruen is the first major gun rights case in over 10 years to come before the Supreme Court and it has the makings of a major gun rights victory.  The case concerns concealed-carry restrictions that require a showing of "proper cause."  Lower courts have upheld the New York law, but there are ample constitutional concerns over its vague standard, such as showing that you are "of good moral character."  New York wants to exercise discretion in deciding who needs to carry guns in public while gun owners believe that the law flips the constitutional presumption in favor of such a right.  There are few constitutional rights that have been debated so long in this country as gun rights.  Indeed, before other Englishmen were given a written guarantee of the right to bear arms, colonists in Virginia in 1607 were given such a written guarantee by the Crown.  Since that time, the right to bear arms has been an ingrained part of our culture and ultimately our Constitution.
Italics added by The Editor.

Supreme Court Defies Biden Administration, Accepts Immigration, EPA Cases.  The Supreme Court decided Oct. 29 to hear two cases that the Biden administration did not want the court to hear — one, aimed at reviving a rule that screens out potentially government-dependent immigrants, and another that could roll back the reach of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The court decisions came as migrants continue to stream illegally across the increasingly porous southern border and the Biden administration develops a strategy for dealing with the scientifically contentious phenomenon of manmade global warming.  The decisions also came as the court prepares to hear high-profile cases in coming days dealing with a Texas law strictly regulating abortions and a New York law that strictly regulates gun use.  The Supreme Court agreed to hear Arizona v.  San Francisco, court file 20-1775, which concerns the so-called public charge rule.

Mark Levin: 'The Democratic Party Is All In — Trash the Independence of the Supreme Court'.  During the Sunday [10/24/2021] broadcast of FNC's "Life, Liberty & Levin," conservative talker Mark Levin warned the modern Democratic Party was threatening the independence of the Supreme Court.  According to Levin, author of "American Marxism," Attorney General Merrick Garland'snd other gestures from the Biden administration, including a "commission" on the Supreme Court, were efforts to "trash" the high court's independence.

Gregg Jarrett eviscerates Joe Biden's idiotic SCOTUS commission.  "Packing the Supreme Court" is a noxious idea and even Biden knows it.  He famously (and correctly) denounced it as "boneheaded" and a "terrible, terrible idea."  But during the campaign, he didn't have the courage to stand by his convictions[,] because he feared it would alienate the liberals in his party that he's been sucking up to.  So, he pandered to the idea (and then dodged) and then appointed a commission to study it[,] hoping to buy time and shift responsibility elsewhere.  It's the antithesis of leadership, but classic Joe Biden.  He's the Charlie Brown of presidents — notoriously wishy-washy and a model of self-contradiction.  Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the high court but failed.  And Biden is no FDR — not by a long shot.  But as a practical matter, it won't happen.  Not a chance.  You'd need a constitutional amendment to impose a term limit[,] and that won't happen.  And Democrats would have to blow up the filibuster in order to add justices to the court[,] and that won't happen.  But more importantly, it's politically toxic.  Polls consistently show that Americans are vehemently opposed to tampering with the Supreme Court.

Democrat Dog and Pony Shows Come up Short.  It isn't hard to point out the failures of Democrats.  They're so numerous it would be difficult to compile a comprehensive list of them.  But two recent political gambits by congressional Democrats are falling flat on their face.  Biden's SCOTUS Commission and the congressional J6 commission have completely failed in their purpose of hiding their incompetence in managing anything larger than a fundraising dinner.  Democrats successfully managed to whip their base into a frenzy over the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.  It seems like ages ago now, but the #MeToo crowd that trashed Kavanaugh was nowhere to be found when Trump was able to nominate a second Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett, who was attacked for merely being a mother Democrats didn't like.

Cotton: SCOTUS Commission Was an 'Effort to Provide Joe Biden Cover'.  During a Friday [10/15/2021] interview on Fox News Channel's "America's Newsroom," Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) sounded off on the White House's presidential commission on the Supreme Court's seeming reluctance to support court-packing.  According to Cotton, the commission was never supposed to make any changes to the Supreme Court.  Instead, the Arkansas Republican said the commission's purpose from the beginning was to provide then-presidential candidate Joe Biden "cover" from the far left.

Biden's Supreme Court packing commission says they are split on adding more justices.  Joe Biden's Supreme Court commission warned that expanding the number of Justices on the bench could be seen as a 'partisan move' with global and domestic repercussions in documents released on Thursday evening [10/14/2021].  Members of the panel agreed that Congress had the Constitutional authority to pull it off but were 'divided on whether Court expansion would be wise.'  Biden established the presidential commission in April.  The panel is now releasing more than 200 documents as the high court navigates one of its most politically divisive sessions with questions on abortion and gun rights on the docket in coming weeks.

A Radical Dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas Offers a Reproach to Merrick Garland.  Brown v. Entertainment Merchants arose after California passed a law banning the sale of violent video games to persons under the age of 18.  California was promptly sued by, in Entertainment Mercahnts, a trade association.  They were opposed by the governor, Edmund Brown, and the state attorney general, one — remember this — Kamala Harris.  At the Supreme Court, the state of California lost.  The majority opinion was written by The Great Scalia, as the justice is known in these columns.  The opinion noted that the high bench had already rejected attempts by states to "shoehorn" violence into unprotected category of obscenity.  More broadly, the majority of justices reckoned that the California law "does not comport with the First Amendment," which prohibits laws abriding the freedom of speech.  Joining Justice Scalia in the majority were Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.  Justice Alito wrote a separate concurrence.  So it turned out that the only justices to side with Governor Edmund Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris — both Democrats — were Justice Breyer and, in Clarence Thomas, the most right-wing member of the high court.

John Roberts is no longer the leader of his own court.  Who, then, controls it?  When Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the decisive vote in 2012 that upheld Barack Obama's signature achievement in office, the Affordable Care Act, he reportedly did so following a month-long campaign by fellow conservatives to try to get him to join their side.  His decision to side with liberal colleagues inspired ire on the right but it also cemented the chief justice's role as the leader of his own court.  That was then.  Last week, as the supreme court began a new session that will include rulings on abortion, gun rights, and torture, Roberts no longer holds the coveted role of sitting in the court's ideological center.

People Notice When the Elites Lie.  [Scroll down]  Ordinary Americans, who aren't emotionally invested in keeping up the illusion that all is well on the banks of the Potomac, saw something different.  They saw John Roberts telling a lie and Donald Trump telling the truth.  Everybody knows that most of what the upper level of the judicial system does is politics by another name.  They know that most of the time, Obama judges, Trump judges, Bush judges, and Clinton judges rule differently on politically charged questions.  And a large portion of the American people decide whom to vote for in presidential elections based mainly on what kinds of judges they want the next president to appoint.  John Roberts has the audacity to tell these people that none of this is true and that all judges are really just doing their best to enforce the same laws in an impartial way.

Supreme Court rejects appeal by D.C. residents for more representation in Congress.  The Supreme Court on Monday [10/4/2021] advised a lower court to reconsider earlier decisions on the border wall and rejected an appeal from Washington, D.C. residents for voting rights in Congress, delivering a blow to the districts statehood push.  The high court on Monday directed lower courts to reconsider their previous rulings that froze funding for construction of a wall at the southern border.  Former President Trump, after watching Congress deny his funding requests for the wall, declared an emergency and diverted $3.6 billion from the military budget for the wall, drawing a slew of lawsuits.

Sonia Sotomayor Exposes the Lie of an 'Apolitical' Supreme Court.  [Scroll down]  And just as all eyes have returned to the court, observers of all stripes have been presented with a timely reminder as to how the court's progressives view their jobs: to wit, as unabashed liberal partisans.  That reminder has now come courtesy of the current court's most far-left justice, Sonia Sotomayor.  It follows an entire career's worth of similar comments from Justice Sotomayor's former colleague, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  According to reporting from both CNN and the Washington Post, Sotomayor recently offered what can only be interpreted as a substantive public policy position on S.B. 8, Texas' recent anti-abortion fetal heartbeat law that has garnered much national attention.  That Sotomayor would now offer a forthright political opinion on the topic is hardly unexpected:  She dissented from the court's correct recent decision to deny Texas pro-abortion plaintiffs' emergency request to enjoin any enforcement of S.B. 8, lambasting the law at the time as "flagrantly unconstitutional."

Vaccinated Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh tests positive for COVID.  The Supreme Court revealed Friday that Justice Brett Kavanaugh tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday night [9/30/2021].  The justice, 56, has been fully vaccinated against the virus, as have all other members of the high court.  He is currently experiencing no symptoms and his wife and family have tested negative.  The court said Kavanaugh had tested negative as recently as Monday morning.

The Supreme Court Could Not 'Block' Texas' Fetal Heartbeat Law.  On Wednesday [9/1/2021], the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in a challenge to S.B. 8, Texas' new abortion law.  This unique statute empowers private citizens to sue those who perform or facilitate abortions.  President Biden ripped the 5-4 decision, charging that the conservative justices followed "procedural complexities" "rather than use its supreme authority to ensure justice."  Biden is wrong.  The Court has no sweeping, majestic power to "ensure justice."  Indeed, it is a myth that courts can "strike down" laws at all.  Rather, judges have a very limited power:  to enjoin specific government officials from enforcing laws against specific litigants.  The judiciary cannot simply erase statutes from the book.  And when the government plays no role at all in enforcing a statute — as with S.B. 8 — courts cannot "block" that law from going into effect.

Supreme Court Refuses To Block Texas Heartbeat Law Which Virtually Bans Killing Babies.  The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Texas law that protects babies who have a detectable heartbeat from being aborted in the Lone Star State.  In a 5-4 decision, the highest court in the nation declined to block Texas' newest abortion law despite protests from Planned Parenthood, other abortion activists, and even journalists.  Radical pro-abortion facilities and activists first brought an emergency petition to the Supreme Court with the hopes that the justices would at least temporarily block the law from going into effect on Sept. 1.  The court passed on acting on the petition on Aug. 31, meaning the law, which gives private citizens the power to file civil suits against anyone who performs abortions after six weeks or assists a woman in obtaining an abortion, went into effect on Wednesday.  Violators of the law could be forced to pay $10,000 to the plaintiff.

Follow the Science... Toward Tyranny.  Now comes the U.S. Supreme Court espying tyranny in a bureaucratic Centers for Disease Control (CDC) regulation preposterously claiming to prevent the spread of COVID-19.  Perhaps the court caught some anti-tyranny virus, for just 48 hours before, it denied the bureaucracy the ability to preserve and enhance the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program — which allows "Dreamers" to remain in the United States illegally and indefinitely.  Whatever the epidemiology of its jurisprudence, the court's unsigned per curiam opinion in Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHS has exposed the tyranny of the administrative state.  Both the CDC and the DACA examples illustrate the extent to which the federal government is governed not by an elected congress or president, or even the unelected courts but by the administrative state, the nexus of bureaucracy, academia, and media that effectively rules America on behalf of increasingly leftist policies.

Supreme Court denies request to stop Texas 6-week abortion ban, with John Roberts and liberals dissenting.  The Supreme Court formally denied a request from Texas abortion providers to freeze a state law that bars abortions after six weeks.  Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal justices in dissent.  The court's move means that the law — which is one of the strictest in the nation and bans abortion before many people know they are pregnant — will remain on the books.  The law allows private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who assists a pregnant person seeking an abortion in violation of the ban.  In an unsigned opinion, the majority wrote that while the clinics had raised "serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law," they had not met a burden that would allow the court to block it at this time due to "complex" and "novel" procedural questions.

Virginia Supreme Court upholds reinstatement of teacher who opposes transgender pronoun mandates.  Loudoun County Public Schools failed to convince the Virginia Supreme Court that it had the right to suspend a teacher — and ban him from school board meetings — for publicly speaking against a proposed transgender pronoun mandate.  The high court upheld a circuit court ruling that reinstated Tanner Cross as his free speech lawsuit proceeds against the district.  It cited recent First Amendment precedents from both the U.S. Supreme Court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which does not have jurisdiction over Virginia federal courts.  "[I]t is settled law that the government may not take adverse employment actions against its employees in reprisal for their exercising their right to speak on matters of public concern," and the district doesn't dispute that Cross was speaking on an "issue of social, political, or other interest to a community," the high court said.

A spot of good news in sea of bad news.  On Thursday [8/26/2021], a grim day, in a depressing month, in a terrible year, there is some good news:  the Supreme Court killed the CDC's efforts to destroy private property.  In a per curium decision, the six non-leftist Supreme Court justices held that the CDC lacks the authority to impose eviction moratoriums.  This is a huge victory, not just for property-owners, but for the American way of life.

Supreme Court Ends Biden's Eviction Moratorium.  The Supreme Court on Thursday [8/26/2021] rejected the Biden administration's latest moratorium on evictions, ending a political and legal dispute during a public health crisis in which the administration's shifting positions had subjected it to criticism from adversaries and allies alike.  The court issued an eight-page majority opinion, an unusual move in a ruling on an application for emergency relief, where terse orders are more common.  The court's three liberal justices dissented.  The decision puts hundreds of thousands of tenants at risk of losing shelter, while the administration struggles to speed the flow of billions of dollars in federal funding to people who are behind in rent because of the coronavirus pandemic and its associated economic hardship.  Only about $5.1 billion of the $46.5 billion in aid had been disbursed by the end of July, according to figures released on Wednesday, as bureaucratic delays at the state and local levels snarled payouts.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden Eviction Moratorium.  The Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration's eviction moratorium in a 6-3 decision on Thursday [8/26/2021].  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the moratorium earlier this month to cover counties with "high" or "substantial" coronavirus spread, which as of Wednesday included the vast majority of counties in the U.S. The order was issued after a previous nationwide moratorium instituted during the Trump administration expired on July 31.

Supreme Court Allows Revival of Trump-Era 'Remain in Mexico' Asylum Policy.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday [8/24/2021] refused to block a ruling from a federal judge in Texas requiring the Biden administration to reinstate a Trump-era immigration program that forces asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border to await approval in Mexico.  The court's brief unsigned order said that the administration had appeared to act arbitrarily and capriciously in rescinding the program, citing a decision last year refusing to let the Trump administration rescind the Obama-era program protecting the young immigrants known as dreamers.

Supreme Court Rules Against Biden, Reinstates Trump's 'Remain In Mexico' Policy.  The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday [8/24/2021] against the Biden administration's attempt to end former President Donald Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy.  In a 6-3 vote, the court rejected the administration's bid to block U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's ruling that revived the enforcement of the policy.  The high court said the administration failed to show the decision to end the policy was not arbitrary and capricious.  Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.

Supreme Court Orders Reinstatement of 'Remain in Mexico' Policy in [a] Blow to Biden Admin.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday [8/24/2021] declined to block a lower-court ruling that will require the Biden administration to reinstate the Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy for asylum seekers at the U.S. border.  The court's three liberal justices dissented, saying they would have granted the administration's request to halt the lower court's order.  The administration had sought to end the policy, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols, which forces migrants to await their U.S. immigration court dates in Mexico.  The program was first suspended when Biden took office and was later formally terminated.  However, Texas and Missouri sued to challenge the Biden administration's decision to end the program.

US Supreme Court Intervenes in 'Remain in Mexico' Case, Blocking Program's Revival.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 20 temporarily blocked the reinstatement of the "Remain in Mexico" program, intervening just hours before President Joe Biden's administration would have had to restart the policy.  Justice Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush nominee, in a one-page order, stayed a ruling by a federal judge that was poised to go into effect on Aug. 21.  That ruling would have forced the Biden administration to restart the Trump-era program, formally known as the Migrant Policy Protocols (MPP).  The Biden administration ended the program on June 1, triggering a lawsuit from the states of Texas and Missouri.  Alito issued the order after the U.S. government filed an emergency motion with the nation's top court.  He said he was blocking the lower court ruling so that the full Supreme Court could consider the application.  He has asked the states that are challenging the Biden administration's reversal of the policy to respond to the administration's request by Aug. 24.

Justice Amy Barrett denies appeal from Indiana University students fighting COVID-19 vaccine mandate.  Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied an appeal from students at Indiana University to block the school's vaccine mandate.  Barrett, who has jurisdiction over the appeals court involved in the case, denied the students request for an injunction against Indiana University's vaccine mandate on her own without consulting other colleagues on the court and without hearing from the school.  Indiana University told students and employees that they are required to be vaccinated by the start of the fall term on August 23.  Students who don't comply will have their registration canceled, and employees who don't comply will lose their jobs.

Supreme Court Denies Petition to Block Indiana University's Vaccinate Mandate.  The Supreme Court denied Thursday [8/12/2021] the petition of eight Indiana University students asking to block the school's requirement that students receive the COVID vaccine as a condition of fall enrollment.  Newly confirmed conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett was charged with reviewing the legal challenge to the college's rule and refused to block it.  No other justices on the bench offered a dissenting opinion.  The case originated when a group of Indiana students asked the court for an emergency order striking down the mandate, claiming that the potential harm of inoculation exceeded the merits of protection against the disease for their age demographic.

The Supreme Court has Become a Council of Kings.  In this month's edition of "let's kill the Constitution," we have the CDC's eviction moratorium as the next demonstration that no one in our government feels compelled to comply with the Constitution anymore.  In Alabama Association of Realtors v.  Department of Health and Human Services, the Supreme Court upheld the CDC eviction moratorium and did so in a manner that vastly expanded the Court's power and authority.  The moratorium required that property owners allow others to squat on their property, without compensation, for over a year.  It was clearly a violation of constitutionally protected property rights.  It restricted what property-owners could and could not do with their own property, without compensation or due process.  A minority comprising Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett held that the CDC does not have the authority to impose an eviction moratorium — even during a time of pandemic.  Justice Kavanaugh agreed with this minority but then voted with Justices Roberts, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan to allow the moratorium to stand.

The Bill Comes Due After the DOJ Capitalizes on Brett Kavanaugh's Cowardice.  As I feared, Brett Kavanaugh's cowardice in not vacating the stay on the original eviction moratorium is coming back to haunt property owners across the country.  In my previous pieces on this topic, I noted that Kavanaugh had the chance to join the conservatives, vacate the stay on the original moratorium, and do so in a way that clearly prevents any future issuance given how blatantly unconstitutional this theft of property is.  Instead, perhaps in some misguided attempt to get the left to love him, the Trump-appointed justice joined the liberals, allowing the moratorium to continue and expire.  By doing so, Kavanaugh created a path for Joe Biden and the CDC to essentially game the system, bankrupting more landlords before any new challenge can make it through the courts.  Biden admitted yesterday that is their plan.

Mississippi Attorney General Asks Supreme Court to Overturn Roe V. Wade.  The Mississippi Attorney General on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe V. Wade.  "The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history, or tradition" Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch told the Supreme Court justices.  "There are those who would like to believe that Roe v.  Wade settled the issue of abortion once and for all," Fitch said in a statement posted on her official website.  "But all it did was establish a special-rules regime for abortion jurisprudence that has left these cases out of step with other Court decisions and neutral principles of law applied by the Court.  As a result, state legislatures, and the people they represent, have lacked clarity in passing laws to protect legitimate public interests, and artificial guideposts have stunted important public debate on how we, as a society, care for the dignity of women and their children.  It is time for the Court to set this right and return this political debate to the political branches of government."

Backlash in states starts over Biden court-packing scheme.  At the very moment today [7/20/2021] that President Joe Biden's Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States was meeting to consider adding likely Democratic justices, an effort started in Wisconsin to lock in the current makeup of the court — and 150 years of history.  Newly elected Wisconsin state Sens. Julian Bradley and Eric Wimberger and Rep. Tony Kurtz said they started to circulate a resolution to block expanding the court beyond nine judges.  While some other states have passed simple resolutions on the issue, their plan, dubbed "Wisconsin Keep 9 Resolution," calls for a constitutional convention to debate an amendment that would require nine states.  In a memo seeking co-sponsors shared with Secrets, the trio wrote, "Legislators in other states have urged their members of Congress to amend the constitution.  However, as a legislature we do have the power to call for a constitutional convention directly, and that is what this joint resolution does."

Justice Breyer Addresses Rumors of Retirement.  Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer addressed rumors of his potential retirement on Thursday.  The 82-year-old justice has sat on the bench for nearly 27 years and is under pressure from the far-left to step down so that President Joe Biden can appoint another liberal justice while Democrats hold the majority in the Senate.  Breyer said that his own health, and the court, are the factors behind his decision.  "Primarily, of course, health," Breyer told CNN of his decision making process.  "Second, the court."  He added a firm "no," when asked if he was retiring in the immediate future.

A Coup Against The Constitution?  [Scroll down]  In addition to spinning up new states, the left is also wondering how to get a Supreme Court that will rule in its favor.  There is no legal requirement for nine justices, so they saw the opportunity to use their wafer-thin tie plus Kamala Harris in the Senate to add some seats and pack the court.  While the act of doing so might be technically Constitutional, the reason for doing it is clearly anti-Constitutional.  Many Democrats and leftists no longer see the Bill of Rights as the most powerful protection citizens possess.  They see an impediment to doing the important work they were put here to do.  That includes exempting hate speech (as they define it) from the First Amendment and getting that ridiculous Second Amendment back to its proper place securing the right to a flintlock musket of your choice.  They want a Supreme Court that will rubber stamp any initiative that helps rein in all that dangerous individual liberty.

Right, wrong and a flower shop.  Is there anyone who can say what is always right and always wrong and present an unchanging standard by which all behavior can be judged?  I raise the question in light of last week's non-ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined for a second time to hear an appeal from a flower shop owner in Washington State.  Barronelle Stutzman, the owner, refused to provide flowers for a same-sex couple because her religious beliefs instruct her that marriage was created by God for opposite sexes.  The U.S. Supreme Court had sent her case back to the state supreme court for further consideration.  That court upheld its original ruling, forcing Ms. Stutzman to provide the flowers, or face penalties under the state's anti-discrimination laws.  Three conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court wanted to hear the case.  It takes four.  What confuses many people is that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused on the same religious grounds as Ms. Stutzman to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.  Why is religious belief a sufficient reason to uphold the Colorado baker's right not to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and a violation of another state's law in the flower shop case?  News reports say Ms. Stutzman has provided flowers in the past to gay individuals, but not for their weddings.  How far are the courts willing to go with this?

I Could Lose Everything After 'Devastating' End to 8-Year Court Battle Over Same-Sex Wedding, Florist Says.  When the Supreme Court announced July 2 that it had declined to take up florist Barronelle Stutzman's case, it left her on the losing side of an eight-year court battle.  In 2013, one of Stutzman's longtime customers asked her to design floral arrangements for his same-sex wedding.  She told him that because of her religious beliefs, she could not design an arrangement for the wedding, but she referred him to several other florists.  A few weeks later, she learned she was being sued.  The Washington state "attorney general, without any complaint from Rob [Ingersoll] and Curt [Freed], sued me personally and corporately, and the ACLU got ahold of Rob and Curt and also sued me personally and corporately," Stutzman told The Daily Signal.  Now, the Washington state Supreme Court ruling against the Christian florist stands because the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Stutzman's appeal.  The Supreme Court's move could cost Stutzman everything.

Supreme Confusion Over Free Speech.  The Supreme Court just undermined the authority of K-12 public schools to set reasonable rules for children about their speech outside the classroom or on campus but involving school matters with established rules.  The Court also took what should have been a matter between the child and the child's parents and transferred it to our courts, which further weakens parental and school authority.  In its recent decision, Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., the Supreme Court recently ruled on a school's ability to discipline a student for express and symbolic speech made off-campus (in this case, via a social media app called Snapchat).

The Liberal Supreme Court.  This is a review of the Supreme Court's constitutional decisions during its October 2020 term, which ended on June 30, 2021.  (It's called the October 2020 term because that's when it began.)  This review shows that, contrary to the mainstream media narrative, the court doesn't have a "conservative majority."  In constitutional cases at least, it leans toward the liberal side.  SCOTUS Blog tells us that during this term the court's most liberal justice, Sonya Sotomayor, was in the majority 70 percent of the time.  But that includes cases interpreting federal statutes, where conservatives won some victories.  These included Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, upholding Arizona's election integrity law, and Pakdel v. San Francisco, helping landowners sue for compensation when government seizes their land.  Where the liberal tilt is noticeable is in constitutional cases.

Supreme Court Leaves Unlawful, Unconstitutional Eviction Moratorium Intact.  The Supreme Court's decision to leave in place the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's unlawful, unconstitutional eviction moratorium poses a threat to the rule of law, federalism, and fundamental constitutional rights.  Justice Brett Kavanaugh perplexingly agreed with the court majority to leave this moratorium in place, despite acknowledging that the CDC's edict is indeed unlawful.  On Sept. 4, 2020, the CDC banned property owners from commencing the eviction process in courts until the end of 2020.  The CDC subsequently renewed and extended this ban three times.  Not only did the CDC grossly exceed its congressional mandate, but a congressionally authorized eviction moratorium would itself violate the Constitution.  The CDC predicated its edict on the Public Health Service Act, which authorizes regulations "necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the states or possessions, or from one state or possession into any other" international and interstate spread of communicable diseases.

Conservatives 6, Tyranny 0.  The New Civil Liberties Alliance is fighting the systemic threats of the administrative state.  With the Supreme Court shutting down for the summer, NCLA pointed out six wins over liberal bureaucrats and politicians.  The alliance announced, "As the U.S. Supreme Court's October 2020 Term comes to a close, the New Civil Liberties Alliance is celebrating an unblemished 6-0 record for the amicus curiae briefs we filed in defense of civil liberties.  The high court's administrative power cases produced several unlikely majorities, including two NCLA amicus wins in the form of unanimous opinions written by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Breyer.  Justice Gorsuch even quoted from NCLA's amicus brief in his separate opinion in U.S. v. Arthrex.  These six rulings in favor of NCLA's positions show that our strategy of defending civil liberties against administrative power in the federal courts is working."  The group did not argue these cases.  Instead it lent public support to those suing the government.

SCOTUS Defends Election Integrity, Dems Panic.  On Thursday [7/1/2021], the Supreme Court upheld two longstanding provisions of Arizona election law, provoking widespread trepidation among the Democrats.  In a 6-3 ruling authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court held that it was permissible for the state to limit ballot harvesting and out-of-precinct voting.  Such limitations are commonplace throughout the country, but the Democratic National Committee (DNC) took Arizona to court arguing that these two violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).  The DNC lost but appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against Arizona.  SCOTUS overturned that ruling and the panicked Democrats inevitably denounced the Supreme Court's decision as a brazen assault on democracy.

Supreme Court Upholds Freedom of Association.  In Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, the Supreme Court on Thursday held by a 6-3 majority that California violated that right by demanding that charitable organizations disclose their major donors as a condition of fundraising in the state.  Charitable organizations in California that solicit contributions are required by state law to register with the state and provide reports that include their federal IRS Form 990.  While most Form 990 information is public, federal law requires that "Schedule B," which lists an organization's "substantial donors," be kept confidential.  Americans for Prosperity and the Thomas More Law Center refused to provide their Schedule B's to the state, and instead sued California.  The risk of public disclosure of this sensitive information, they argued, violates the right of association, especially when California does not actually use it to investigate charitable misconduct.

Supreme Court wades into national debate over pipelines.  s both parties debate the construction of new oil and gas pipelines, the U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in, saying states cannot overturn federal eminent domain permits for those projects.  The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday [6/29/2021] in PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey that the state of New Jersey was not exempt from federal eminent domain provisions.  In the case, the PennEast Pipeline company received a permit to build a 116-mile pipeline from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  That pipeline went through New Jersey, and the company obtained most of the necessary rights-of-way for construction.  However, when it came time to obtain them from the state of New Jersey, the state's government resisted.

Democrats Demand Biden pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices.  Democrats are demanding that President Joe Biden pack the US Supreme Court with liberal justices after it upheld Republican-backed Arizona voting rules in its final decision of the 2020-2021 term.  Biden expressed his disappointment in the ruling on Thursday and called on Congress to restore fundamental voting rights, saying: 'In a span of just eight years, the Court has now done severe damage to two of the most important provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — a law that took years of struggle and strife to secure.  'After all we have been through to deliver the promise of this nation to all Americans, we should be fully enforcing voting rights laws, not weakening them.'

Strike 3: Why Biden Commission Should Reject Court-Packing.  President Joe Biden's Supreme Court commission is up and running, keeping alive the calls for court-packing.  This plan for a hostile takeover of the Supreme Court has been rejected not once but twice in American history.  The commission can put it to rest for good.  Court-packing means expanding the number of positions on a given court for the purpose of changing its decisions.  Every president appoints judges as existing positions become vacant.  Congress periodically creates new judgeships because certain courts need more judges to handle caseloads.  Neither of these constitutes court-packing.  Congress has always known the difference.

Supreme Court upholds Arizona voter fraud protections.  The Supreme Court upheld Arizona voting rules that restrict ballot harvesting and the submission of provisional ballots outside of one's home precinct, following a challenge from the Democratic National Committee.  In a 6-3 decision on Tuesday [6/29/2021], the court ruled that neither the policy requiring provisional ballots to be completely disregarded if submitted at the wrong precinct nor the law making it a felony to submit another person's ballot (with limited exceptions) violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.  The decision overturned a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  "[N]either Arizona's out-of-precinct rule nor its ballot-collection law violates §2 of the VRA," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court's opinion, in which he was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Justice Alito devastates Dems' arguments in AZ voting rights case Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee.  On July 1, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 6 [to] 3 decision, ruled that Arizona did not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when it required in-person voting to take place in the precinct to which the voter is assigned, and limited collection of early-voting ballots to the U.S. Postal Service, election officials, or family member, household members or caregivers.  In overturning a Ninth Circuit en banc decision rejecting Arizona's voting requirements, Justice Sam Alito, for — let it be said — the six justices appointed by Republican presidents, recognized the legitimate interests of a State in preventing fraud, and intimidation or pressure on voters.  Justice Alito noted that fraud does not have to be shown before a State can act to take legitimate measures to prevent fraud.  He also indicated that "disparate impact" must be shown to be significant before overturning a State's voting laws.

Are SCOTUS's three remaining reliable liberals clueless on immigration?  "[W]hy would Congress want to deny a bond hearing to individuals who reasonably fear persecution or torture, and who, as a result, face proceedings that may last for many months or years (while their withholding-only proceedings wend their way toward completion)? I can find no satisfactory answer to this question."  A seemingly perplexed Justice Stephen Breyer wrote this (and was predictably joined in bewilderment by the Court's two other liberal justices, Sotomayor and Kagan) in his June 29 dissenting opinion in Johnson v. Guzman Chavez, the recent case in which the majority found that, in layman's terms, deported aliens who re-enter the U.S. illegally are not entitled to a bond hearing while they await their current adjudication.

Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Rules in Heated Voting Rights Decision.  In its first statement about voting rights since 2013, the Supreme Court on Thursday [7/1/2021] upheld a pair of Arizona voting regulations and gave a boost to Republican lawmakers enacting new election rules following the 2020 election.  The two rules at issue disqualify votes cast at the wrong precinct and limit third-party ballot collection, which critics call "ballot harvesting."  The real flash point in Thursday's case is the framework judges should use to identify voting procedures that violate Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, the focal point of election litigation.  Justice Samuel Alito delivered the opinion for a six justice majority over the dissent of Justice Elena Kagan for the liberal trio.  The decision announced limits on the reach of the Voting Rights Act.

Supreme Court strikes down California donor disclosure requirement.  The Supreme Court on Thursday [7/1/2021] invalidated a requirement by the state of California that charities fundraising in the state must disclose the identities of their most generous donors.  The high court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in favor of a pair of nonprofits that challenged the state's policy.  The Supreme Court found the measure, which requires charities that fundraise in the state to turn over information about their top contributors, is unconstitutional.  "We are left to conclude that the attorney general's disclosure requirement imposes a widespread burden on donors' associational rights.  And this burden cannot be justified on the ground that the regime is narrowly tailored to investigating charitable wrongdoing, or that the state's interest in administrative convenience is sufficiently important," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in an opinion, joined in full by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Supreme Court upholds Arizona restrictions in major voting rights, racial discrimination case.  A divided US Supreme Court on Thursday [7/1/2021] upheld two Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions, rejecting claims that they discriminate against minority voters and imposing new limits on the landmark Voting Rights Act.  The 6-to-3 decision, breaking along ideological lines, overturned a lower court ruling to uphold Arizona's policy of invalidating ballots cast in the wrong precinct and a law criminalizing the collection of mail ballots by third-party community groups or campaigns.

Arizona Ballot-Harvesting Ban Is Legal, Supreme Court Rules in High-Stakes Electoral Integrity Case.  Arizona's ban on ballot-harvesting and out-of-precinct voting does not violate the federal Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in a closely watched case with implications for future elections.  In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Mark Brnovich, the attorney general of Arizona who argued the case, said the court "recognized when it comes to time, place and manner, the states have a lot of authority."  "We as public servants have no more sacred duty than protecting the people's right to vote, but we have to maintain confidence in the integrity of the results," the Republican officeholder said.

Is the Supreme Court gaslighting us?  George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathon Turley has posited that recent unanimous Supreme Court rulings may be the court sending a message to politicians.  Facing threats to pack the Supreme Court and calls for Justice Stephen Breyer to resign, Turley believes the court is making a rare show of unity.  Apparently, the logic is that if they show that they're not ideological (I know, don't laugh), the Democrats will understand that packing the court won't make any difference.  They're trying to validate Chief Justice John Robert's claim that there are no "Obama judges" or "Trump judges."  There's just one problem — the Supreme Court is both political and ideological, and everyone knows it.  Trying to gaslight everyone now is asking us to ignore 50 years of bad behavior.  Good luck with that.

Supreme Court says [there is] no right to [a] hearing for some immigrants.  The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday [6/29/2021] that the government can indefinitely detain certain immigrants who say they will face persecution or torture if they are deported to their native countries.  Over the dissent of three liberal justices, the court held 6-3 that the immigrants are not entitled to a hearing about whether they should be released while the government evaluates their claims.  Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that "those aliens are not entitled to a bond hearing."

Already Deported Illegal Aliens Have No Right to Seek Release on Bond, Supreme Court Rules.  The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that previously deported illegal aliens again facing deportation who claim a fear of persecution if they are removed to their country of origin may be indefinitely detained by the government.  Over the dissent of its three Democrat-appointed justices, the high court found that those noncitizens aren't entitled to a hearing about whether they should be released while the government processes their claims.  Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court's opinion in Johnson v. Guzman Sanchez, which was made public on June 29.  Oral arguments took place telephonically on Jan. 11. Before that, both the trial court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled against the government.  Not allowing people who have already been deported to seek release on bond makes sense, Alito wrote in the court's opinion.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit to Ban Absentee Ballot Drop Boxes.  The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently rejected a lawsuit that sought to ban the state's usage of absentee ballot drop-boxes, although another legal challenge on their use is still being considered in a lower court.  Conservative businessman and GOP donor Jere Fabick in March petitioned (pdf) the state Supreme Court in March to consider a ban of the drop-boxes, arguing that they violate state election laws.  He also sought to ban election officials from filling in missing addresses of witnesses on ballot envelopes, and his suit attempted to limit who can return absentee ballots to election clerks.  In a 4-3 ruling on June 25, the court threw out the case but noted that the lawsuit raised important questions.  The majority claimed that arguments contained within the lawsuit were not "clearly presented."

Justices deny Wyoming, Montana coal suit against Washington.  The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday [6/28/2021] that it won't allow Wyoming and Montana to sue Washington state for denying a key permit to build a coal export dock that would have sent coal to Asia.  Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito voted in the minority in the ruling against letting the two states sue the third in a case that would have gone directly before the high court.

Clarence Thomas says federal laws against marijuana may no longer be necessary.  Clarence Thomas, one of the Supreme Court's most conservative justices, said Monday that because of the hodgepodge of federal policies on marijuana, federal laws against its use or cultivation may no longer make sense.  "A prohibition on interstate use or cultivation of marijuana may no longer be necessary or proper to support the federal government's piecemeal approach," he wrote.  His views came as the court declined to hear the appeal of a Colorado medical marijuana dispensary that was denied federal tax breaks that other businesses are allowed.

Supreme Court Lets Trans Students Using Opposite Sex Bathrooms Ruling Stand.  On Monday, the Supreme Court turned down an opportunity to reverse a ruling that permitted students identifying as the opposite sex to use the opposite sex's bathrooms.  The Court declined to hear the case of Gavin Grimm, a Virginia female student who identifies as a boy who had sued the Gloucester County school board for stating that restrooms were "limited to the corresponding biological genders."  "The case initially reached the Supreme Court in 2017, but the argument was canceled after President Trump reversed an Obama administration rule that had directed schools to allow students to use restrooms that correspond with their gender identity," The Washington Post noted.

No, San Francisco Can't Force You To Lease Your Retirement Home To a Renter for Life Says SCOTUS.  Back in April, I wrote about the case of Pakdel v.  City and County of SF, involving the Ninth Circuit decision appealed to the Supreme Court which upheld a San Francisco ordinance that required persons converting rental property into condominiums to offer a lifetime lease to any renter occupying a unit of the property as a condition of the conversion permit. [...] The Pakdels brought suit in federal court in San Francisco on the grounds that the San Francisco ordinance was an unconstitutional "taking" of their property by the City and County of San Francisco without just compensation.  The district court ruled against the Pakdels on procedural grounds — they hadn't brought their action at an appropriate juncture in the conversion process, and that they hadn't followed certain procedures prescribed by the San Francisco ordinance which might have allowed them to avoid the mandatory rental requirement.

The Supreme Court won't save conservatism.  For decades, conservatives have sought to regain lost culture-war ground through judicial nominations, with GOP voters consistently rating the Supreme Court a higher priority than do Democrats.  As the latest high-court term winds down — one featuring a putative 6-3 "conservative" majority — it's worth taking stock of where that project stands.  The answer: not in a great place.  Consider two of this term's highest-profile cases:  California v.  Texas (on ObamaCare) and the Fulton v.  City of Philadelphia (on religious liberty).  In California, a 7-2 majority of Supremes again left former President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy untouched.  The court declined to reach the substantive issue — the constitutionality of the individual mandate.  Instead, they dismissed the lawsuit brought by Texas and 17 other states on the threshold question of standing — lawyer-speak for a plaintiff's obligation to show a concrete, remediable injury traceable to the defendant's conduct.

SCOTUS concedes school administrators can regulate off-campus speech.  SCOTUS, on June 23, ruled 8-1 in favor of the plaintiff, Brandi Levy, in a case involving her suspension after badmouthing her school on social media.  Her profanity-laced diatribe was posted on Snapchat.  She wrote the message after she failed to make the Varsity Squad and was being kept on the Junior Varsity Squad. [...] A student took a screenshot of the message and showed it to the cheerleading squad's coach, and Brandi was subsequently kicked off the team.  The parents made numerous appeals, which ascended through the appellate courts, eventually reaching the Supreme Court.  At stake was the issue of whether a school has authority to take disciplinary action when a student speaks outside school grounds.  Schools have argued that extracurricular activities off-campus, but affiliated with the school, are within that purview.  The school also argued that speech that leads to a "substantial disruption" to school activities is an actionable offense no matter where it is made, off school property or outside school time.

Supreme Court Rules against NCAA in Athlete Compensation Dispute.  The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Monday [6/21/2021] that the NCAA can no longer bar colleges from offering student-athletes education-related benefits, including free laptops or paid post-graduate internships, in the name of amateurism.  The ruling does not specifically address the question of paying athletes directly, however.  Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote on behalf of the court that the NCAA "seeks immunity from the normal operation of the antitrust laws," adding that the court declines the request because "this suit involves admitted horizontal price fixing in a market where the defendants exercise monopoly control."  Justice Brett Kavanaugh accused the NCAA of "price fixing" in a concurrent opinion.  "The NCAA's business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America," he wrote.

SCOTUS Wimps Out On Obamacare — Again.  Obamacare has once again been rescued by a Supreme Court that seems determined to keep it alive regardless of the Constitution or precedent.  Thursday morning [6/17/2021], the justices dismissed California v. Texas based on the dubious proposition that a coalition of 18 GOP states had no legal standing to challenge the "reform" law or its infamous insurance mandate.  The majority didn't deign to consider the merits of the lawsuit, which argued that the mandate was not merely unconstitutional but inseverable from the rest of the statute.  The Court's cowardice drew a blistering dissent from Justice Samuel Alito, who accused the majority of ignoring decades of precedent in order to deny the states standing:  ["]No one can fail to be impressed by the lengths to which this Court has been willing to go to defend the ACA against all threats.  A penalty is a tax.  The United States is a State.  And 18 States who bear costly burdens under the ACA cannot even get a foot in the door to raise a constitutional challenge.  Fans of judicial inventiveness will applaud once again.  But I must respectfully dissent.["]

'Hopelessly divided' Supreme Court defies narrative with another unanimous opinion.  The Supreme Court has finally handed down two of the five "blockbuster" opinions of this term with rulings on the Affordable Care Act and religious rights.  The most striking aspect of the decisions was the absence of ideological divisions.  Indeed, the case on religious rights is yet another unanimous decision from a Court that President Joe Biden has declared "out of whack" and Democratic leaders have declared hopelessly divided along ideological lines.  This week represented the final collapse of the false narrative that has been endlessly repeated like a mantra in Congress and the media.  When it comes to health care, the ACA has long been in the position of Mark Twain who insisted that his death has been "greatly exaggerated."  During the circus-like confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett, Democratic senators surrounded the room with giant pictures of people who would lose their health care due to her nomination.  Various senators and legal analysts insisted that Barrett was obviously selected to kill the ACA.  Democratic senators pummeled Barrett with stories of people who may die as a result of her nomination and portrayed her as a craven, heartless ideologue selected to take away health care for millions.

The Supreme Court's Day of Reckoning is Coming.  The election of 2020 is going to lay bare the dereliction of the Supreme Court for all to see. [...] The court seems to have three distinct voting blocs:
  [#1]   The oath keepers — These are the justices that are willing to stand up and defend the Constitution even if it means they'll have to endure attacks.  Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch make up this bloc.
  [#2]   The jellyfish — These are the justices that lack the spine to face controversy.  They're more concerned about defending the court than the Constitution.  Justices Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh make up this bloc.
  [#3]   The subversives — These are the justices that have been using penumbras and emanations to rewrite the constitution in pursuit of social engineering.  Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer make up this bloc.
It's rumored that only three justices wanted to hear the 2020 election lawsuits.  Does anyone doubt that it was those who comprise the "oath keepers" bloc?  Now, Chief Justice Roberts has placed his court in a trick-box.  By choosing to stay out of the election controversy, John Roberts has bet the court's reputation that the mysteries of the election would remain mysteries.  As wagers go, it was not a particularly smart one.  The election involved millions of ballots, tens of thousands of election workers, and thousands of counties.  If there was fraud, there is too much evidence, in too many hands, to stay hidden.

The Roberts Court Punts on Religious Liberty Again.  In yesterday's Fulton v. City of Philadelphia decision from the Supreme Court, conservatives saw a victory in the battle over religious liberty as the nation's highest court decided 9-0 that the City of Philadelphia could not exclude a Catholic services organization from the providing adoption services through its system.  That the decision was unanimous came as something of a shock to many observers, and raised questions about the Court under Chief Justice John Roberts.  The decision, while a victory for religious liberty, is still seen as fairly narrow, [...]

Supreme Court unanimously rules in favor of Catholic foster agency in case that pitted religious freedom against LGBTQ rights.  The US Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday in favor of a Catholic child welfare organization, saying the charity has a right to decline to place foster children with same-sex couples.  Catholic Social Services sued the City of Philadelphia after it informed private agencies that provided foster care services that it would not refer children to the agencies unless they agreed to nondiscrimination requirements.  Catholic Social Services argued that it had the right to opt-out of the nondiscrimination requirement, citing the First Amendment.

Supreme Court sides with Catholic foster agency that excludes same-sex couples in 9-0 ruling.  The Supreme Court sided unanimously with a Catholic foster agency in a dispute against the city of Philadelphia over whether it should be banned from participating in the city's foster program because it excludes same-sex couples.  The group, Catholic Social Services (CSS), claimed that "Philadelphia's attempts to exclude the Catholic Church from foster care" violated the First Amendment.  Lawyers for the city, meanwhile, said that CSS "lacks a constitutional right to demand that DHS offer it a contract that omits the same nondiscrimination requirement every other FFCA must follow when performing services for the City."  In a 9-0 ruling, the justices sided with Catholic Social Services.

U.S. Supreme Court urged by 22 states to maintain eviction ban.  The attorneys general of 22 states on Friday urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to end the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's pandemic-related residential eviction moratorium that has been challenged by landlord groups.  The landlords asked the Supreme Court last week to issue an order stopping the national ban on evictions, which was first implemented last September and is due to expire on June 30.  CDC Director Rochelle Walensky declined to say this week if the agency will again extend the moratorium, saying discussions are ongoing.

Unpacked and Undivided:  Is The Court Sending A Message With A Litany Of 9-0 Decisions?  Today [6/1/2021] the Supreme Court issued two more unanimous decisions in Garland v. Dai and United States v. Cooley.  This follow two unanimous decisions last week.  The weekly display of unanimity is notable given the calls by Democratic leaders to pack the Court.  Yesterday, I wrote about how the heavy-handed campaigns might backfire with the justices.  As we await important and likely divided decisions on issues like abortion, Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues seem to be sending a message that the Court is not so rigidly ideological as Democratic members and activists suggest.  In the Garland case, the court ruled (again) unanimously to reverse the Ninth Circuit in an opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch on the rule in immigration disputes regarding the credibility of non-citizens' testimony.  In Cooley, the Court unanimously ruled in an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer that a tribal police officer has authority to detain temporarily and to search a non-Native American traveling on a public right-of-way running through a reservation.

Kagan Writes 9-0 Supreme Court Opinion Rejecting Liz Warren's Subversion of Immigration Law.  On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected an illegal immigrant's attempt to twist immigration law and create a loophole that would allow thousands of illegal immigrants to become lawful permanent residents.  Democratic senators and attorneys general advocated for this loophole, but a liberal justice wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court.  "Petitioner Jose Santos Sanchez entered this country unlawfully from El Salvador.  Years later, because of unsafe living conditions in that country, the Government granted him Temporary Protected Status (TPS), entitling him to stay and work in the United States for as long as those conditions persist.  Sanchez now wishes to become a lawful permanent resident (LPR) of the United States.  The question here is whether the conferral of TPS enables him to obtain LPR status despite his unlawful entry.  We hold that it does not," Associate Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, wrote in the opinion.

Supreme Court must review forcing only men to register for the draft at 18 because policy sends 'tremendously harmful message', activist group warns.  The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether it is discrimination for the government to require only men to register for the draft when they turn 18.  The question of whether it is unconstitutional to require men but not women to register could be viewed as one with little practical impact.  The last time there was a draft was during the Vietnam War, and the military has been all-volunteer since.

Supreme Court refuses case to include women in military draft.  On Monday [6/7/2021], the U.S. Supreme Court said it won't take a case, brought by the National Coalition For Men, which challenged the constitutionality of the male-only draft.  In a decision with no noted dissenting opinions, the court declined to take the case.  In the opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court had decided to defer the matter to Congress, as it "actively weighs the issue."

Landlord group asks Supreme Court to strike down eviction freeze.  A group of landlords on Thursday [6/3/2021] asked the Supreme Court to end a nationwide freeze on evictions so that property owners can proceed with removing financially distressed renters from their homes.  The emergency request comes a day after a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., rebuffed the group's bid to nullify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) eviction moratorium.  Led by the Alabama Association of Realtors, the group asked Chief Justice John Roberts to reinstate a lower court ruling that found public health officials had overstepped their authority in halting evictions across the U.S.

The New Secession Crisis: The Democrats have already left the Union.  The Democrats have already seceded from America's historic conception of nationhood in many respects: [...] THEY have attempted, most importantly, to change our fundamental structures of governance.  In trying to add Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. (which is specifically excluded from statehood in the Constitution) as states, they have attempted to fundamentally and unilaterally alter the congressional balance of power.  They have attempted to end the Senate filibuster (a 183-year-old tradition of our governance) and pack the Supreme Court, by amending the 152-year-old Judiciary Act in a blatant attempt to remove the influence of the last branch of government they don't control.

WaPo wonders:  Has John Roberts lost control of SCOTUS?  Let's answer this question with another:  Did John Roberts ever have power to "steer the direction of the court" in the first place?  The Washington Post offers what appears to be a belated cri de coeur over the consequences of moving from having five conservative jurists on the Supreme Court and having six instead.  But this is the wrong number to use, at least in one sense: [...] Peter Stevenson wants to make the argument that the new 6-3 majority is choosing cases over Roberts' objections, cases that will take the court in a more political direction.  That, however, ignores a technical point about granting cert.  Strictly speaking, Roberts doesn't have any control over which cases the court will hear other than his one vote on requests for cert — and it only takes four justices to hear a case, not five or six.

Are the Supreme Court and Biden ready to rumble over Roe?  Over the years, pro-choice groups at times exaggerated the risk of a serious threat to Roe and its progeny.  Now, however, reality has caught up to the hyperbole.  The court just accepted review in a Mississippi case that could deliver a crippling, or even lethal, blow to Roe. But President Biden has a familiar back-up plan.  Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization would seem, on its face, to be an incremental — not existential — threat to Roe.  The Mississippi legislature moved to ban abortions after 15 weeks, seven weeks earlier than past laws passing constitutional muster.  However, Dobbs is the long-awaited "clean case" — one that has a straight, unimpeded shot at the key controlling abortion case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the case which effectively reframed Roe around the key criteria that the Constitution forbids bans on abortion before a fetus has achieved viability.

Roe v. Wade is on trial.  Don't let the Left threaten the Supreme Court over it.  Roe v. Wade is on the docket again, and everybody knows exactly what will happen.  No, we cannot predict the ruling on Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban.  Republican-appointed judges are inevitably mercurial on this issue in hearings.  We would not be surprised to see Justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, or even Neil Gorsuch uphold part or even all of the current deformed jurisprudence on abortion.  But we do know with certainty that the Left will use media pressure, corporate pressure, and even violent threats against the republic in a tireless lobby effort to preserve Roe and Planned Parenthood v.  Casey.  The abortion lobby has long been the beating heart of the Democratic Party.  Defense of abortion and subsidies for Planned Parenthood are the central items of Democratic dogma.  On war, taxes, spending, labor, and even guns and climate change, Democrats allow some dissent.  But not on abortion.  The party's fundraising apparatus is inextricably tied with the abortion industry.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Warrantless Gun Seizure 9-0.  In some ways this was a very narrowly tailored opinion, in that the Second Amendment was not invoked at all, only the Fourth.  And indeed, Justice Samuel Alito' concurring opinion specifically states that "Our decision today does not address those issues" in relation to the constitutionality of red flag laws.  However, the decision was a blow for individual rights against warrentless police seizures in the home.  Also, by explicitly including guns as property that is equally protected from such warrentless seizures, the Supreme Court has properly supported Second Amendment rights against the state's overreach.

This 9-0 SCOTUS Ruling on Guns Shows Just How Extreme (and Dangerous) the Biden Administration Really Is.  Did you hear that Joe Biden's Department of Justice wanted the Supreme Court to rule that police could search Americans' homes for firearms — and confiscate them — without a warrant?  In the case of Caniglia vs.  Strom, this issue was in play.  Had SCOTUS ruled that police could do that, your Second Amendment rights would have been in grave jeopardy.

Supreme Court shuts down police attempts to search homes without a warrant.  The case arose out of a 2015 incident in which a Rhode Island married couple argued over attempted suicide.  At one point, the husband, Edward Caniglia, gave his wife, Kim, an unloaded gun and told her to kill him.  She left the house instead and later called local police to check on him.  When the police arrived, they entered the house and confiscated Caniglia's guns.  He later sued.  A district court sided against him.  When he brought the case to an appeals court, it also decided against him — and extended the "community caretaking exception" for police to search cars without a warrant to homes as well.  It was in this last decision, Thomas wrote, that the lower courts had erred, arguing that the home is a much more private sphere than a car.

Supreme Court Accepts a Mississippi Abortion Case That Seems Likely to Overturn Planned Parenthood vs.  Casey.  Today [5/17/2021] the US Supreme Court announced it would take up the issue of abortion in the upcoming fall term in a case that promises to be significant.  The case is called Jackson Women's Health Organization vs.  Dobbs. [...] This is not an argument over procedure; it is a question that will frame the abortion debate in the future.  If the Court agrees with Mississippi, then the door is open for those states that wish to regulate all abortions.  If the abortion industry wins, then all "pre-viable" babies can be killed without mercy.

Pro-Abortionists Lose Their Minds as a Sledgehammer Is Taken to Roe v. Wade.  The Supreme Court of the United States has chosen to hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which challenges a Mississippi state law that restricts abortions of fetuses after 15 weeks of gestation.

Supreme Court to hear challenge to Roe v. Wade.  The Supreme Court on Monday accepted a Mississippi challenge to the abortion precedent set by Roe v. Wade.  In an unsigned order, the court said that it would hear the case but limited its scope to the first question presented in the petition, which is whether "all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortion are unconstitutional."  The court will not consider the other two questions, which related to scrutiny of abortion restrictions.  The court's acceptance of the case electrified the anti-abortion movement, with many leaders hoping that it would signal the end of a decades-long battle to send the abortion question back to individual states.

Activists Panic as SCOTUS Takes Case That Could Overturn Roe v. Wade.  SCOTUS announced on May 17 that it would provide a ruling on a controversial abortion ban from the state of Mississippi and hear the case next fall.  The Mississippi law — passed in 2018 but blocked by lower courts — banned all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.  LifeSiteNews summed up the threat to Roe, writing that SCOTUS is now set to hear the case "which challenges the 'viability' threshold of current legal precedent and therefore sets the stage for a decision that will either uphold, overturn, or modify Roe v. Wade."  The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Mississippi ban (prompting the SCOTUS ruling), citing that the 15-week-ban violates legal precedent that abortions cannot be banned before the unborn baby is viable, which is around 22 to 24 weeks.  That precedent, according to the circuit court, traces "an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade."  If SCOTUS sides with Mississippi's ban, then Roe v. Wade would be in the crosshairs.  Again, the idea that a chunk could be taken out of the federal right to kill their preborn offspring put leftists on Twitter into a state of panic.

Supreme Court Tees Up To Review Abortion Bans In Mississippi Case.  The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up a case examining whether Mississippi's pro-life ban on elective abortions 15 weeks into pregnancy is unconstitutional.  This particular restriction in Missippi was first enacted in 2018 and allowed abortions after the 15-week date for "medical emergencies" and "severe" fetal abnormalities.  Lower courts, however, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, blocked the law and ruled that it places an undue burden on women who want to abort their child after the state's deadline.  By choosing to take up Dobbs v.  Jackson Women's Health, justices on the Supreme Court are teeing up to reevaluate "whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional" and potentially change how landmark abortion cases such as Roe v.  Wade and Planned Parenthood v.  Casey affect Americans.  Pro-life activists celebrated the decision as a step in the right direction to ban abortion altogether.

How [a] Court-Packing Power Grab Endangers Rights, Threatens Nation's Foundations.  The independence of the Supreme Court is crucial to preserving the original meaning of the Constitution and preventing a radical transformation of our laws and our country.  But with Democrats in control of the White House and slim majorities in the House and Senate, not only are basic rights like the right to life under daily assault, the very foundations of America are threatened like never before.  President Joe Biden last month announced a 36-member commission to study potential "reforms" for the Supreme Court, including possibly increasing the number of justices on it.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., have proposed legislation to increase the number of justices from nine to 13.  Conveniently — though not coincidentally — for Democrats, four new justices would mean there would then be seven justices appointed by Democratic presidents, compared with six appointed by Republican presidents.

The Supreme Court has taken up residence in the Swamp.  The Supreme Court was originally envisioned as a nonpartisan third branch of the government.  With lifetime appointments and a mission to defend the Constitution, it was believed that the court would remain above the political fray.  But about 50 years ago, the court decided that with penumbras and emanations it could discover things in the Constitution that are not actually written there. [...] As political players, the justices have used their newfound power to "discover" a whole host of "rights" that are not actually written in the constitution.  They've discovered:
  •   A right to privacy
  •   A right to abortion
  •   A right to same-sex marriage
  •   A right for the government to seize private property for the benefit of private enterprises
  •   A right for the government to regulate commerce within states
The issue isn't whether any of these things are good or bad.  The issue is that the voters, via their elected representation, should have been allowed to make these decisions.

3 Things to Know About Second Amendment's Return to Supreme Court.  It's been well over a decade since the Supreme Court last decided a meaningful Second Amendment case.  That wait is about to end.  Although District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) answered some foundational questions about the right to keep and bear arms, the Supreme Court's decade of silence enabled lower courts to undermine these core cases routinely.  This in turn allowed states to run roughshod over the Second Amendment.  We've gotten our hopes up before that the Supreme Court finally would stop treating the Second Amendment as a second-class right, unworthy of consistent legal review.  Just last term, the high court excited millions by taking up New York State Rifle & Pistol v. City of New York, which was about New York City's incredibly restrictive laws on transporting firearms.  That excitement came to a crushing end when New York City enacted minor changes to its laws and the Supreme Court declared the case moot, declining in the interim to take up any of the remaining Second Amendment challenges for the term.  Many suspected we might go another decade without seeing the court hear another challenge to gun control laws.

Supreme Court has key rulings in the coming weeks; includes voting rights, health care.  Every spring the Supreme Court seems to find itself in the headlines with consequential rulings on the horizon.  This spring is no different.  Over the coming weeks, major cases impacting various aspects of American life are poised for rulings.  One of the biggest outstanding cases involves the Affordable Care Act.  The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that it was constitutional, but this is a new challenge.

19 States Ask Supreme Court to Rein In EPA Powers Over Coal Plants.  West Virginia and 18 other states are asking the Supreme Court to review the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory authority over greenhouse gases after an appeals court struck down a Trump-era rule months ago on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.  "The case, if granted, would be the biggest climate question to reach the Supreme Court in more than a decade," according to Bloomberg Law.  In Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the Supreme Court gave the agency the power to regulate greenhouse gases.  The Jan. 19 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was a victory for left-wing environmentalists that helped clear the way for the then-incoming Biden administration to impose new restrictions on the energy sector.

Supreme Court Tosses Democrats Lawsuits Seeking Access To Trump Finances.  The U.S. Supreme Court has halted lawsuits from Democrats that accused Donald Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution's anti-corruption provisions by maintaining ownership of his business empire including a hotel near the White House while in office.  The justices threw out lower court rulings that had allowed the lawsuits — one filed by the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland and the other by plaintiffs including a watchdog group — to proceed, while also declining to hear Trump's appeals of those decisions.  The justices ordered the lower courts to dismiss the cases because they are now moot.

SCOTUS Will Decide Whether the Right to Bear Arms Extends Beyond Your Doorstep.  While it may seem obvious that the constitutional right to "keep and bear arms" extends beyond the home, federal courts have been debating that question for years.  This week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could finally settle the issue, which the petitioners call "perhaps the single most important unresolved Second Amendment question."  The case involves a New York law that requires applicants for handgun carry licenses to show "proper cause," which according to state courts means more than a "generalized desire" to "protect one's person and property."  Applicants must "demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community," which in practice means that ordinary New Yorkers have no right to armed self-defense once they leave their homes.  The vast majority of states are less demanding, typically requiring that people who want to carry concealed handguns meet a shortlist of objective criteria.  But several states have laws like New York's, enforcing subjective standards such as "good cause" (California), "proper purpose" (Massachusetts), "justifiable need" (New Jersey), "good and substantial reason" (Maryland), or a special "reason to fear injury" (Hawaii).

Supreme Court to take up major Second Amendment concealed handgun case.  The Supreme Court said Monday [4/26/2021] it will consider how much protection the Second Amendment provides for carrying a gun outside the home.  The case is the first time in more than a decade that the court has agreed to take up a central issue of the gun rights debate, something it has consistently ducked since issuing a landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 that the Second Amendment provides an individual right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense.  The court agreed to hear a challenge to a New York state law that allows residents to carry a concealed handgun only if they can demonstrate a special need beyond a general desire for self-protection.

Did Amazon Pull Clarence Thomas Documentary Off Their Site in Order to Pull Him Off Their Case?  Does Amazon intend to test Thomas's word should a Section 230 case come before the Supreme Court; insisting he recuse himself because Amazon's decision to pull, "Created Equal:  Clarence Thomas in His Own Words," from its site creates a conflict of interest?  The possible motives behind Amazon's decision to take down from its platform the popular documentary about the prominent African-American Supreme Court Justice, especially during Black History Month, has bewildered and astounded many commentators, on the left and on the right, including Mark Paoletta.

Supreme Court Seems Primed to Reverse Kamala Harris's Attack on Free Speech.  On Monday [4/26/2021], the Supreme Court heard arguments in the key First Amendment case Americans for Prosperity v.  Rodriguez, which centers on the State of California's requirement that nonprofit organizations disclose their donor information to the state.  Back in 2015, then-Attorney General Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) demanded that two conservative nonprofits, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), hand over their donor lists.  This demand threatened to reveal the identities of donors, potentially subjecting them to threats and harassment.  Legal representatives for AFP and TMLC said the Supreme Court justices' questions and remarks suggested they are likely to strike down California's requirement as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.

Clarence Thomas calls out liberal court colleagues for inconsistent opinions 'depending on the issues'.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used a footnote in a murder case to call out his liberal colleagues' apparent double standard for minors, questioning why teenagers should have an absolute right to abortion but can't be held fully responsible for homicide.  "When addressing juvenile murderers, this Court has stated that 'children are different' and that courts must consider 'a child's lesser culpability," Thomas said in the footnotes of his opinion in Jones v.  Mississippi.  "And yet, when assessing the Court-created right of an individual of the same age to seek an abortion, Members of this Court take pains to emphasize a 'young woman's right to choose.'"  "It is curious how this Court's view of the maturity of minors ebbs and flows depending on the issue," Thomas continued.

Clarence Thomas Smacks Leftist Justices For Hypocrisy On Maturity Of Minors Regarding Abortion.  On Thursday [4/22/2021], in a concurring opinion he wrote agreeing with the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in Jones v. Mississippi, Justice Clarence Thomas smacked leftist justices on the Court for their hypocrisy when it came to the maturity of minors.  Thomas pointed out that some language in Court decisions assumed that when referring to juvenile murderers, members of the Court had cited that "children are different" and that courts must consider "a child's lesser culpability," yet when discussing abortion by girls of minor age, leftist justices had assumed they were mature enough to make that decision. [...] (Thomas was referring to Montgomery v. Louisiana.)  "And yet, when assessing the Court-created right of an individual of the same age to seek an abortion, Members of this Court take pains to emphasize a 'young woman's' right to choose."  (Thomas referred to Lambert v. Wicklund, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, and Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health.)  "It is curious how the Court's view of the maturity of minors ebbs and flows depending on the issue," he concluded.

Why Supreme Court justices should not be signing $2 million book deals.  The news this week that Justice Amy Coney Barrett has signed a $2 million book deal should strike even capitalists such as myself as unseemly.  Barrett has been on the Supreme Court for less than a year and she is already cashing in for seven figures.  I publicly supported her confirmation to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg but her decision to accept a $2 million advance for a book she could not have sold for $200 before her confirmation casts serious doubt on her judgment, and judges, especially Supreme Court justices, need good judgment.  Technically, Barrett has done nothing wrong.  The United States Code limits a judge's outside earned income at 15 percent of the judge's salary.  Barrett's current salary as an associate justice of the Supreme Court is $265,600, which means her outside earned income cannot exceed $39,750.  Although I do not teach math for a living, I do know that $2 million is a lot more than $39,750.  But in a federal statutory schema littered with loopholes, book royalties inexplicably do not count as outside earned income for purposes of government ethics.

Keep an Eye on This SCOTUS Labor Case.  Americans are proud of their right to property, not enjoyed by people in many democracies.  As the Cato Institute puts it, our founding fathers understood that private property is the foundation of prosperity and freedom.  But California's 46-year-old Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) violates that constitutional principle, and it even fails to protect farm workers.  It allows union officials and pickets to invade farms — for three hours every day, for 120 days a year — and harangue, coerce, and arm-twist farm workers into joining the union and engaging in collective bargaining with growers even when they're happy with their working conditions and pay.  The property-owner is powerless to stop the intrusion, as the regulation does not require the owner's permission.  Surprising?  That is why a forthcoming decision by the Supreme Court in a case involving a strawberry plant nursery and a packager from California and the state's Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) will be a watershed.

Supreme Court's failures are putting America on a path to tyranny.  Rarely do the generation experiencing the actual events and decisions that lead to their nation's demise fully appreciate the enormity of their oversight until sometime after their culture's destruction has been rendered incurable.  Largely, it is not due so much to their negligence as it is to most of them being too preoccupied with simply living and making a living.  Perhaps that would explain why, in just the first four months of 2021, the Supreme Court issued four decisions — or, perhaps better viewed as non-decisions — that should have caused all legitimately patriotic Americans to be alarmed and called to action... but did not seem to.  Only a few weeks ago, without offering any substantive explanation, the Court summarily refused to even look at — much less seriously consider — any of the evidence of the 2020 election irregularities offered by attorney Sidney Powell and others.  Evidently, the Supreme Court of the United States of America was not interested in doing what it could — and should — to let America know decisively whether or not its presidential election had been shamelessly stolen by those now in power.  Why would they not do this?

Supreme Court Rejects GOP Challenge to Pennsylvania Election Rules.  The Supreme Court declined on April 19 to hear a lawsuit regarding a Pennsylvania voting dispute nearly six months after the Nov. 3, 2020, election.  The court rejected an appeal from a Republican congressional candidate's unsuccessful challenge of the state's mail-in ballot initiatives, which is the final Nov. 3-related action to be dismissed related to Pennsylvania's voting laws.  In a two-line order, the Supreme Court wrote:  "The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted.  The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as moot."  The decision is the Supreme Court's latest rejection of a slew of election lawsuits that came before and after the Nov. 3 election, as President Donald Trump and his Republican allies attempted to challenge the results.

AOC: Why are we letting nine justices tell Congress what it can and can't do?  In all seriousness, there's less to her comment about letting nine judges boss Congress around than there might appear.  She's not suggesting that Congress should disregard rulings by the Court — I think.  And she's not arguing that Marbury v. Madison should be overturned and the practice of judicial review abandoned — I think.  What she's saying, dopily enough, is that she'd be fine with 13 judges telling America's elected representatives what they can and can't do.  Just not nine.

Three times John Roberts has moved left in Supreme Court rulings or held a minority position.  Since Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court, Roberts, more often than not, has voted with the minority when it comes to religious freedom during the pandemic.  The minority is a new position for Roberts, who, since being nominated by President George W. Bush in 2005 and confirmed by the Senate, historically has voted with the majority more than any of the other justices currently serving on the court.  But former President Donald Trump's three appointees, Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, have left the centrist Roberts at odds more often with his fellow Republican-appointed colleagues.  The chief justice still commands the court, but in the past year sometimes has found himself alienated from other court conservatives.

The Left's Legislation to Pack the Supreme Court:  What Is It & What Does It Mean?  In the latest example of progressive hysteria and hypocrisy, a group of democrats formally launched legislative efforts Thursday [4/15/2021] to pack the Supreme Court by adding four new justices.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and Internet Hank Johnson (D-GA), Representative Mondaire Jones (D-NY) and Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass) introduced the bill, called the Judiciary Act of 2021, in efforts to create a 13-justice Supreme Court.  The bill is short, sweet and to the point.  It simply revises the section in federal law that says the Supreme Court has a "Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices" to say "a Chief Justice of the United States and twelve associate justices."

14 Times Democrats Admitted Court-Packing Is A Terrible Idea.  This month, Democrats in both chambers of Congress have made clear their intention of expanding the Supreme Court, with the clear intention of swinging the Court's sphere of influence away from conservatives and back towards the Left.  But while Democrats increasingly support such a proposal, it wasn't long ago that leaders in the party strongly opposed the idea.  Here are 14 times Democrats said court-packing was an idea they could not get behind. [...]

Biden's Supreme Court Will Mean End of Independent Judiciary.  President Joe Biden's executive order last week creating a bipartisan commission to study "structural changes" to the Supreme Court sends a clarion message of his administration's plan to fundamentally dismantle third branch judiciary checks on unconstitutional executive and legislative branch overreaches.  According to a White House press release:  "The Commission's purpose is to provide an analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals."  The executive order says, "The topics it will examine include the genesis of the reform debate; the Court's role in the Constitutional system; the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court's case selection, rules, and practices."  Read all of this to mean that it will provide the rationale and legal framework for court-packing.

House and Senate Planning to Introduce Legislation Thursday to Pack The Supreme Court.  Jerry 'the penguin' Nadler and Senator Ed Markey are planning to introduce legislation tomorrow [4/15/2021] to add four Supreme Court justices to the current bench.  The objective is to bring a liberal bias to the high court by adding four leftist judges.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is in the hot seat.  Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is in the crosshairs of the progressive left.  And no, it's not that the left-wing Breyer has undergone an epiphany and might finally fulfil his oath of office and start ruling per the written Constitution.  Rather Breyer's "crime" is that he's 82 years old.  It appears the left is still smarting over the Ruth Bader Ginsburg fiasco.  That came about because RGB tenaciously hung on past her shelf-life and deprived Barack Obama the chance to appoint her successor.  As a result. that opportunity fell to President Trump, and he nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  The left thought this would herald the end of its domination of the courts, and it might well have if the 2020 election wasn't stolen from President Trump.  As things stand now, the Senate is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats with Vice-President Harris holding the deciding vote.  This is a tenuous situation for Democrats.  Should one of their members from a red state die unexpectedly, the Senate could easily flip.

Propagandists: Latino TV Networks Cheer Dems' Court-Packing Bill.  Gone are the days when the nation's leading Spanish-language networks would cover the U.S. presidency with adversarial scrutiny.  Their coverage of the Democrats' efforts to pack the Supreme Court proves their pivot to advocacy propaganda.  Watch as anchors from Telemundo and Univision, respectively, hail Democrat efforts to pack the Court:  [Video clip]

The Abiding Shame of 'Packing' the Supreme Court.  In 2005, then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) delivered a Senate floor speech about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's doomed 1937 plan to "pack" the U.S. Supreme Court.  FDR's plan would have permitted him to add six justices, immediately securing a pro-New Deal judicial majority.  But "in an act of great courage, Roosevelt's own party stood up against this institutional power grab," Biden recounted 16 years ago.  "They did not agree with the judicial activism of the Supreme Court, but they believed that Roosevelt was wrong to seek to defy established traditions as a way of stopping that activism."  In fact, Biden actually understated the extent to which Senate Democrats rebuked the iconic Democratic president's court-packing scheme.  The Senate Judiciary Committee report issued at the time used eye-opening, clarion language:  "Let us of the Seventy-fifth Congress, in words that will never be disregarded by any succeeding Congress, declare that we would rather have an independent Court, a fearless Court, a Court that will dare to announce its honest opinions in what it believes to be the defense of the liberties of the people, than a Court that, out of fear or sense of obligation to the appointing power, or factional passion, approves any measure we may enact.  We are not the judges of the judges.  We are not above the Constitution."

Democrats Introduce Bill to Expand Supreme Court, but Reception Is Tepid.  A group of Democrats on Thursday [4/15/2021] unveiled their bill to expand the Supreme Court, but party leaders showed little support and Republicans assailed the proposal as radical.  The "Judiciary Act of 2021" would add four seats to the nation's top court, effectively flipping the balance from 6 [to] 3 in favor of conservative-appointed justices to 7 [to] 6 in the opposite direction.  The rationale fueling the proposal is that Republicans confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last year.  The GOP broke no rules or laws, but some Democrats were bitter that they did not hold the seat open for whoever won the 2020 election.  "Republicans stole the Court's majority, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation completing their crime spree," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement.  "This legislation will restore the Court's balance and public standing and begin to repair the damage done to our judiciary and democracy."

Dems Unveil Plan to Pack the Supreme Court but Republicans Can't Wait for Them to Try.  Democrats have long teased the idea that they would pack the Supreme Court once former President Donald Trump had put three judges in place, but now that the prospect is becoming a reality, Republicans are actually daring Democrats to try it under the idea that once they do try, it'll seal their fate in the midterms.  According to Fox News, not only are Republicans very confident that they'll stop the Democrats from accomplishing expanding the Supreme Court from nine seats to 13, but that the move will be unpopular enough to hand both the House and the Senate to them during the midterm elections.  This has prompted some politicians to openly encourage Democrats to give court packing a shot.

Democrats kick off push to pack Supreme Court with four new justices.  A group of Democrats Thursday formally launched a legislative effort to pack the Supreme Court by adding four new justices, in a move that was hailed by progressive activists but quickly met with fierce GOP opposition and skepticism by Democratic leadership.  Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., along with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Judiciary Committee members Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., and Hank Johnson, D-Ga., stood outside the Supreme Court Thursday [4/15/2021] to announce their new legislation to expand the high court from nine to 13 justices.

Nancy Pelosi and senior Dems kill their own party's bid to pack the Supreme Court with four more liberal judges.  Nancy Pelosi effectively killed an upcoming Democrat proposal to expand the Supreme Court by four seats by saying Thursday [4/15/2021] she would not bring the bill to the House floor.  The bid from a group of Democratic lawmakers would change the number of justices for the first time in 160 years and wipe out the conservative majority built under Donald Trump.  'Do you support [Rep.] Jerry Nadler's bill to expand the Supreme Court by 4 seats and would you commit to bringing that bill to the floor,' a reporter asked the House Speaker at a press conference on Thursday.  'No,' she said.

Pelosi Says She Has "No Plans" to Bring Nadler's Bill to Expand Supreme Court by Four Seats to House Floor.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Thursday morning [4/15/2021] said she does not support Jerrold Nadler's bill to expand the Supreme Court by four seats.  According to a report by The Intercept, Congressional Democrats, with House Judiciary Chairman Nadler leading the charge, will unveil the new court packing legislation on Thursday.  When asked about Nadler's bill, Pelosi said she didn't completely reject the idea of packing the Supreme Court.  She said she supported Joe Biden's commission to study the proposal.

'The moderate left is gone': Republicans line up to condemn Dems' plan to introduce a bill to pack Supreme Court with four new justices — erasing the GOP majority.  Republicans have condemned proposals to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 13 — a plan which Democratic members of Congress have said they will introduce on Thursday [4/15/2021].  'Packing the Supreme Court would destroy the Supreme Court,' tweeted Tom Cotton, senator for Arkansas.  'The Democrats will do anything for power.'  Donald Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said increasing the size of the court was a terrible idea.

Is Biden's Supreme Court Commission Packed To Fail?  With the establishment of his commission to study the possible packing of the Supreme Court, President Biden has adjoined his name to one of the most inglorious efforts of Franklin Roosevelt.  Court packing has long been anathema in the United States, and polls have consistently shown the vast majority of Americans oppose the idea.  Biden himself once denounced it as a "boneheaded" idea, but that was back in 1983, when there remained a real space in politics for at least the pretense of principle.  Now Biden and others seem to think the Supreme Court must be canceled for its failure to yield to the demands of our age of rage.  Many of us were surprised when he pandered to court packing calls in the 2020 primaries.  Some of us have called for expanding the court over a lengthy transitional period, but commentators and some Democrats called for an immediate infusion of new justices to give liberals the controlling majority.  Unhappy with conservative rulings, Democrats demanded that the Supreme Court be replaced by a much larger and more reliably liberal body.

Nadler Unveils Democrats' Plan to Pack Supreme Court, Claims:  "We're Not Packing it, We're Unpacking It".  House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler unveiled the Democrats' plan to pack the Supreme Court on Thursday [4/15/2021].  The majority of Americans do not support court packing, but stolen elections have consequences.  Nadler said the number of justices is up to Congress and Congress has changed that number 7 times in the history of the country.  Chairman Nadler said the Democrats are seeking to expand the Supreme Court by four seats to match the number of circuit courts.

The Editor says...
Pick any number less than a hundred, and some hair-splitting legalist can find that it "matches" some other number, and therefore it's just the right amount.  This is the chicanery for which the Democrats are famous.

Democrats ready legislation to add four seats to Supreme Court.  A group of Democratic lawmakers plans to introduce legislation that would add four seats to the Supreme Court.  Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia, and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts are prepared to bring forth legislation on Thursday that would increase the number of justices on the high court from nine to 13.  "Our democracy is under assault, and the Supreme Court has dealt the sharpest blows," Jones wrote in a Wednesday [4/14/2021] tweet.  "To restore power to the people, we must #ExpandTheCourt."

The Editor says...
It's hard to imagine what the Democrats' grievances are, since the liberals on the court are hard-core left-wing activists, and there are only three or four reliable conservatives to be seen there, and at the moment when the country needed their courage the most — November 2020 — they sat on the sidelines.  Giving the political left a 10-to-3 majority on the Supreme Court will give the SCOTUS far more power, but it won't "restore power to the people."  The Democrats demand that the next person nominated to the court must be a black female, which is exactly the kind of race-based favoritism they pretend to oppose.

GOP reps announce constitutional amendment to keep Supreme Court at 9 'before it's too late'.  A group of six House Republicans Tuesday will introduce a constitutional amendment aimed at setting the number of Supreme Court justices at nine in a reaction to calls from Democrats to pack the court and a commission ordered by President Biden to study the topic.  The proposed amendment, first obtained by Fox News, is sponsored by Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., along with Reps.  Chris Jacobs, R-N.Y., Ken Buck, R-Colo., Mo Brooks, R-Ala., Ted Budd, R-N.C., and Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.  Biden's 36-member commission would study not just adding justices to the court but also other potential reforms as well, including "the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court's case selection, rules, and practices."

Dems Ready Legislation to Pack the Supreme Court.  On Thursday, Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate plan to unveil legislation to expand the size of the Supreme Court, potentially reversing the originalist gains under former President Donald Trump.  The bill would add four seats to the Court, bringing the total from nine to 13, sources told The Intercept.  Congress has the authority to set the number of justices on the Court, which has remained at 9 since 1869.  House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Subcommittee Chair Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) are leading the bill in the House while Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) will lead the effort in the Senate.

Democrats to propose legislation expanding the Supreme Court.  Several House Democrats are set to unveil legislation Thursday to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court.  Supporters of the proposal plan to hold a news conference on the steps of the Supreme Court building.  They include U.S. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and U.S. Reps.  Jerry Nadler and Mondaire Jones, both of New York, and Hank Johnson of Georgia.  Given Democrats' control of the White House and Senate, the legislation could allow the party to supersede the court's current conservative majority by "packing" the Court with liberal justices.  Some Republicans quickly derided the proposal.

This Pastor Went to the Supreme Court to Stop Government From Locking Down Churches.  He Won.  Jeremy Wong has never been all that interested in politics.  The young associate pastor at Orchard Community Church always tried to keep his focus on the congregation — until COVID struck.  Then, to his frustration, things changed.  Suddenly, it was impossible to minister the way he and so many other pastors had under California's suffocating lockdown rules.  By October, after months of trying to lead Bible studies and prayer meetings over Zoom, Jeremy had had enough.  He decided to join a lawsuit to fight the state's over-the-top limits on in-home religious gatherings.  Finally, late Friday night, something happened that he "never in [his] wildest thoughts" expected:  they won.  "I didn't have super high expectations," the 40-year-old told the Mercury News.  But the feeling of relief is unmistakable.

Trump Issues Urgent Statement on Grave Danger to the Supreme Court.  Donald Trump has weighed in on a dangerous development that poses a threat to the Supreme Court.  The statement, issued by email, addresses the Biden-appointed commission to "reform" the highest court in the land, which obviously means advocating that it should be packed with radical new justices.  "Wouldn't it be ironic if the Supreme Court of the United States, after showing that they didn't have the courage to do what they should have done on the Great Presidential Election Fraud of 2020, was PACKED by the same people, the Radical Left Democrats (who they are so afraid of!), that they so pathetically defended in not hearing the Election Fraud case," Trump said.

Supreme Court Deals Heavy Blow To Environmentalist Group.  The U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a heavy blow to a major left-wing environmental group.  In the 7-2 ruling, the justices sided with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, thwarting the Sierra Club's bid to obtain documents concerning a regulation finalized in 2014 relating to power plants.  "The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires that federal agencies make records available to the public upon request unless those records fall within one of nine exemptions.  Exemption 5 incorporates the privileges available to Government agencies in civil litigation, such as the deliberative process privilege, attorney-client privilege, and attorney work-product privilege," Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote.  "This case concerns the deliberative process privilege, which protects from disclosure documents generated during an agency's deliberations about a policy, as opposed to documents that embody or explain a policy that the agency adopts," she continued.

Why Biden Is Breaking America.  As I previously wrote, even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was against court packing because she didn't want to see the court politicized further.  [Indeed], as I noted in the same piece, Joe Biden has spoken out against it for years, saying that doing so would be an egregious power grab.  Yet, here we are on the edge of that power grab.  If he does that, then he may indeed be able to decree any executive order which might then be upheld by a compliant and packed Supreme Court.

JoeBama Turns His Eye of Chaos Toward The Supreme Court.  Leftist ideologues from the Chicago school have a typical playbook they pull from.  One of their strategies is to flood the zone of politics to create chaos that allows them to act under cover of the distracted nature of their plan.  JoeBama turning his eye toward the Supreme Court while pushing COVID crisis, the Border crisis, promoting infrastructure and simultaneously advancing on the filibuster rule is classic Chicago, aka Alinsky.  The deployment of a commission to study reform in the Supreme Court, while simultaneously having a plan to install Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (50) to replace Justice Stephen Bryer [sic], now 82-years-old, is all part of that chaos approach.  The existence of the commission — and the potential recommendation to pack the court with additional voices — has another benefit; it can be viewed by the existing court as a threat to retain the status quo... or else.  The leftists will use the commission to mold the courts decisions.  Chicago is often subtle as a brick through a window.

Supreme Court Rules Against California's Limits On In-Home Religious Gatherings.  The U.S. Supreme Court in a divided decision late Friday ruled in favor of lifting restrictions on in-home religious gatherings, overturning a lower court ruling that upheld Gov. Gavin Newsom's limits on people from different homes.  The 5-4 unsigned ruling follows other similar decisions recently regarding churches and the coronavirus pandemic.  The decision noted it was the fifth time the court has rejected the Ninth Circuit's analysis of California coronavirus restrictions.  Chief Justice John Roberts dissented but did not sign the dissenting statement submitted by justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer.  The ruling stated that before it can limit religious gatherings, the government must prove they pose a greater danger than secular activities that remain open, such as shopping or attending movies.

Biden to Form Commission to Study Packing the Supreme Court.  President Joe Biden is set to issue an executive order on Friday forming a bipartisan commission that will perform a 180-day study of potential changes to the Supreme Court, including court packing and setting term limits for justices.  "The Commission's purpose is to provide an analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals," the White House said in a statement.  "The topics it will examine include the genesis of the reform debate; the Court's role in the Constitutional system; the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court's case selection, rules, and practices."  Biden promised to form the bipartisan commission during the campaign in October as he repeatedly dodged questions regarding his stance on expanding the Supreme Court.

MSNBC host calls on liberal Supreme Court Justice Breyer to retire after his warning against 'court-packing'.  MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan has called on liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to retire from the bench after he spoke out forcefully against court-packing earlier this week.  In the piece, published Thursday [4/8/2021] and starkly headlined "Justice Stephen Breyer Should Retire from the Supreme Court," Hasan accused Breyer of intentionally overlooking the "partisanship" of his conservative colleagues, and dismissed his position as "naive, misguided and self-serving."  "It feels odd for me to have to remind a sitting justice that nowhere in the Constitution does it say there should be nine justices on the court," Hasan wrote at one point.  In a lecture at Harvard Law School on Tuesday, Breyer argued that politically-driven changes to the Supreme Court risked damaging the rule of law in the United States.

Inside Biden White House's ties to dark money group seeking to pack Supreme Court.  President Biden's White House has close ties to a left-wing dark money group that seeks to expand the Supreme Court.  Both White House press secretary Jen Psaki and Paige Herwig, Biden's point person on judicial nominations, previously worked for Demand Justice, which is part of a massive dark money network, the Sixteen Thirty Fund.  Demand Justice is open about seeking to overhaul the federal court system to advance progressive goals.

Did Trump Violate the First Amendment by Blocking People on Twitter?  Clarence Thomas Weighs In.  When President Donald Trump blocked users on Twitter, some of them sued, claiming the president had violated their First Amendment rights to speak in a public forum.  On Monday [4/5/2021], the Supreme Court dismissed that lawsuit as moot.  While the Court did not issue an opinion on the case, it stands to reason that Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute (2021) would be moot because Trump is no longer in office and because Twitter has suspended Trump's account.  Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an important concurring opinion warning that the true threat to free speech did not involve Trump but Twitter.  In 2019, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that the comment threads on Trump's tweets constituted a "public forum," so Trump violated the First Amendment by blocking plaintiffs from accessing the threads.  "But Mr. Trump, it turned out, had only limited control of the account; Twitter has permanently removed the account from the platform," Thomas noted.

SCOTUS and the Snapchat cheerleader.  A free speech case involving children and public schools is going to be going before the Supreme Court.  This case, out of Mahonoy, Pennsylvania, has been rattling around in the courts for nearly four years now and it could set a new precedent in terms of how restrictive public schools are allowed to be when it comes to the speech of minors.  At the heart of the case is a former high school cheerleader who elected to use some, shall we say, inappropriate [language] when posting to her friends on the social media app Snapchat.  When word of her ranting reached school officials, she was suspended from the cheerleading squad for a year.  While this may sound like a trivial matter, it does speak to precisely how broad the power of public schools can be when it comes to the off-campus activities of students.

Supreme Court to hear case of cheerleader suspended for Snapchat post.  A cheerleader who was suspended from the squad because she posted [some stuff] on Snapchat will now have her case heard by the Supreme Court — which will weigh whether her free speech rights were violated.  Brandi Levy was just 14 and a freshman cheerleader in Mahonoy, Pennsylvania, when she sent the offending Snapchat to her friends after not getting accepted into the varsity squad, she told ABC News.

A lifetime position on the Supreme Court is far too important to trivialize with race and gender quotas.
Psaki Reveals That Biden 'Absolutely Committed' To Installing A Black Woman On Supreme Court.  During a press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed that Joe Biden is "absolutely" committed to nominating a Black woman to the Supreme Court.  During his campaign, Biden promised to put a Black woman on the nation's highest court in order to appeal to the critical race theorists of the Democrat Party.  The campaign promise was put in the spotlight as a reporter asked Psaki if the Biden team was considering giving favorable chances to political nominees of certain skin color.  Biden's campaign pandering came back to the spotlight after he released his first federal judicial picks, a group of 11 attorneys that included multiple Black women.

The Editor says...
If the nominee must be black and must be female (how is that legal?) I'm rooting for either Sheila Jackson Lee or Maxine Waters.  Imagine all the lively discussions that would ensue behind closed doors at the Scotus with either of those two clowns in the room.

The Supreme Court:  Cowards, Crooks, or Compromised?  The Court's unwillingness to make any decisions regarding the presidential election of 2020 is a historic failure. [...] One could argue, successfully, that January 6 on the Washington Mall happened because of the lack of integrity and guts in the Supreme Court.  Because of their blatant disassociation with being a coequal branch with the presidency and Congress, the Court has lost enormous respect from half of America. [...] From the five to six purple battleground states, there were obviously enough questions, doubts, and sworn witnesses to at least hear the evidence in the cases.  There was so much smoke out there in terms of possible election irregularities that the Supreme Court had ample reason and cause to see if there was in fact a roaring blaze.  But yet a majority of the Court refused to hear it.

Supreme Court Takes Up Dismemberment Abortion Case.  On Monday [3/29/2021], the Supreme Court announced it would consider the case Cameron v.  EMW Women's Surgical Center, which centers on Kentucky's ban on dismemberment abortions, also known as dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortions.  The Court is not likely to weigh the merits of the purported constitutional "right" to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade (1973) and later cases, however.  In April 2018, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) signed H.B. 454 into law, banning any practice that involves "the bodily dismemberment, crushing, or human vivisection of the unborn child."  Yet after Bevin lost his reelection campaign in 2018, his successor, Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, did not direct his administration to keep defending H.B. 454.  Beshear's health secretary did defend the law until the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction against it.

Supreme Court Denies Bid by Judicial Watch to Require Hillary Clinton Testify Under Oath About Her Emails.  The Supreme Court on Monday [3/29/2021] denied a bid by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch to uphold a court ruling requiring Hillary Clinton to testify under oath about her private email system.  The Supreme Court's denial was unsigned and issued without comment.  In January Judicial Watch filed a petition for writ of certiorari ("cert petition") with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to uphold a court ruling requiring Hillary Clinton to testify under oath about her private email system.  Hillary Clinton used a private email system to conduct official government business when she was the head of the Department of State.

Supreme Court sits on potentially blockbuster abortion case.  The Supreme Court is sitting on a petition in a Mississippi abortion case that could blow the lid off Roe v. Wade.  The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, has been before the court since September without a word from the justices.  It has been considered at the court's conferences eight times and each time left on the table.  That likely means that fewer than four justices so far have voted to take up the case.  Another possibility is that the court has already rejected the case and one of the conservative justices is working on a dissent that will be released in one of the court's orders list.  The lack of action at this point in either direction is surprising to some anti-abortion advocates, who, especially after former President Donald Trump's administration appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the court, expected the court to weigh in on the controversial issue.

A federal appellate judge challenged Supreme Court infallibility.  In the case of Tah v. Global Witness Publishing, Inc., which emerged from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, nobody but the parties involved cared about the issues in the case.  It became noteworthy, though, because Judge Laurence Silberman used the dissent, not just to disagree with the majority's ruling, but also to warn against the danger of a national media that is completely allied with the party controlling all of Washington D.C.  However, I find the case even more exciting because it attacks the notion of Supreme Court infallibility.

Poll: Clarence Thomas Is GOP's Most Popular Supreme Court Justice.  According to an Economist and YouGov poll, Justice Clarence Thomas is the Republican Party's most popular justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.  The survey asked whether there was a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the justices and found Thomas had a favorability of 59 percent within the Party, along with Justice Amy Coney Barrett with 55 percent and Justice Brett Kavanaugh with 53 percent favorability.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts Has Been... Highly Disconcerting.  We the Constitutional have spent large swaths of the last fifteen years wondering just what the heck Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is doing.  Republican President George W. Bush was reelected in 2004 in part because We the People like having judges enforce the Constitution — not rewrite it.  The next year, he appointed Roberts Chief Justice.  At the time, we were more than a little pleased.  Ever since, not so much.  Because he has issued an incessant cavalcade of really awful rulings.  Most recently, he was so far out there every one on the Court ruled the correct way — except him.

Supreme Court sides with Christian students silenced on Georgia campus.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with a former Georgia college student who sued his school after it prevented him from expressing religious views in a free-speech zone on campus.  The 8-1 decision, authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, said that Chike Uzuegbunam — who was silenced by Georgia Gwinnett College officials even after he had obtained a permit to proselytize and handout religious literature — can seek nominal damages despite the fact that the school ultimately changed course and Uzuegbunam subsequently graduated.  In a very rare alignment of votes, Chief Justice John Roberts was the lone dissenting justice in the case.

Supreme Court dismisses Trump's last election fraud case.  In a ruling on Monday [3/8/2021], the Supreme Court dismissed the last of three court cases brought by the Trump campaign challenging the 2020 US presidential election.  The Court did not give a comment as to their reasons for the dismissal.  This final challenge brought by the Trump campaign alleged that thousands of votes cast using absentee ballots in Wisconsin needed to be examined for fraud, according to Reuters.

SCOTUS, 8-1: You better believe students can sue colleges over "speech zone" First Amendment violations.  That gasp heard after this ruling dropped comes from every college and university with a "free speech zone" and policies that impose heckler's vetoes.  Plaintiffs suing over restrictions on speech and religious expression on campus only need to establish "nominal damages" to gain standing, the Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision, not necessarily actual damages.  That opens up a vast new field of litigation that attorneys all across the country will rush to meet. The 8-1 ruling in Uzuegbunam v Preczewski from Justice Clarence Thomas does not actually settle the case in favor of the students, but the writing is on the wall for Georgia Gwinnett College.

Supreme Court Dismisses 'Sanctuary City' Cases at Request of Biden's DOJ.  The Supreme Court has dismissed three pending requests to hear challenges to the Trump administration's order to withhold millions of dollars in law enforcement funds from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions — states and cities that refuse to cooperate with Department of Homeland Security efforts to deport people residing in the United States illegally. [...] In 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that called on U.S. agencies to withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions, many of which are governed by Democrats.  Part of Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, the order made federal money to state and local governments conditional upon their giving U.S. immigration officials access to their jails and advance notice when illegal immigrants were being released from custody.  Lower courts were divided on whether the policy was lawful.

Barrett writes first majority Supreme Court opinion in FOIA dispute.  The Supreme Court on Thursday shielded draft documents from a pair of federal agencies from disclosure under a widely used federal public records law, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett authoring her first majority opinion since joining the high court in October.  The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and National Marine Fisheries Service in their dispute with the Sierra Club, which sought records related to the services' consultations with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Supreme Court Again Allows Indoor Church Services, Lifts Ban.  The U.S. Supreme Court said a California county must let five churches hold indoor services, adding to a line of orders that have curbed the power of government officials as they battle the spread of the coronavirus.  The latest high court action follows a Feb. 6 order that let indoor worship services resume in most of California at 25% capacity.  The court's unsigned one-paragraph order said the outcome "is clearly dictated" by the earlier decision.  The three liberal justices — Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor — dissented.  Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, said its ban remained valid because it was part of a broader prohibition on indoor gatherings at both religious and secular establishments.  The county's policy let facilities operate at 20% capacity for purposes other than gatherings.

Here's What Ted Cruz Is Doing to Keep Democrats from Packing the Supreme Court.  Activist judges pushing a far-left agenda have been legislating from the bench, and a handful of Supreme Court Justices committed to upholding the Constitution is the only thing stopping the left's total transformation of the country.  For that reason, Democrats have been lying in wait for the opportunity to take out the Supreme Court.  Democrats are no longer hiding their disdain for the high court.  Democrats openly admit to hostile court-packing plans that would stuff the Supreme Court full of activist judges who would then sign off on everything Democrats couldn't sneak past the voters.  Vice President Kamala Harris has said, "everything is on the table" when it comes to bypassing the Supreme Court.  Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) has called court-packing a "long-overdue court reform."  Most concerning, President Biden has created a commission to study possible reforms to the federal judiciary because, as Biden puts it, the court system is "getting out of whack."

Kavanaugh and Barrett:  John Roberts Retreads?  All that work for, and faith in, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett!  As with John Roberts before, we are once again the victims of unrequited affection and lost labor.  Like other Republicans, I expended lots of hours and effort to do my part in getting all three confirmed.  I wrote articles, did radio and TV interviews, gave speeches, called Senators and asked my friends to do so, and spoke to countless people. [...] I have traveled over 800 miles, paid for motels, and over the years took off work so as to help these nominees become confirmed justices.  Like so many others on our side, we believed in them.  Finally, strong justices, conservative like us.  The Court was finally ours... a dream come true.  Well, the dream has died and our hopes for the Great Cause have not been respected by those in whose behalf we so tirelessly worked.

Clarence Thomas Dissent in Election Cases: 'Our Fellow Citizens Deserve Better'.  "Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us," Justice Clarence Thomas declared Monday, when the Supreme Court decided — by one vote — to hear none of the 2020 election cases raising issues of voter fraud and illegal votes.  Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted with the liberal justices to deny review of the lower court decisions.  Four justices must vote to hear a case to put it on the Court's docket, but only three justices — Thomas, fellow conservative Samuel Alito, and libertarian Neil Gorsuch — voted to take at least two of four of the key cases from November 2020.  All three dissenting justices took the unusual step of writing opinions as to why the Court should have taken at minimum two of these cases.

Supreme Court denies Trump request to keep tax records private.  The Supreme Court declined a request from former President Donald Trump to halt a New York state prosecutor from obtaining his tax returns, the Associated Press reports.  The decision closes a years-long effort by Trump to keep his tax returns private.  The Economist reports that Monday's decision opens eight years of tax returns to New York County district attorney Cy Vance.  The Supreme Court did not deliver any dissents or offer any explanation as to why they denied Trump's request for a stay in keeping the returns out of Vance's hands.

Trump Unloads on 'Crazy Nancy' & 'Headhunting' Prosecutors After SCOTUS Decision.  Former President Donald Trump unleashed on those carrying out a blood vendetta against him after leaving office.  On Monday [2/22/2021], the Supreme Court effectively declared open season on Donald Trump by refusing to block prosecutors from going after his tax returns and financial records.

Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch Blast Supreme Court's 'Inexplicable' Refusal to Hear Pennsylvania Election Lawsuit.  The Supreme Court on Monday [2/22/2021] struck down a Republican challenge over absentee ballots received up to three days after Election Day in Pennsylvania.  Republicans in the Keystone State had sought to block a state court ruling that allowed the Nov. 6 deadline extension in the 2020 election.  The decision prompted dissents from three conservative justices; Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch.  The trio argued that while the legal questions in the case may not have affected the outcome of the November election, the Supreme Court should take the opportunity to clarify election law because the same legal issues could impact future elections.  Throughout his dissent, Thomas characterized the Court's refusal to take cases challenging the election as "inexplicable," "befuddling," and "baffling."  "These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle.  The refusal to do so is inexplicable," Thomas wrote.

SCOTUS Refuses To Hear Pennsylvania Election Lawsuits.  The Supreme Court has rejected three GOP elections-related lawsuits regarding the state of Pennsylvania.  In a six-to-three decision Monday, the court refused to hear a case challenging a three-day extension of the deadline to receive mail-in ballots in the state.  Justices John Roberts, Amy Comey Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh sided with their liberal colleagues while Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.  The court also moved to deny hearing a case seeking to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the state and another similar case by the Trump campaign.  In the dissent, Justice Thomas argued "the absence of evidence of voter fraud is not enough to instill confidence in election integrity."

Justice Thomas Blisters Court on Rejecting Election Cases.  After the Supreme Court turned away two Republican appeals over Pennsylvania's mail-in ballot deadline changes, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas issued a blistering dissent against the decision to reject the case.  "One wonders what this Court waits for," Justice Thomas wrote.  "We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules.  Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections.  "The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling."  Three conservative Justices Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch sought to hear the cases, while Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal justices in turning then away.  Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not take part on cases that preceded her swearing in.

Our Supreme Court Goes Full Nicaragua.  While I think the United States Supreme Court stumbled badly in its 7-2 rejection of the Texas case on standing last year, the refusal to "grant cert" (i.e., to take the case) yesterday in a Pennsylvania case is horrifying beyond words. [...] What the Supreme Court codified yesterday, and what it started with the Texas rejection, is that election laws and procedures cannot be challenged beyond a state court, at any time, regardless of how badly those states shred the United States Constitution, and regardless of the major consequences to the other 49 states as a result.  They don't ever say that per se, but the results of what those two rulings have done are just that.  Period.  Those trying to challenge Pennsylvania's obviously corrupt and rigged election system have been told that they cannot challenge the laws ahead of the election, because there is not yet a victim.  They've been told that fellow Americans impacted by Pennsylvania's corrupt system cannot challenge, because of standing.  Now they've been told that they cannot challenge after the election, because it's after the election — and therefore moot.

With Supreme Court's Non-Decision, Citizens Must Reform Electoral System.  The U.S. Supreme Court's appalling decision not to hear a Republican challenge to Pennsylvania's extra-legal changing of election laws shortly before the 2020 vote — which likely delivered the state to Joe Biden in the wee hours of Election Night — is just the latest disgrace of the John Roberts court, and a clear signal of future trouble for the Republic.  Pusillanimity has marked the chief justice and the institution he leads since his volte-face regarding the 2012 Obamacare decision, in which he saved the misbegotten, intrusive, and blatantly unconstitutional law at the last minute by choosing to call the "individual mandate" a tax — that is to say, a hitherto unprecedented ukase by the federal government that once-free citizens had to buy a health-care policy under threat of IRS penalty.  A human weathervane, Roberts has gone on from that low point to plumb ever-new depths of moral cowardice as, increasingly, he sides with court's dwindling liberal bloc to become, in effect, the new Anthony Kennedy — the regal one-man swing vote on matters of urgent national importance.

Clarence Thomas Unleashes Brutal Smackdown Against the Supreme Court Over Election Ruling.  On Monday [2/22/2021], Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas unleashed on his fellow Supreme Court justices after they voted against taking up cases relating to ballot-integrity measures for the 2020 election and future elections.  "This is not a prescription for confidence," Thomas said in his dissent on Monday, noting that "changing the rules in the middle of the game is bad enough."  "That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election.  But that may not be the case in the future," Thomas wrote.  "These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle.  The refusal to do so is inexplicable."  Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch also dissented.

SCOTUS plays Catch 22 with challenges to Pennsylvania election.  The Supreme has signaled that anything goes when it comes to jiggering election rules in favor of the Democrats.  Challenge illegalities in the last election with a good case, and you're stuck in a classic Catch-22 situation, as Ace pithily sums it up:
      ["]Before the inauguration:  Not timely
      After the certification:  Moot
The two cases the Court declined to hear challenged the last-minute changes to election law in Pennsylvania.  Never mind that the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives state legislatures the power to prescribe "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives"; the Supreme Court just allowed the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to change the rules for the November 2020 federal election by declaring the case moot.

Unbelievable, SCOTUS Refuses to Hear PA Election Challenge After Previously Granting Injunction.  In a 6-3 ruling today [2/22/2021] the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to grant writ to hear the Pennsylvania election challenge cases.  While the majority of media will likely celebrate this decision; and while the court has refused to hear the case(s) based on their position the issues are "moot"; there appears to be an underlying motive not being discussed.  It only takes four justices to agree to hear a case and grant a writ of certiorari.  In October 2020 the issues with the Pennsylvania court overruling the Pennsylvania legislature was of such importance four justices agreed to block the lower court order.  However, four months later the majority claim the arguments within the case are "moot"; & the election is over.  In essence the Roberts Court is saying they will allow any/all methods and manipulations of election law within states, and only look to the state outcome.  This is very troublesome.

Supreme Court Declines To Hear Pennsylvania Election Dispute Cases.  The Supreme Court denied review today [2/22/2021] to two cases filed in connection with the Presidential vote in Pennsylvania.  The first case was filed by both the Trump Campaign and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, challenging the decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that made changes to the election laws in Pennsylvania.  The most controversial change allowed the counting of mailed-in ballots received up to three days after election day — the election statute has a cut-off of 8:00 pm on election night — so long as the ballot envelope was postmarked on election day.  Ballot envelopes with no postmark, or with an illegible postmark, were deemed to have been received after election day.

Sidney Powell Speaks Out After SCOTUS Meetings Friday on Election Fraud — Expects Orders and Opinions Next Week.  The US Supreme Court was set to consider President Trump's voter fraud cases in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan on Friday [2/19/2021].  These three cases are on the Supreme Court docket for Friday. [...] As a reminder, Pennsylvania Democrat officials changed the election rules weeks before the election without consulting the legislative branch.  This is unlawful in the state.  It will be interesting to see if SCOTUS is the latest lawless branch of government following today's decisions.

How Democrats Are Already Maneuvering to Shape Biden's First Supreme Court Pick.  After meeting in the Oval Office earlier this month with President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and his fellow senior House Democrats, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina made a beeline to Ms. Harris's office in the West Wing to privately raise a topic that did not come up during their group discussion:  the Supreme Court.  Mr. Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, wanted to offer Ms. Harris the name of a potential future justice, according to a Democrat briefed on their conversation.  District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs would fulfill Mr. Biden's pledge to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court — and, Mr. Clyburn noted, she also happened to hail from South Carolina, a state with political meaning for the president.

Also posted under Race-based political opportunism.

Supreme Court Set to Consider Whether Trump Voter Fraud Cases in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan Can Proceed.  The US Supreme Court is set to consider President Trump's voter fraud cases in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan on Friday [2/19/2021].  These three cases are on the Supreme Court docket for Friday. [...] As a reminder, Pennsylvania Democrat officials changed the election rules weeks before the election without consulting the legislative branch.  This is unlawful in the state.  It will be interesting to see if SCOTUS is the latest lawless branch of government following today's decisions.

Supreme Court to determine if police can enter a house and take guns without obtaining a warrant.  In a case that could have wide-ranging effects on policing in America, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments next month to decide if police can make warrantless searches of a private residence under the "community caretaking" doctrine.  The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects citizens from warrantless searches as one of America's basic rights.  Before a police officer or other government official can enter a private home, they must show a judge probable cause that an item is present and that a crime has been committed.  If the judge finds there is sufficient probable cause, a search warrant is issued.  There are widely-accepted exceptions, called "exigent circumstance," for emergency situations.  These exigent circumstances involved protection of life and evidence.  If an officer sees suspects destroying evidence through a window, he can enter the home to stop the destruction.

Divided court allows indoor worship services to resume in California.  Friday's [2/5/2021] ruling spawned several different opinions.  Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch indicated that they would have given the churches everything that they had asked for — that is, allowed them to reopen immediately without any limitations.  In a statement that was also joined by Justice Samuel Alito, they suggested that it is not difficult to determine in this case whether California has singled out religion for special, and more stringent, treatment.  They acknowledged that the state "has a compelling interest in reducing" the risk of transmitting COVID-19, but [...] "if Hollywood may host a studio audience or film a singing competition while not a single soul may enter California's churches, synagogues, and mosques, something has gone seriously awry."

Supreme Court to Consider 2020 Election Challenge Lawsuits in February Conference.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday [2/5/2021] scheduled several high-profile contest-of-election lawsuits, including ones brought by attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, and the Trump campaign, for consideration at its Feb. 19 conference.  According to a case listing, the lawsuits include Sidney Powell's Michigan case (20-815), the Trump campaign's Pennsylvania lawsuit (20-845) and Wisconsin lawsuit (20-882), the Pennsylvania lawsuit brought by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) (20-810), and Lin Wood's Georgia case (20-799).  All cases allege some form of unlawful election-related conduct affecting the result of the election, including expansion of mail-in balloting by elections officials changing rules in contravention of state election laws, lack of adequate security measures around mail ballots, issues with machine vote tabulation, and denial of meaningful access to poll watchers.  The Supreme Court declined to grant relief or fast-track the cases as requested in respective petitions filed ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden.

SCOTUS apparently not fans of shutting down churches.  In a Friday night [2/5/2021] ruling, the Supreme Court voted along ideological lines and ruled that California Governor Gavin Newsom can't entirely ban indoor church services due to the pandemic.  But they didn't go so far as to say that churches are "untouchable" and can't be restricted in any fashion.  Unsurprisingly, the court's three remaining liberal justices dissented and would have been willing to allow Newsom to forbid indoor church services entirely.  This is a decision that will likely impact a number of other pending cases in multiple states.  It was a case of the First Amendment being pitted against the extraordinary authoritarian powers granted to executive officials during a declared state of emergency.

Supreme Court rules California churches may open despite the pandemic.  The Supreme Court lifted California's ban on indoor church services during the pandemic Friday [2/5/2021], ruling that Gov. Gavin Newsom's strict orders violate the Constitution's protection for the free exercise of religion.  The justices in a 6-3 decision granted an appeal from a south San Diego church that has repeatedly challenged the state restrictions on church services, including its ban on singing and chanting.  The ruling overturned decisions by federal judges in San Diego and San Bernardino, and the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco, which upheld the state's orders despite earlier warnings from the high court.

Starr: Chief Justice Roberts Should Make [it] Clear [that the] Trump Impeachment Trial [is] Unconstitutional.  Several Republicans along with lawyers for former President Donald Trump have called his second impeachment many things:  Bogus, ridiculous, insane, petty, improper, and illegal.  Democrats need to hear one more term, however, and they need to hear it from someone specific.  The term is "unconstitutional" and it needs to come from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, according to former independent counsel Ken Starr, who knows a think or two about impeachment proceedings since his probes of President Bill Clinton lead him to be impeached in 1998.

Supreme Court to consider election lawsuits in February.  The Supreme Court on Friday [2/5/2021] listed several high-profile election lawsuits for consideration at its mid-February conference.  The cases include challenges to the 2020 election from Trump-aligned lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, as well as Republican Rep. Mike Kelly's Pennsylvania lawsuit.  Nearly every lawsuit takes issue with the expanded use of mail-in ballots by many states.  The decision came after the court declined to fast-track all election-related litigation in early January.  In nearly every plea for expedition, lawyers backing former President Donald Trump told the court that if the cases were not heard before President Biden's inauguration, their success would be unlikely.

Supreme Court Schedules Election Lawsuits for February Conference.  The United States Supreme Court has scheduled the Pennsylvania election case, Sidney Powell's Michigan election case, and Lin Wood's Georgia election case for its February 19 conference.

Supreme Court cancels arguments on Trump's border wall, 'remain in Mexico' policy.  The Supreme Court on Wednesday [2/3/2021] canceled courtroom arguments scheduled for the next few weeks over two aspects of former President Donald Trump's immigration policy — a reflection of the new administration's reversal on both issues.  The court granted the Justice Department's request to remove two Trump administration appeals of lower court rulings from the argument calendar, one being against the use of Pentagon money to build the southern border wall and the other against making immigrants wait in Mexico instead of the U.S.  Stopping the wall project was among the first steps President Joe Biden took after he was sworn into office.

Biden asks Supreme Court to cancel arguments on border wall, asylum cases.  The Biden administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to cancel upcoming arguments in cases challenging former President Trump's border wall and policy requiring that asylum-seekers remain in Mexico.  The request follows day-one efforts by the new administration to reverse course on each, potentially making moot the Feb. 22 and March 1 hearings.  "The President has directed the Executive Branch to undertake an assessment of 'the legality of the funding and contracting methods used to construct the wall,'" the administration wrote to the court.

The Real Constitutional Crisis is Upon Us.  The Supreme Court is supposed to be our bulwark against encroachments on the Constitution.  The justices are not only to be the interpreters of the Constitution, but also its guardians.  They are the robed scholars intended to understand the Constitution inside and out, and to ensure the nation remains faithful to it.  They are granted lifetime appointments so that they may remain above petty politics.  Justices are intended to be free of party affiliation so that they may defend the Constitution — independent of outside influences.  Somewhere along the line, the Supreme Court decided that it not only wanted to keep the Constitution relevant, but it wanted the Constitution to evolve with the times.  Suddenly, we had an evolving Constitution (I hate the term "living Constitution").  We've now been introduced to "penumbras" and "emanations" — which are just legal-speak for, "We know what the Founders meant, even though they didn't write it down."  And with that, fidelity to the Constitution has been lost.

The Supreme Court Has Failed in Its Role as the National Abortion Control Board.  When the Supreme Court makes an important decision that influences the entire nation, it's flashed across the media for a day and then forgotten.  Rarely is the practical impact of the decision reviewed afterward.  But a new report provides insight on how recent Supreme Court decisions regarding abortion clinics have resulted in a public health mess.  The Supreme Court's Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt decision of 2016 and June Medical Services LLC v. Russo decision of 2020 nullified important health and safety regulations for abortion clinics in Texas and Louisiana.  They also cast doubt on the same laws in every other state, prompting some to wonder if those laws were ever necessary.  The Guttmacher Institute estimates that in 2017, "over 862,000 abortions were performed in the U.S., with only 5% in physicians' offices and hospitals."  That means that abortion clinics are where the vast majority of abortions are performed.  Americans might ask, "What's this have to do with the Supreme Court?  The court isn't responsible for what goes on in clinics."  While the Supreme Court isn't supposed to be, it assumed unprecedented control over abortion clinics in 1973 in Roe v. Wade.

The Left's Push to 'Reform' the Courts Only Will Politicize Them.  President Joe Biden has announced the creation of a commission to examine "reforming" the courts.  This move is not only a "solution" in search of a problem, but will itself likely damage the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.  It is based on the dangerous idea that the political branches should manipulate the very design and structure of the judiciary until it produces decisions that fit a particular ideological or political agenda.  That is no exaggeration.  In August 2019, five Senate Democrats — four of whom serve on the Judiciary Committee — filed a legal brief written by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., in a Supreme Court case challenging a New York state law that restricted transport of a licensed firearm outside of one's home.  The brief closed with these words:  "The Supreme Court is not well.  And the people know it.  Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be 'restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.'"

Biden Creates Commission to Study Supreme Court Reform, Report States.  President Joe Biden's administration is creating a commission to study Supreme Court reform, Politico reported Wednesday [1/27/2021].  The new bipartisan commission will be under the purview of the White House Counsel, according to Politico.  Multiple members have already been selected, sources familiar with the discussions told Politico, including Yale Law School professor Cristina Rodríguez, former President of the American Constitution Society Caroline Fredrickson, and Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith.  During the 2020 presidential election, Biden refused to address whether he would pack the court, insisting that he would not provide such an answer until at least 180 days after he became president and after he had received a recommendation from a bipartisan commission on changing the Supreme Court.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder Urges Democrats to Pack the Supreme Court.  Former Attorney General Eric Holder urged Democrats to "use the power" of their new majority to pack the Supreme Court.  In a virtual conference on judicial reform hosted by the Brookings Institution on Monday [1/25/2021], Holder said Democrats need to act now that they have control of the White House and Congress.  "It is painfully clear, at least to me, that Democrats and progressives are, and have been, uncomfortable with the acquisition and the use of power ... Republicans and conservatives never have been," Holder said.

Chief Justice Roberts Opts Out of the Impeachment Circus.  There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Justice Roberts.  The Roberts Court, specifically the Roberts part of it, has repeatedly sided with lefties on issues that would get its eponymous figure disinvited from the cocktail party circuit.  When faced with a serious choice, Roberts has usually taken the easy way out and turned into the direction of the greatest social pressure.  Refusing to preside over the impeachment trial is arguably a step in that direction.  But by his standards, it's an act of courage to indicate by omission that the whole thing is a circus and that he wants no part of it.  It's not that Roberts doesn't hate President Trump, but it's likely that he doesn't think former presidents can be impeached and that he sees the whole thing as an ugly and cynical political circus operating under the faintest tinge of the color of law.

Supreme Court calls emoluments lawsuits against Trump moot.  The Supreme Court on Monday brought an end to lawsuits over whether Donald Trump illegally profited off his presidency.  The justices threw out Trump's challenge to lower court rulings that had allowed lawsuits to go forward alleging that he violated the Constitution's emoluments clause by accepting payments from foreign and domestic officials who stay at the Trump International Hotel and patronize other businesses owned by the former president and his family.  The high court also ordered the lower-court rulings thrown out as well and directed appeals courts in New York and Richmond, Va., to dismiss the suits as moot now that Trump is no longer in office.

CJ Roberts and the Courage of Roger Scruton.  [Scroll down]  But now our Democratic friends want to have a trial of Citizen Trump in the Senate.  So I looked up the text of the Constitution online.  It says ["]The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.  When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation.  When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside:  And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.["]  Ahem.  Do you see the problem here, you strict constructionists, you living constitutionalists, and you, Sen. Chuck E. Schumer (D-NY)?  When the proposed trial begins on February 8, Roberts, CJ, can say — should say — to the assembled duly sworn multitude:  "Sorry chaps.  The President of the United States is not on trial.  Citizen Trump is on trial.  So it would be against the Constitution as written for the Chief Justice to preside.  And it would be a grievous blow to the dignity of the Supreme Court and the plain meaning of the Constitution if the Chief Justice were to preside in flagrant violation of the plain words of the Constitution."

SCOTUS Throws Out Lawsuits Accusing Trump Of Taking Foreign Bribes.  The Supreme Court tossed two lawsuits accusing former President Donald Trump of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution on Monday [1/25/2021], ending a roughly four-year legal battle over the former president's businesses.  One of the lawsuits was filed by a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the day after Trump was inaugurated in 2017. The attorneys general of District of Columbia and Maryland brought a similar lawsuit in June of that year, according to Politico.

Supreme Court Orders Dismissal of Suits Over Trump Finances.  The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the formal dismissal of two lawsuits that accused Donald Trump of unconstitutionally profiting from his presidency.  The cases no longer had any practical consequences after Trump's term in office ended Jan. 20, and both sides agreed the disputes had become legally moot.  Those suing Trump included hotels, restaurants and the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.  They said Trump as president benefited from a stream of foreign and state government officials who patronized his properties, including the Trump International Hotel in Washington, a few blocks from the White House.

Sen. Rand Paul says Chief Justice Roberts won't take Trump impeach trial.  As Democrats plunge ahead with a post-term impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, a key question remains:  Will Chief Justice Roberts take the case?  Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky says he won't — making the exercise "a fake, partisan impeachment," the lawmaker told Fox News' Sean Hannity Friday [1/22/2021].  Paul claimed Roberts has "privately said he's not supposed to come unless it's an impeachment of the president."  According to the US Constitution, "when the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside" — a requirement not made for any other impeachment case.

Roberts rules.  Today comes word via Senator Rand Paul that Chief Justice Roberts will not preside over any Senate impeachment trial of President Trump: the text of the Constitution only requires the Chief Justice to preside over the trial of "the President."  Trump is no longer "the President."  Roberts's presence is therefore not called for.  Trump is of course a private citizen at this point.  The constitutional text does not appear to contemplate the impeachment or trial of a private citizen, although such impeachments took place once in the eighteenth century and once in the nineteenth.  Former Fourth Circuit Judge Michael Luttig argues in this Washington Post column that a Senate trial of Trump would be unconstitutional.

Chief Justice John Roberts does NOT want to preside over Donald Trump's second impeachment trial.  Chief Justice John Roberts is eager to avoid presiding over Donald Trump's second impeachment trial — after he became a lightning rod during the first one.  Just as the Senate is seeking to ascertain how it might proceed with an impeachment trial without blowing up the start of Joe Biden's term, the Supreme Court could face its own business being rearranged.  The Constitution states that 'When the President of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside.'

Supreme Court refuses to expedite election challenges.  The Supreme Court announced Monday [1/11/2012] it would not expedite a group of election challenges.  The move is yet another legal blow to President Trump who has pushed to overturn the 2020 results through the courts.  The president has cases pending before the justices against Wisconsin and Pennsylvania officials, and pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood also has litigation pending against the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

John Roberts Betrayed America A Long Time Ago.  I distinctly remember the exact moment in 2012. I was in my office working when I heard President Obama say on TV something to the effect of, "I think you may be surprised by Justice Roberts on how he votes on Obamacare..."  It was then the doubts started flowing into my mind about our Chief Justice.  Those doubts have proven to be correct — Chief Justice John Roberts is corrupt and has been for some time.  His vote on Obamacare that betrayed the Constitution of the United States was the first evidence of this fact.

Overcoming the Court's Abdication in Texas v. Pennsylvania.  In refusing to hear Texas v. Pennsylvania, the U.S. Supreme Court abdicated its constitutional duty to resolve a real and substantial controversy among states that was properly brought as an original action in that Court.  As a result, the Court has come under intense criticism for having evaded the most important inter-state constitutional case brought to it in many decades, if not ever.  However, even in its Order dismissing the case, the Supreme Court identified how another challenge could be brought successfully — by a different plaintiff.  This paper explains that legal strategy.  But first we focus on the errors made by the Supreme Court — in the hopes that they will not be made again. [...] Fortunately, that might have been only the first round in the fight to preserve the nation.  A strategy exists to re-submit the Texas challenge under the Electors Clause to the Supreme Court in a way that even that Court could not dare refuse to consider.  Just because Texas did not persuade the Justices that what happens in Pennsylvania hurts Texas does not mean that the United States of America could not persuade the justices that when Pennsylvania violates the U.S. Constitution, it harms the nation.

U.S. Supreme Court Pushes Off Pennsylvania Case Until After Inauguration Day.  Jonathan Turley:  "Inaugurations are like cats:  it is hard to get either to walk backwards."

What are the new SCOTUS justices thinking?  It is the threat of packing the Supreme Court that should be of special concern to the conservative SCOTUS justices.  If the day ever comes when the five conservative justices look down the bench and see six or eight justices who will rubber-stamp any issue in support of liberal Democrats, then the conservative justices will have become inconsequential, and our Constitution will be effectively null and void.  The five conservative justices will then spend their days trudging back and forth to their once exalted chambers and writing dissents that will be of interest only to academicians.  The nine justices on the Supreme Court have always appeared to be independent.  That is why we get rulings with different numbers of justices affirming and dissenting.  At least on the face of it, John Roberts does not have the authority to order the other justices how to vote.  The necessity of having free and fair elections is so important that it seems the conservative justices would have simply shrugged at John Roberts's attempt to control them.

Supreme Kangaroo Court.  The United States Supreme Court has flagrantly violated its Rules, and it is now claiming not to know where my papers and $300 check are, even though they received all papers on December 4, 2020, proved by my time-stamped copy.  The case analyst I spoke with today, a short tempered insulting individual, also tried to convince me there was a Supreme Court Rule preventing me from filing the case.  When pressed to cite the Rule, he could not do so.  Because there is no such Rule.  I filed exactly as required by Rule 17.4, and that Rule says the case "will be docketed" when forty copies and $300 are received.  Those were received at the Court on December 4th.  They have been holding my $300 check for three weeks.  I had the papers filed by commercial same day courier, at the Supreme Court Police booth, which is the proper place the Court receives filings.  The Officer stamped my copy, as is the normal process.  Since the Attorney General of Arizona mentioned my filing in their Amicus Motion in the Texas case, the Supreme Court itself cannot pretend my papers were stalled by their clerks.  Make no mistake about it, my case is a clear winner under Foster v.  Love, and the Supreme Court simply may not want it docketed for that reason.

[The] Trump campaign [is] independently filing with [the] Supreme Court over election results.  The Trump campaign issued its first independent filing with the Supreme Court on Sunday [12/20/2020], in hopes of reversing actions taken by Pennsylvania's high court.  The campaign aims to reverse three Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases that changed the state's mail balloting law immediately before and after this year's election.  "This petition follows a related Pennsylvania case where Justice Alito and two other justices observed 'the constitutionality of the [Pennsylvania] Supreme Court's decision," President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani said in a statement, referring to extending the deadline of mail-in ballots from 8 p.m. on Election Day to 5 p.m. three days later.  Trump's team claims there is a "strong likelihood" Pennsylvania's high court violates the Constitution and says decisions by the Pennsylvania Legislature on mail-in ballots led to fraud.

Trumpism Without Trump:  Not Kinder and Gentler, But Harder and Fiercer.  The Democrats stole the election.  President Trump is right to fight this.  The U.S. Supreme Court was wrong to stand aside and let it happen.  (Texas had standing to sue over it, for whereas Texans must grin and bear it when we are outvoted fair and square by other states, if our votes are nullified by cheating in other states, then we have been injured and we have a right to seek redress.)  Even without the cheating, the impact of massive private subsidies aimed solely at boosting turnout in Democrat strongholds, pre-election bias in the press, and censorship by Big Tech may itself have been enough to tip the results in Joe Biden's favor. [...] We should make the Democrats pay for it, yes, but not through pettiness and spite.  They may project their sins onto us, but let us not emulate their sins in return.  Instead, we should attack the Left where it is most vulnerable, and that is on policy.

Justices Punt on Census Apportionment, Toss NY Injunction Against Trump.  At issue in Trump v. New York was a memorandum issued by President Donald Trump to the secretary of the Department of Commerce (where the Census Bureau is housed), directing him to exclude illegal aliens from the population to be used for apportionment of the House of Representatives "to the maximum extent feasible."  Under federal law, the secretary presents the president with the base population to be used for apportionment.  The president then applies a statutory formula to that population to determine the number of members of the House to which each state is entitled.  New York sued over the memorandum and obtained an injunction from a district court judge to prevent the directive from being followed.

U.S. Supreme Court throws out challenge to Trump census immigrant plan.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday threw out a lawsuit seeking to block President Donald Trump's plan to exclude immigrants living illegally in the United States from the population count used to allocate congressional districts to states.  The 6-3 ruling on ideological lines, with the court's six conservatives in the majority and three liberals dissenting, gives Trump a short-term victory as he pursues his hard-line policies toward immigration in the final weeks of his presidency.

2020 Election Integrity — A Snapshot Showing Where We Stand.  Chief Justice Roberts's Supreme Court is manifestly reluctant to fulfill its statutory responsibilities, despite overwhelming, and steadily accruing, evidence of significant fraud that the election outcome.  However, in 2018, President Trump may have prepared a time bomb that can still save the day.  Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, filed a complaint asserting that election fraud disenfranchised Texas voters.  Texas voting was done within the framework of the U.S. Constitution and battleground states strayed beyond legal boundaries, to put it mildly.  The legal votes of Texans were nullified by the alleged fraudulent votes of those states.  Article III, section 2, of the Constitution states in relevant part, the Supreme Court "[J]udicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity ... to Controversies between two or more states. ..."  Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has denied the Texas lawsuit challenging the election outcome in battleground states, asserting "lack of standing."  Justices Alito and Thomas dissented from the majority opinion and wanted to hear the case.

Supreme Court Green-Lights Trump Removal of Illegal Aliens From Census Count.  The Supreme Court ruled that the federal government may remove illegal aliens from the 2020 Census count, which eliminates that population from the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes that officially determine the presidency.  The 6-3 decision in Trump v.  New York issued Dec. 18 is a victory for the Trump administration.  Placed on a judicial fast track because various census-related deadlines are nearing, oral argument took place telephonically before the nine justices on Nov. 30.  The Trump administration wanted illegal aliens removed from the decennial census count to prevent them from having an impact on the apportionment of political power among the states.

Supreme Court Punts Census Lawsuit into January, No Quantifiable Harm Currently Appears.  The New York lawsuit against the Trump administration, over disqualification of unlawful aliens in the 2020 election, was dismissed today [12/18/2020] by the Supreme Court under procedural grounds.  However, that said, there is a clear indication where the outcome is likely to end up once the court takes up the case next year.  The high court noted no harm currently exists because the census report hasn't been delivered to congress to begin the representative apportionment.  The ruling was 6-3 on process, with justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer signing a dissent on the case.

SCOTUS punts 6-3 on Trump effort to exclude illegals from apportionment.  [T]he Chief Justice wound up on the conservatives' side in punting this challenge to Donald Trump's efforts to exclude illegal immigrants from reapportionment calculations.  Roberts agreed that the complaint doesn't demonstrate any particularized injury and may not be justiciable in the future either, while the court's liberal wing wanted to swat this policy down immediately.

Did Chief Justice John Roberts Really Scream at Conservative Justices Over the Texas Challenge to the 2020 Elections?  [Scroll down]  When this sorry spectacle's history is written, the Supreme Court will not cover itself with glory.  Regardless of the factual basis of the case, when eighteen states come to the Supreme Court on an issue which the Constitution says gives that court original jurisdiction, the sleight-of-hand dismissal engineered by Chief Justice Roberts was a shameful dereliction of duty.  I understand why he didn't want to deal with it; every day, we are all confronted with things which it is our duty to do but which we'd rather just not.  What separates adults from [...] children is that we do those things despite our aversion.  When Roberts dismissed the Texas case, it was a textbook case of moral cowardice and cheap pettifoggery.  What happens in the coming weeks, months, years that grows out of this election lies, to a great extent, at the feet of John Roberts, who should have acted and could have acted but decided just not to do his duty.

Rebuttal: The event described above did not happen.
No, John Roberts didn't demand that Texas's lawsuit be dismissed for fear of "riots".  This embarrassing crankish spectacle from Monday's electoral college session in Texas is making the rounds on social media today, with more than 6,000 retweets and 650,000 views as I write this. [...] As a million lawyers have pointed out today, the story is an obvious lie for the simple reason that the justices haven't met in person in months.  To believe that some conveniently unnamed staffer heard John Roberts chewing out Alito and Thomas through the walls of the Court building, you have to believe that someone in an adjoining room was dialed into a conference call or Zoom chat among the justices (and why would they be?) and had the audio on their device turned waaaaaaaaay up.  But it's stupid for other reasons.

Attorney Lin Wood Unleashes on Justice John Roberts, Calls For His Resignation.  On Thursday [12/17/2020], pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood unleashed on Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, calling for his immediate resignation.  "This may be most important tweet of my life," Wood started.  "Chief Justice John Roberts is corrupt & should resign immediately.  Justice Stephen Breyer should also resign immediately.  They are "anti-Trumpers" dedicated to preventing public from knowing TRUTH of @realDonaldTrump re-election."  Wood also questioned whether or not Roberts had visited pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's island.  "I have long had questions about "the John Roberts" on Jeffrey Epstein private jet flight logs," he added in another tweet.

Supreme Court sides with Colorado church over COVID attendance caps.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday [12/15/2020] sided with a Colorado church challenging the state's capacity restrictions on houses of worship during the coronavirus pandemic, the latest order from the high court, now with a 6-3 conservative majority, in favor of churches and synagogues seeking to hold worship services during the ongoing crisis.  In an order with three dissents, the high court tossed out an August decision from the federal district court in Colorado that kept the attendance limits in place and sent the dispute back to the lower courts for further consideration in light of its November order barring New York from enforcing capacity restrictions at houses of worship.

Now we know for sure that our judges and justices are abject cowards.  The vote fraud that took place in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada was monstrous and long planned.  Election laws were surreptitiously weakened by secret consent decrees (GA), mass mail-in ballots, Dominion vote machines programmed to flip votes, the creation of tens of thousands of fake ballots, illegal alien voting, illegal drop boxes, get-out-the-vote campaigns in Democrat-heavy districts paid for by the execrable Zuckerberg of Facebook infamy, the refusal to allow GOP observers, ballots trucked from one state to another.  The judges dismissed lawsuits in every court where one was filed by the Trump campaign or other plaintiffs, seemingly without even considering the details.  The Supreme Court justices surely all know what took place; they can't have missed all the hearings at which witnesses to fraud testified and signed affidavits as to the truth of what they observed.  But the judges and justices were afraid.  Now that the left seems to have successfully stolen the election, they will certainly do it again.  They have the permission of the SCOTUS.

Failing to Adjudicate Texas Lawsuit, Supreme Court Is Turning Constitution Into Two-Legged Stool.  The refusal of the United States Supreme Court to hear the suit of Texas and 17 other states against four states, (Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), that were alleged not to have conducted fair presidential elections, on the grounds of Texas' lack of standing, is a grievous abdication.  The claim of Texas and the other states was that in failing to protect against fraudulent voting on a large scale that affected the results for each state, and cumulatively between the defendant states affected the outcome of the election of the president and vice president, this was a violation of Texas's right to an adequate level of assurance that the constitutional process of selection of the president and vice president was truly followed.  The attorney general of Pennsylvania called the Texas lawsuit a "seditious" attempt to disenfranchise the people of his state, and the Trump-hating media gave it the usual total-immersion in reflexive mockery.  Official processes are not more important than the election of the president; no right is more fundamental than the assurance of the constitutional selection of the president.  The Supreme Court's decision can only be seen as another illustration of its determination under this notoriously controversy-averse Chief Justice (John Roberts), to avoid any judgment that might produce a partisan backlash.

Courts to Voters:  Democrat Election Fraud Is 'Too Big to Fail'.  The courts have spoken, one after another.  Some 74 million Americans have been denied our day in court.  The Democrats' crime of stealing a presidential election is too big to fail.  Our play-it-safe judges don't want to venture into these enormous seas, full of sharks, without precedent.  They want to say in the safe spaces of the familiar.  Stealing an election for city council is familiar enough to be overturned by law.  Stealing a presidential election by wholesale fraud is above the law.  One might think that somehow our laws are written too narrowly to catch the whale of Democrat fraud in the election, but for one thing:  the declarations from the bench that it is unthinkable to "upend an election."  Our judges tell us that ruling fraudulent ballots invalid would "disenfranchise" millions of voters.  These are political statements.  They are pusillanimous statements.  They are not legal statements.

SCOTUS: What Constitution?  We've all heard that "No Man Is An Island."  It seems that the SCOTUS is of the view that each State in the so-called Union IS an island.  That each State is now free to define its own version of a republican form of government and it's nobody else's business.  This, of course, opens the way for coalitions of States to form and engage in systematic jiggering of elections — the SCOTUS has washed its hands of this Constitution business.  I think it's safe to say that the three Trump justices will live to rue this day and this work.  Sadly, so may all of us.  The consequences of this will not be long in coming.

Frauds: The Election, Media, Congressional Dems, and the FBI.  The first of this week's two biggest stories was Friday evening's action by the Supreme Court refusing to hear the lawsuit brought by Texas and other states respecting the evident fraud in the balloting in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan. [...] In short, I believe if the Court had decided to take it, it would not have decided who won these states.  Instead, had it decided that the electors from those states were chosen illegally, it would have remanded the complaints to the legislatures of these states, which have the responsibility to fashion a remedy.

Georgia Supreme Court Declines to Hear Trump Lawsuit Ahead of Electoral College Vote.  The Supreme Court of Georgia declined to hear an election challenge filed by President Donald Trump's team before the Dec. 14 Electoral College vote.  The court said that it "lacks the jurisdiction to consider the petition and rejects it," reported Fox News.  The appeal from Trump's team asked the Georgia Supreme Court to consider the merits of the case before Monday, Dec. 14.  It was not clear why the Georgia Supreme Court made its decision to reject the case.

SCOTUS opens up a constitutional can of worms.  The highest court in the land ruled that Texas, and the 18 other states that supported its lawsuit, have no standing to seek relief for gross and obvious violations of the U.S. Constitution.  Texas alleged that four swing states blatantly violated the Constitution's Electors Clause by allowing unauthorized politicians and bureaucrats to change election law when the supreme law of the land grants that power exclusively to state legislatures.  The Lone Star State also charged that those swing states, which are now determinative in deciding who won the presidency for the entire nation, also violated equal protection under the Constitution's 14th Amendment by writing rules for some counties within a state that did not apply to other counties. [...] If SCOTUS's reasoning is followed to its logical extension, then what about these ramifications?
  •   If Louisiana decides that it wants to reinstitute human slavery in violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, who are the other 49 states to complain?  Why would they have standing to seek relief?
  •   How about if Alaska decides to limit voting rights to only men in clear violation of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution?  What legitimate basis would Nebraska or New York have to complain?

Supreme Court Refuses to Consider Texas Election Lawsuit Based on Original Jurisdiction.  In a disappointing majority decision announced shortly before 6:30pm Friday evening [12/11/2020], a majority of Supreme Court justices refused to take up a Texas lawsuit challenging four states in the 2020 election.  The court, with two dissenting options by Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, stated that Texas lacked a legal right to sue and did not have a legal interest in how other states carried out their elections.  The court rejected the Texas' lawsuit without considering the specific merits of the state's case.  Texas had asked the court to delay the official vote of the Electoral College, scheduled for Monday, Dec. 14, or prevent the four states from casting votes in the Electoral College for Biden.  Justice Alito filed a short statement regarding the court's disposition of the case and was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

Trump Approves Filing Retooled Texas-Style Election Challenges:  Giuliani.  President Donald Trump's legal team is planning on filing retooled lawsuits, his lawyer said Saturday [12/12/2020].  "We move immediately, seamlessly, to plan B, which is to bring lawsuits now in each one of the states.  We had them ready.  They're just a version of the one that was brought in the Supreme Court.  So last night, the president made the decision," Rudy Giuliani said during an appearance on "War Room:  Pandemic."  Texas filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, alleging the elections there were run contrary to the Constitution.  The nation's top court rejected the suit late Friday.  Trump's team is going to file suits or has already filed in the four states as well as Arizona and Nevada.  The suits will incorporate allegations in the complaint filed by Texas.

Dick Morris to Newsmax TV: Dems Preemptively 'Intimidated' SCOTUS on Packing.  All the campaign talk about packing the Supreme Court, if not term limits on justices, was by design in the Democrats' election playbook to "intimidate," according presidential strategist Dick Morris on Newsmax TV.  "The Supreme Court is after justice, of course, but primarily they are after making sure the Supreme Court survives — that's their institution and that's their duty," Morris told Saturday's "The Count." "I believe the Supreme Court was sent a message by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party during the election.  "And the message was:  'If you overturn this election, we will pack you, and make your Court basically meaningless."

Scotus Rejects Texas Election Lawsuit.  The Supreme Court has DENIED Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's lawsuit, which was signed onto by multiple states and supported by over 100 member of congress.  There was a dissent from Alito and Thomas, but it seems to have been based on matters of jurisdiction and not the merits of the lawsuit.  And the ruling itself was not on the merits, but on the matter of "standing."  Notably, the three justices appointed by Trump did NOT dissent from rejecting the case.

We Don't Need SCOTUS to Win.  The Texas suit, later joined by other states, against Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, was a nice try, but it was always a long shot.  Of course SCOTUS would be reluctant to grab so much power by ordering state legislatures to seat the right electors.  Why?  Because the power is already in the hands of the legislatures to do this. [...] So what happen next, and what can regular folks do now?  First, we can keep up the pressure on the legislators of those five GOP states to select electors who will vote for the rightful winner, who is obviously Trump.  Some of the members in these legislatures may suffer from TDS, so the message must be sent that they have to set aside their irrational opposition and do the right thing.  Second, Sidney Powell's legal team can continue with their lawsuits, so they can expose and uproot Dominion Voting Systems.  Now the goal will not be to overturn elections, but to get rid of the flawed, rigged system.  This goal is much more realistic and easier to accomplish.

Supreme Court's Texas Ruling is Nothing Short of Disgrace.  Friday evening [12/11/2020] the United States Supreme Court decided to not take the Texas lawsuit against four states over their application of presidential election law.  The Court only mustered two justices in favor of taking the case:  Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.  The argument against hearing the case was that Texas lacked standing to sue Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  Wow! [...] What is the purpose of the Supreme Court?  It was intended to adjudicate the essential protections of our Constitution.  A fair and honest election must be a part of this protection.  We are a republic and select electors (that ultimately choose the president), who are apportioned based upon the population of each state and jurisdiction.  Failure to follow the Constitutional prescription under Article II section 1 that grants the legislatures the sole power to choose electors renders this clause useless and must be a permanent harm to citizens of different states.  Failure to hear this case is an abrogation of the Court's role to protect our institutions.

Texas' Unsuccessful Lawsuit Raises Voting Issues States Should Heed.  Texas raised a number of substantive issues in its request, including: one, that those states violated the Constitution's Electors Clause, which entrusts state legislatures with the responsibility to determine the appointment of presidential electors; two, that those states violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause by treating voters in different parts of those states unequally in terms of how ballots were cast and counted; and three, that those states violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause because the elections in those states were so fundamentally unfair.  But the Supreme Court never addressed those issues.  Instead, the high court denied Texas' request to file the case, or "bill of complaint," for "lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution."  The court went on to explain that this means, "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its election." Basically, Texas isn't the right party to bring this suit.

Supreme Court Unanimously Denies Texas Emergency Relief, Refuses to Grant Motion for Leave to File.  This evening [12/11/2020], in Texas v. Pennsylvania, a unanimous Supreme Court refused to grant Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton an injunction or other relief that would bar the selection of presidential electors in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  As detailed in the just-released order, seven justices would deny the Texas AG's Motion for Leave to file a complaint, citing a lack of Article III standing.  Justices Alito and Thomas, citing their long-standing belief that the Court lacks the discretion to deny the motion, would have granted the motion, but would have provided Texas with no other relief.  In other words, not a single justice believed Texas deserved the extraordinary relief it sought.

U.S. Supreme Court denies Texas lawsuit "for lack of standing".  The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a ruling in Texas' lawsuit challenging election procedures in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  The lawsuit divided the nation, with roughly half the states supporting and opposing the lawsuit, respectively.  The Court just denied Texas' request to file a Bill of Complaint.  Justices Alito and Thomas would have granted it, but denied any additional relief. [...] "Standing" is required to sue because the federal courts can only hear actual cases and controversies, not hypothetical cases.  To make a case and controversy, the person filing the lawsuit must have suffered an actual harm, not a merely hypothetical harm (the doctrine of standing can be complicated, but that's a simple explantation).

How Trump Can Win:  SCOTUS, State Supreme Courts, Legislatures, And The 12th Amendment.  Despite the recent SCOTUS decision regarding the Texas lawsuit, multiple paths still remain that make it possible for President Donald Trump to win the election. [...] In fact, there are still lawsuits for SCOTUS to hear and decide on.  On Friday, Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward announced that they have just submitted their case to the Supreme Court regarding alleged election fraud in their own state.  Ward argued that the case was necessary due to the lack of due process provided to them by the judicial system when investigating the alleged fraud.  Even if SCOTUS rejects any and all lawsuits from the Trump campaign, the Supreme Courts in each of the states themselves can still hear and rule on votes.  Lawsuits remain ongoing in the key swing states.

Giuliani Says Trump Team 'Not Finished' After Supreme Court Defeat.  Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal attorney, said Friday on Newsmax TV's "Stinchfield" that the president's legal team will continue filing lawsuits even after the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by Texas, which was backed by 17 other states and 126 House Republicans, to overturn the election results in four swing states.  Giuliani said, "The case wasn't rejected on the merits, the case was rejected on standing.  So the answer to that is to bring the case now to the district court by the president, by some of the electors, alleging some of the same facts where there would be standing and therefore get a hearing."

Supreme Court shoots down Texas lawsuit, but it isn't over yet.  The Supreme Court moved today [12/11/2020] to dismiss a case brought forth by the state of Texas to delay selection of electors in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia.  This is a blow to the Trump campaign's hopes of correcting the election results that were fabricated by widespread voter fraud.  According to the Supreme Court, they denied the request over lack of standing. [...] The case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court tomorrow has real legs.  Lin Wood has his case docketed.  Sidney Powell and the Trump campaign all have cases working their way up the ladder.  Until January 20th comes or President Trump concedes, the battle continues.

Two Supreme Court Justices Are of the View the Court MUST Hear Cases Involving Disputes Between States — Are There Three Others?  Four years ago, Nebraska filed a motion in the Supreme Court seeking permission to file a complaint against Colorado over issues involving Colorado's passage of legislation that legalized the recreational use of marijuana in contravention of federal law.  Nebraska alleged that its interests as a state were harmed by that legislation.  The Supreme Court denied the motion.  Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the denial, and he was joined in his dissent by Justice Samuel Alito.  Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor were together in denying the motion.  Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Ginsburg are no longer on the Court.

Supreme Court rejects Texas' effort to overturn election in fatal blow to Trump legal blitz to stop Biden.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said it would not consider a lawsuit filed by Texas that sought to overturn Joe Biden's election victory in four battleground states.  The court ruled that Texas had no legal right to challenge how other states conduct their elections, and thus lacked standing to file the suit.

Supreme Court denies Texas, Trump appeal over election results in four other states.  The Supreme Court has denied a Texas effort Friday that would have essentially nullified the presidential elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin.  "The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution," the Supreme Court's order reads.  "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.  All other pending motions are dismissed as moot."  The order does not foreclose any other pending or future election appeals at the Supreme Court, but time is running out.  The states meet next week on Dec. 14 for the Electoral College exercise.  And on Jan. 6 there will be a joint session of the House and Senate to count the electoral votes and certify President-elect Joe Biden as the winner.

Five Ohio Congress members among more than 100 who sign on to Supreme Court case trying to overturn Biden's election.  The Texas lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden's victory has quickly become a conservative litmus test, as 106 members of Congress and multiple state attorneys general signed onto the case even as some have predicted it will fail.  The Ohio members of Congress who have signed on are Republicans Jim Jordan, Bill Johnson, Bob Gibbs, Bob Latta and Brad Wenstrup.

Wisconsin Supreme Court to hear arguments in Trump's lawsuit seeking to overturn state's election results.  The conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear arguments over the weekend on President Donald Trump's state lawsuit seeking to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots and overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state.  The court's decision to take the case, and to hear arguments on Saturday, came hours after a lower court judge ruled against Trump and said there was nothing illegal about the election or subsequent recount in the state's two largest counties.  The highly unusual Saturday arguments will come exactly 48 hours before Monday's scheduled Electoral College vote.

A little known clause of the Constitution has a huge bearing on the Texas election lawsuit.  The papers filed by Texas and its allies in Texas v. Pennsylvania do not invoke the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution:  "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government" (Art IV, Sec. 4).  The clause has been mentioned rarely in Supreme Court jurisprudence and is usually consigned to the dead zone of "political questions," which means that it is for the political branches, not the courts to decide what it means.  However, a group of legislators from Idaho, Alaska, and Arizona filed an amicus brief arguing that the clause should be invoked.

Arizona GOP Takes Election Case to Supreme Court: 'We Found Evidence'.  The Arizona Republican Party, led by chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward, announced on Friday [12/11/2020] it is appealing its election integrity case, taking it to the U.S. Supreme Court after the Arizona Supreme Court dismissed the case.  "Our case is going to the Supreme Court of the United States," Ward announced on Friday, expressing hope that it will be expedited and noting that, if accepted, they will only be the third 2020 presidential election case accepted by the highest court in the land.

What Now?  The Fight for Our Freedom Continues Despite SCOTUS Ruling on Texas.  SCOTUS claims Texas did not demonstrate a judicially recognizable interest in the manner!  So individuals can take over the election process in certain predetermined states, enough to steal the Presidency or the House and that's ok?  There's no impact on the rest of the country?  A man who's made billions on other countries at the expense of American citizens can steal an election using every possible opportunity to manufacture votes and steal votes from his opponent and it has no impact on average hard working tax paying Americans?

U.S. Supreme Court throws out Texas lawsuit contesting 2020 election results in four battleground states.  Briskly rejecting a long-shot but high-stakes case, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday [12/11/2020] tossed out the Texas lawsuit that had become a vehicle for Republicans across the country to contest President-elect Joe Biden's victory.  In a few brief sentences, the high court said it would not consider the case for procedural reasons, because Texas lacked standing to bring it.  Texas this week sued to challenge the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin on the basis that those states implemented pandemic-related changes to election procedures that, Texas claimed, were illegal and cast into question the election results.

The Texas Election Challenge and Its Discontents.  On Monday [12/7/2020], Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit directly with the Supreme Court alleging that Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin ignored statutes enacted by their legislatures in violation of the U.S. Constitution's Electors clause.  The lawsuit further accuses these states of violating the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause by using more favorable criteria in determining the validity of votes cast in Democratic districts, citing the Court's 2000 ruling in Bush v. Gore, which prohibited differential standards for ballot tabulation.  Despite being written off as a publicity stunt by the defendants, the Court has docketed the case and gave them until Thursday, December 10, at 3 p.m. to file responses.  Meanwhile, Texas has been joined in the effort by 18 additional states and President Trump.  As with every case Republicans take to the Supreme Court, the usual chorus of progressive "experts" has inevitably characterized Texas v. Pennsylvania as devoid of merit and a potential threat to the republic.

What Texas Case at Supreme Court Could Mean for the Presidency.  Texas this week asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its complaint that the states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin unconstitutionally changed the rules in the run-up to the Nov. 3 presidential election.  Does the Texas lawsuit make a legally sound argument, and how likely is it that the Supreme Court will hear it?  President Donald Trump also asked Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to argue the case since he is a former solicitor general of the state.  How likely is that to happen, and what could it mean?

106 House Republicans demand Joe Biden's victory is voided and back Donald Trump at Supreme Court.  More than half the House Republican caucus signed on to a friend of the court brief in support of a Texas lawsuit that aims to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.  Rep. Mike Johnson, an ally of President Donald Trump, garnered the signatures of 105 other GOP lawmakers including the House's No. 2 Republican leader, Rep. Steve Scalise.  The group, not surprisingly, contains other top Trump advocates includings Reps.  Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Dan Crenshaw, Greg Gianforte, Louie Gohmert, Debbie Lesko, Elise Stefanik and outgoing Rep. Steve King.

Pennsylvania House of Representatives Join Texas in Their Lawsuit Against Key Swing States.  On Tuesday morning [12/8/2020], Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton revealed that the state of Texas filed a massive lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for exploiting "the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election." In the couple days following the announcement, dozens of other states have joined Texas in their lawsuit.  On Thursday, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives joined the case as well.

Five Ohio Congress members among more than 100 who sign on to Supreme Court case trying to overturn Biden's election.  The Texas lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden's victory has quickly become a conservative litmus test, as 106 members of Congress and multiple state attorneys general signed onto the case even as some have predicted it will fail.  The Ohio members of Congress who have signed on are Republicans Jim Jordan, Bill Johnson, Bob Gibbs, Bob Latta and Brad Wenstrup.

'The Big One' Gets Bigger: 15 Michigan Legislators Join Texas Election Lawsuit.  On Thursday [12/10/2020], 15 Republican legislators in Michigan filed a motion in support of Attorney General Ken Paxton's (R-Texas) lawsuit challening the 2020 presidential election results in four key swing states, including Michigan.  The legislators joined the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society in supporting the Texas lawsuit, which asks the Supreme Court to remand the election results to swing-state legislatures for review and potential reversal.

There Is a Compelling Theoretical Case Behind the Complaint Texas Wants to File in the Supreme Court.  [Scroll down]  By virtue of becoming a state, can it be said that each state has taken an obligation to each and every other state with regard to how it goes about carrying out the process of conducting its election for the only two offices which are subject to a nationwide vote?  These are the only two offices where the voting in one state has a direct impact on the voters of other states.  For those two offices, do states have cognizable rights to expect that each and every other state will conduct elections for President and Vice President in a manner that guarantees ballot integrity, and a fair and accurate count of the votes?  What recourse do one or more states have in the face of evidence that one or more other states have failed to produce — intentionally or by negligence — an election process and ballot count with integrity?  If the Supreme Court is not a forum where such disputes can be aired and resolved, what forum is there?

Will the Supreme Court ignore the stolen election?  When millions of people see a rules violation in football, and when the violation is permitted to go unpenalized, there is controversy, anger, and much discussion, after which all is soon forgotten.  When the same thing happens in a presidential election, when millions of people see the steal, and when the legislatures and courts do nothing, it is called corruption.  More than that, it is corruption so deep, so pervasive and widespread, that we are at a loss for words.  It now appears possible that Joe Biden will successfully steal the presidency from the voters.  As ludicrous as that sounds, the reality is slowly beginning to sink in.  There is no shortage of evidence; there is no lack of witnesses.  Worse yet, the consequences of the crime we are all witnessing will not be merely one team winning and the other losing.  It may well be the end of the republic, and for those who are witnessing it, there is no hyperbole in that foreboding.

Briefly Noted:  Roberts' Folly.  John Roberts, by foolishly allowing — on a 4-4 decision — the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to unconstitutionally rewrite Pennsylvania's election laws, has managed to maneuver the SCOTUS into a [bad] position.  Half the states, with Texas at their head, are now calling the SCOTUS to account.  No matter what the SCOTUS does at this point one half of the country will be angry and will claim they were cheated.  While not everyone would have been happy had the SCOTUS dealt with the illegalities before the election, the Court would at least have had a better chance of convincing the nation that they were acting on constitutional principle.  Realistically speaking, any such hope is probably gone.  And this state of affairs is largely Roberts' doing.

A Summary of the Texas Election Lawsuit.  Texas claims that the presidential elections as held (and as directed by government officials outside the legislature) in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan all flagrantly violated their own election laws by materially weakening or doing away with security measures.  Further, according to the U.S. Constitution, the legislature (representing the citizens) of each state has absolute authority and responsibility for how presidential electors are chosen; the will of legislature being expressed through state law.  Texas claims that the violations of election law in these states created an environment where ballot fraud was enabled and likely to occur.  The lawsuit lists the violations of law in each of the defendant states and provides evidence of fraud (the number of ballots handled unconstitutionally) in each of the states sufficient to change the outcome of the ballot counts.

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State AG Ken Paxton Explains Legal Position of Texas in Supreme Court Election Lawsuit.  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears on Sean Hannity to discuss the legal position of his state in an election lawsuit about arbitrary state processes used in the 2020 election.  Paxton, on behalf of Texas, has sued battleground states Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin to challenge the unconstitutional creation of their mail-in ballots within the election.  Several states have now joined Texas in alignment with the lawsuit.  [Video clip]

Supreme Court Requests Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia Respond to Election Lawsuit By 3pm Thursday.  Immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court directly asked the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia to respond to the Texas constitutional lawsuit on unconstitutional ballot changes, Jordan Sekulow sat down with Newsmax to discuss:  [Video clip]

A 2020 Election Redo in 4 States?  Here Are the Details About Texas Lawsuit.  The state of Texas has filed an unprecedented motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking for leave to file a complaint with the court against the states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin over the 2020 presidential election.  The motion alleges that changes made in election rules governing absentee ballots in those states by "non-legislative actors" violated the Constitution and "cumulatively preclude knowing who legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future elections."  In a nutshell, Texas is saying these four states' elections were unconstitutional — and therefore, invalid.  The Lone Star State's complaint, filed by state Attorney General Ken Paxton, asks that Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin conduct new elections to determine their electors for the Electoral College.

Eight More States Join the Texas SCOTUS Case.  Now it is no longer Ken Paxton playing Lone Ranger.  The addition of eight states to the lawsuit now means that nearly a third of the states are litigants, and the Supreme Court's ability to blow this off as nothing shrinks dramatically.

Allen West:  Seven States Will Join Texas in SCOTUS Lawsuit Against Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  Col. Allen West joined Steve Bannon Tuesday evening on The War Room.  Allen West, the Republican Party Texas state leader, went on to discuss today's Texas lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania at the Supreme Court.  West told Steve Bannon that Louisiana joined the lawsuit on Tuesday afternoon [12/8/2020].  Louisiana AG Jeff Landry announced earlier this afternoon that Louisiana is joining in on the Texas lawsuit filed yesterday against the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania over irregularities and lawlessness in the conduct of the 2020 election.

Will the Supreme Court Take the Texas Case?  [Scroll down]  The fact that a state is suing other states means it goes directly to the Supreme Court.  They don't have to bother with anybody else.  And they also, the suit is not relying on accusing individuals of fraud or cheating.  Instead, it's based on uncontested facts, which are these elected officials, usually the governors and their secretaries of state, altered the election laws without referring to states' legislators who have plenary power to determine how elections are run in each state.

Nonlegal factors that SCOTUS justices might have to consider in deliberating Texas's lawsuit.  [Scroll down]  I am not a lawyer and will leave to others far more qualified than I to debate the intricacies of constitutional jurisprudence.  My concern here is the other factors that may well weigh on the minds of the nine justices of the Supreme Court.  It's been more than a century since the words "The Supreme Court follows the election returns" entered the nation's consciousness, meaning that it is naïve to believe that the Court acts solely on the basis of legal reasoning and precedent.  I am looking at the case from the standpoint of the Supreme Court as a political body, one that cloaks its actions in the veneer of legal reasoning, but which ultimately is well aware of the political background and consequences of its actions.  The first contextual factor that must be weighing on the minds of the nine justices is expressed in a question asked by Clarice Feldman:  "Do you think the Democrats regret talking about packing the Supreme Court?"

Trump Attorney Jenna Ellis:  Supreme Court Only Denied Emergency Injunctive Relief — The Pennsylvania Case Is STILL Pending Before SCOTUS.  Texas on Tuesday [12/8/2020] filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging election procedures in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin over potential voter fraud.  Then later this afternoon the Supreme Court denied the Pennsylvania injunction case before the court.  This was the Sean Parnell and Mike Kelly case.  Expert says SCOTUS rejected the PA case without any explanation because the same stuff is covered in the Texas case which is a bigger case that includes GA, MI, and WI.  Following the ruling Senator Doug Mastriano vowed to continue the fight against the fraudulent Pennsylvania election.  And on Tuesday night Trump Attorney Jenna Ellis tweeted out that the injunction was dismissed but the case is still active.

Ted Cruz Responds to SCOTUS Rejecting Pennsylvania Election Case.  Republican Senator Ted Cruz is responding to the Supreme Court unanimously ruling Tuesday it will not take up a case surrounding the constitutionality of votes cast through mail-in voting during the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania.  [Tweet]

Pennsylvania's Democrats filed a silly, dishonest Supreme Court brief.  In October, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court took it upon itself to hold that mail-in ballots could arrive after election day if they were mailed on November 3 and, almost as if to ensure fraud, that those mail-in ballots without postmarks would be presumed to have been timely.  An eight-justice U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider the matter.  After the election, though, Justice Alito ordered that Pennsylvania segregate mail-in ballots, indicating further review.  Republicans duly filed a request for a review, and, on Tuesday [12/8/2020], Pennsylvania filed its unimpressive opposition brief.  Pennsylvania's opening argument is that there's no way the Supreme Court should decide whether a state engaged in unconstitutional conduct in a federal election because doing so is just too big!

The Texas lawsuit in the Supreme Court is huge.  On Tuesday [12/8/2020], the State of Texas filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  The suit alleged that, because these states conducted elections that violated their own laws, they tainted the integrity of the vote, something that damaged not only their own citizens but also the citizens in other states.  Because this is an intelligent, powerful case, it's no surprise that eight other states have already joined the litigation. [...] The Texas lawsuit argues that the four defendant states changed their mail-in voting rules without going through the constitutional, legislative process.  By doing so, they assured illegal mail-in votes, meaning all votes under the new "rules" were illegal from the get-go.  These invalid votes override the will of those who legitimately cast votes, tainting the national election.

Supreme Court rejects GOP bid to overturn Biden's victory in Pennsylvania.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday spurned a request from Republican allies of President Trump to decertify Pennsylvania's election results, foreclosing hopes from Mr. Trump and his backers that the justices would help deliver him a second term in the White House.  In a one-line unsigned order, the high court left intact a decision from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that tossed out a lawsuit led by Republican Congressman Mike Kelly challenging a 2019 law that expanded mail-in voting in the state.  "The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied," the order said.  None of the nine justices indicated a dissent.

Supreme Court Denies Latest Election Challenge Out of Pennsylvania.  The US Supreme Court denied the application for the injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.  This was the Sean Parnell and Mike Kelly case.  Expert says SCOTUS rejected the PA case without any explanation because the same stuff is covered in the Texas case which is a bigger case that includes GA, MI, and WI.

Texas Case Challenges Election Directly at Supreme Court.  On Monday [12/7/2020], just before midnight, the State of Texas filed a lawsuit that is far more important than all of the others surrounding the presidential election of November 3rd.  Texas brought a suit against four states that did something they cannot do:  they violated the U.S. Constitution in their conduct of the presidential election.  And this violation occurred regardless of the amount of election fraud that may have resulted.  The four defendant states are Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Texas Attorney General Tries to Drag a Kicking and Screaming Supreme Court Into President Trump's Reelection Fight.  [Scroll down]  Texas is going directly to the Supreme Court using the Article III, Section 2, requirement that the Supreme Court has original, rather than appellate, jurisdiction in lawsuits between states.  The lawsuit has nothing to do with fraud or voting machines.  It is strictly a constitutional issue.  Texas claims that the changes made to state election laws by executive order or administrative in response to the abject terror and panic that has swept parts of the nation over the Wuhan virus violate the Electors Clause, Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution, [...] Texas argues that by changing, without legislative approval, how votes were cast and counted, the state legislatures have been deprived of their power to appoint electors rendering the elections there invalid as there is no pandemic escape hatch in the Constitution.  Texas also argues that the wide variance of rules and procedures for casting and counting votes within states violates the Equal Protection Clause under Bush v. Gore.

Trump Campaign Asks Michigan Supreme Court to Declare That Election Process Violated State Constitution.  The Trump campaign on Monday [12/7/2020] asked the Michigan Supreme Court to review a legal challenge seeking "meaningful access" for poll challengers to observe ballot counting in the state.  Although Michigan had already certified its 2020 election results, the campaign is asking the state's top court to declare that the Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, violated the state's constitution and election laws by permitting the counting of absentee ballots without meaningful access for poll challengers to observe the counting and processing.  They argue that Benson's actions also violated voters' constitutional right to fair and lawful elections.  "Michigan citizens' constitutional rights are being violated by Secretary Benson's failure to prevent unlawful ballots to be processed and her failure to ensure that statutorily-authorized challengers have a meaningful opportunity to observe and challenge the process," the campaign wrote in their brief.

Sidney Powell:  "We're Going to Proceed with an Emergency Appeal — We Expect to Get Relief from Supreme Court".  Attorney Sidney Powell went on with Greg Kelly Monday night [12/7/2020] on Newsmax TV.  This was after US District Court Judge Timothy Batten threw out her voter fraud case in Georgia earlier in the day.  Sidney Powell told Kelly she will proceed immediately with an emergency appeal and expects to get relief from the Supreme Court.

Texas Sues Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin at Supreme Court over Election Rules.  The State of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court shortly before midnight on Monday [12/7/2020] challenging the election procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the grounds that they violate the Constitution.  Texas argues that these states violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions, but not through the state legislatures.  Additionally, Texas argues that there were differences in voting rules and procedures in different counties within the states, violating the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.  Finally, Texas argues that there were "voting irregularities" in these states as a result of the above.  Texas is asking the Supreme Court to order the states to allow their legislatures to appoint their electors.

Ted Cruz Could Be Arguing the Pennsylvania Election Case at the Supreme Court Soon.  Constitutional scholar and Texas Senator Ted Cruz announced Monday afternoon if the Supreme Court takes up the election case pending in Pennsylvania, he will make the oral argument.  "Because of the importance of the legal issues presented, I've publicly urged #SCOTUS to hear the case brought by Congressman Mike Kelly, congressional candidate Sean Parnell & state rep. candidate Wanda Logan challenging the constitutionality of the POTUS election results in PA.  Petitioners' legal team has asked me whether I would be willing to argue the case before #SCOTUS, if the Court grants certiorari.  I have agreed, and told them that, if the Court takes the appeal, I will stand ready to present the oral argument," Cruz said in a statement on Twitter.  "As I said last week, the bitter division and acrimony we see across the Nation needs resolution.  I believe #SCOTUS has a responsibility to the American People to ensure, within its powers, that we are following the law and following the Constitution."

Ted Cruz:  I'll Argue Pennsylvania Election Fraud Case Before the Supreme Court.  Texas Senator Red Cruz says he would present oral arguments a the Supreme Court on behalf of a Pennsylvania congressman and Congressional candidate if their election fraud lawsuit appears in front of the nation's highest court.  Cruz says he would argue the Pennsylvania election law case in front of SCOTUS for Congressman Mike Kelly and candidate Sean Parnell.  They filed a lawsuit two weeks ago to challenge the legality of mail-in ballots and the plaintiffs insist millions of mail-in ballots are not allowed by the state constitution.  Now the U.S. Supreme Court has become involved and is requiring state officials to file legal briefs by tomorrow.  Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is overseeing that appeal and appears to be interested in taking up the case.  Alito moved the deadline from Dec. 9 to Dec. 8 to meet the "safe harbor" deadline.

Will SCOTUS Overrule the Pennsylvania Supreme Court?  The Pennsylvania law may include a 180-day window for the law to be challenged in a Pennsylvania Court, but there can be no statute of limitations when it comes to challenging the law in federal court as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.  Think about it:  do you recall any liberal judges, attorneys, or law professors raising the doctrine of laches when someone suddenly realizes that a decades or century old state law violates the provisions of the Constitution?  Me neither.  There is reason to hope that the plaintiffs' suit will result in a Trump victory at the U.S. Supreme Court.  Justice Alito has already ordered that all absentee ballots in Pennsylvania be sequestered.  The Court now has nine justices and Justice Barrett said repeatedly in her confirmation hearings that she was committed to following the law.  So, there are now potentially five votes to overturn the Pennsylvania law expanding absentee voting as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court vs. Pennsylvania.  The U.S. Constitution was directly violated in the ptresidential election in Pennsylvania and half a dozen states.  A new friend of the court brief filed last Thursday explains in the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Joseph B. Scarnati v. Pennsylvania Democrat Party, et al.  First, can anything be done?  Each state legislature has the power to cure invalid elections in their state by directly appointing the Electors from their state who will vote in the Electoral College on December 14, 2020.  We do not lack legal and constitutional remedies.  We lack elected officials with guts.

Justice Alito Advances by One Day and Several Hours the Deadline for Pennsylvania to Respond.  [Scroll down]  Early Sunday morning [12/6/2020] the Supreme Court docket for this case was updated, and the deadline for the response from the state defendants was moved up to 9:00 am on December 8.  No explanation was provided.  As my two prior articles explain, December 8 is a noteworthy date as that is six days prior to the meeting of the Electoral College. [...] What can be made of the fact that Justice Alito now wants the state defendants' response into the Court with a full day remaining for the Court to take action?  On the one had it could be rationalized that Justice Alito — and likely other members of the Court — want the views of both parties to be reflected in the record before it takes action, whatever that action may be.  Keep in mind that Justice Alito could simply deny the injunctive relief on his own, without seeking the response of the state defendants.  That is an option he seems to have rejected.

Justice Alito Moves up Supreme Court Deadline in Key Pennsylvania Mail-In Ballot Case.  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito asked officials in Pennsylvania to file briefs by the morning of Dec. 8 in response to an emergency injunction petition filed by Republicans seeking to invalidate or rescind the results of the Nov. 3 presidential election in the Keystone State.  That day is the "safe harbor" deadline that requires controversies surrounding elections to be ended, so states can choose their electors before the Dec. 14 meeting of the Electoral College.  Alito initially called for response arguments by Dec. 9, before moving the due date earlier by a day.  The new deadline signals that the Supreme Court intends to rule on the request for the injunction before the safe harbor deadline runs out.  Marc Elias, the top attorney leading the Democrats' post-election legal effort and who last month called the same lawsuit "frivolous," wrote on Twitter on Dec. 6 that he is "NOT worried about the date briefs are due" in the Supreme Court.

Alito Moves Up Deadline For Supreme Court Briefing In Pennsylvania Case, Bringing [it] Within [the] 'Safe Harbor' Window To Intervene.  Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has made a critical decision which may signal that court's willingness to hear a controversial case attempting to flip Pennsylvania's 2020 election results.  Originally, Alito set a Wednesday deadline for the state to respond to GOP Rep. Mike Kelly's lawsuit alleging that a 2019 state election reform, known as Act 77, violates both the state and federal constitutions by creating a so-called "no-excuse mail-in" voting regime.  Many took the Wednesday deadline as political theater, as it would place the case outside the "safe harbor" window which requirest that controversies "concerning the appointment of all or any of the electors ... by judicial or other methods or procedures" to be determined" at least six days before the time fixed for the meeting of the electors," according to Law & Crime.

Is There Another Scenario That Makes Justice Alito's Dec. 9 Response Date Meaningful in Different Way?  As some have noted, the end of the "safe harbor" period — December 8 — is simply a date established by Congress by which a state benefits if all election disputes are settled and the outcome is certified by the state at least six days prior to the meeting of the Electoral College.  The states are not required to meet this deadline, it only provides that certain challenges to a state's naming of electors will not be entertained if the state does meet the deadline.  What many have correctly noted is that this "safe harbor" provision has no legal effect on what the Supreme Court can do if it were to find merit in any election challenge it chooses to hear.  Until the Electoral College actually meets and votes, the Court possesses the authority to issue an injunction preventing the electors from any particular state from being able to lawfully participate on the basis that the manner of their selection was legally invalid.

Pennsylvania — Don't Assume Alito Giving Until 12/9 To Respond To Emergency Application Means He's Letting It Die On the Vine.  On December 1, 2020, we covered an emergency application for injunctive relief sought to halt any further actions by Pennsylvania to certify the election, Pennsylvania:  Emergency Injunction Sought From SCOTUS To Halt Any Further Certification Actions. [...] Another Emergency Application, substantially similar, was filed yesterday, December 3.  That made no sense to me, why would they file twice?  I spoke to an attorney handling the case, and the explanation is that the first filing took place prior to a stay being sought from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which issued the decision at issue.  Out of concern that the US Supreme Court might deny the stay on the procedural ground that a request had not been made to the state court, the attorneys waited for the PA Supreme Court predictably to deny the stay, and then refiled on December 3.

The Supreme Court and the Electoral Coup.  [Scroll down]  And today, it's quite obvious — for Supreme Court justices and all Americans to see — that we are in the last stage of the takedown and final usurpation of the Constitution of the United States.  With distrust, division, and corruption being so prevalent in the big cities and lower courts of many of the contested states — as to nullify the seriousness of over 400 affidavits documenting vote fraud and polling place irregularities, documenting that there were more votes cast than registered voters in quite a number of jurisdictions, and overwhelming evidence of massive computer driven vote manipulation associated with key states' use of Dominion Voting Systems, and pay-to-play corruption at the highest level of Republican Party-led Georgia government to contract with Dominion to use their voting machines — the Supreme Court is compelled to adjudicate. [...] The Supreme Court needs to do its job of adjudication and protect and save the Constitution at this critical time.

SCOTUS to 9th Circuit:  Rethink your approach on worship restrictions pronto.  Consider this a tacit endorsement of the new status quo on stare decisis at the top in dealing with restrictions on worship in the pandemic.  The order overruling Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 rules for churches in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn got lots of heated debate in the concurrences and dissents leading to the 5-4 decision.  It also drew heavy criticism as politically and culturally motivated jurisprudence, and some wondered whether the court would adhere to it in following cases.  Wonder no more.  In a brief order this morning, the Supreme Court told the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its ruling upholding similar restrictions in the Harvest Rock Church case in California.  The case had a pending cert petition, but instead the court vacated the original ruling and instructed the appellate court to remand it back "for further consideration in light of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo."

The court must take the case.  Amid ample evidence that Democrats cheated in a dozen different ways to steal the presidential election, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide the election.  I have no doubt Chief Justice John McCain Roberts would love to deny President Donald John Trump his day in court because Roberts is a passive-aggressive evil little man who repeatedly stabs in the back those who entrusted him with the highest judicial office in the land.  Not hearing the case is a nifty way to certify a stolen election without accepting responsibility for their decision.  But evidence of computers flipping votes for President Donald John Trump to Xiden (as a reader calls him), of shipments of ballots from New York to Pennsylvania, of ballots marked Biden only, of Trump votes dumped, and on down the line matter.  Hundreds of whistleblowers put their lives on the line signing affidavits giving testimony to election theft.  They deserve the protection of the court so that their valor is not for naught.

Supreme Court sides with church challenging Calif.'s COVID-19 restrictions.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday [12/3/2020] ruled against a pandemic-related order by California Gov. Gavin Newsom banning some indoor religious services, agreeing with critics that it is unconstitutional.  In a one-page order, the high court granted a petition from lawyers for Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, Calif., seeking to set aside a lower court ruling upholding Newsom's ban.

Why It Matters When New York's Governor Spits on SCOTUS's Defense of Religious Freedom.  During the COVID-19 epidemic, Gov. Cuomo of New York and other governors have tried to shut down or limit attendance at America's churches.  Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that Cuomo's COVID response, which limited church attendance to as few as ten or lower, violates the constitutional right to freedom of religion. [...] Religious liberty is at the heart of our national identity.  For a top liberal opinion-maker to say defending it is just "politics" is horrifying.  Sadly, in another display of judicial impotence, Chief Justice John Roberts dissented from the 5-4 ruling.  He wrote that since conditions had changed, the Court should avoid addressing "a serious and difficult question."  Bizarrely, he justified inaction based on the fact that it is "a significant matter to override determinations made by public health officials."  Isn't the Supreme Court designed specifically to decide "serious and difficult" questions?  Doesn't the Supreme Court of the United States have the authority to override the determinations of New York state health officials?  If it lacks that authority, it has no authority at all.

The revenge of Clarence Thomas.  Twenty-nine years ago, Joe Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and presided over the "high tech lynching" of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.  Since then, Brett Kavanaugh has been subjected to similar treatment by the Democratic members of the same committee.  Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett were also unfairly abused, if not quite so brutally.  Clarence Thomas didn't just take the abuse.  He fought back, telling Biden to his face, "...I think that this today is a travesty.  I think that it is disgusting.  I think that this hearing should never occur in America." Given what Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett were forced to put up with, I think he spoke for all of them.  But given the constraints all five justices were subject to, they could not really respond adequately to all the cheap shots, character assassination, and abuse they were forced to suffer.  Now, together, they can let their actions speak for them.

SCOTUS Swats Cuomo:  You Can't Shut Down Churches While Keeping Businesses Open.  As Justice Neil Gorsuch writes in a scathing concurrence, "It is time — past time — to make plain" that the Constitution applies at all times, even in pandemics.  In a 5-4 vote late on Wednesday evening [11/25/2020], the Supreme Court issued an injunction against Governor Andrew Cuomo's order that allowed businesses to operate at the capacity of their choosing but limited religious services to either 10 or 25 people at a time. [...] This comes down to the issue of scrutiny.  When government actions proscribe or interfere with a constitutional right, especially an explicit right enumerated in the Constitution, it requires a strict-scrutiny review.  That means New York has to identify a compelling state interest, for which public health and pandemic control certainly qualify, but also demonstrate that the intrusion is narrowly tailored and rationally based.  The state has no evidence that worship services when following proper social-distancing protocols and disinfecting regimes present any more risk than the businesses that the state allows to operate with lesser or no restrictions.  That means it's plainly discriminatory and arbitrary as well as unconstitutional.

Low-Wattage Justice Sotomayor's Attack on the Bill of Rights Makes Her the Left's New Supreme Court Bobblehead.  Yesterday evening [11/25/2020] the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, defended the Constitution's Bill of Rights against a concerted attack by one of the three most totalitarian governors in the United States, New York's Andrew Cuomo.  Cuomo had decreed that the size of religious services could be arbitrarily limited to as few as 10 people.  Ostensibly, this was to protect us all from the dreaded Chinese Lung AIDS because, as we all know, that virus hates people who go to church and hangs out in the church parking lot to attack those who attend.  This is much like how the virus loves to visit bars and restaurants after 9 p.m. and how it also targets Thanksgiving meals.  For reasons unknown to scientists, the virus is afraid to get close to BLM or Antifa demonstrations, though it is very, very attracted to demonstrations defending Constitutional rights.  How very odd.  It is almost like the scientists are just making up [stuff] to target gatherings they personally oppose or push policies they approve of.

Behind the Left's Primal Scream Over the Supreme Court's Religious Liberty Ruling.  I've noticed today [11/26/2020] that the left is in a fury about the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling last night striking down New York's wholly arbitrary restrictions on churches and other places of worship because the Court is "ignoring the advice of the experts."  True indeed.  I could go on at some length about old cases involving the arbitrary (and therefore unconstitutional) use of the government's police power, but in this case it is worth dwelling for a moment on this rote belief that the Court should defer to the "experts" in the other branches about restricting fundamental constitutional rights, like religious liberty.

Justice Sotomayor Upbraids SCOTUS Majority for 'Playing a Deadly Game' With COVID Restrictions.  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a stinging rebuke of her conservative colleagues, calling out what she perceived as hypocrisy and false equivalencies in Wednesday's ruling against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 restrictions.  In a 5-4 decision, the court's conservative block of justices granted a temporary injunction requested by a Catholic Diocese and two Orthodox Jewish synagogues.  By so doing, the court narrowly held that Cuomo's regulations limiting attendance at religious services likely violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.  It was the court's first major decision since the staunchly conservative Justice Amy Coney Barret joined the bench.  Sotomayor was having none of it.

The New SCOTUS.  I still haven't read the Powell complaint.  The reason is because I've been trying to get a handle on the SCOTUS issuance of injunctive relief against Cuomo's draconian and targeted restrictions on the Free Exercise of Religion in New York.  This is a big story.  Part of the story is that the Court was evenly divided on the First Amendment issues after Ginsburg's death — with Roberts siding with the liberals against the First Amendment (I say that with a purpose).  That had resulted in decisions that left anti religious freedom decisions in place in California, because of the 4-4 split.  There's no split any longer with Justice Amy on the Court, and the result appears to be a solid 5-4 conservative majority that is showing a measure of solidarity in opposition to the CJ [Chief Justice] — who again sided with the liberals.  The opinion itself is somewhat complicated, in that the ruling is PER CURIAM, with no single justice listed as having written it.  What everyone is talking about, however, is the way that Gorsuch, in his concurrence, appeared to go out of his way to deride Roberts specifically and the liberals generally for their cavalier attitude toward our First Amendment freedoms.

Supreme Court rules in favor of Christian and Jewish groups who challenged New York's COVID restrictions on religious gatherings.  The Supreme Court late Wednesday temporarily barred New York from enforcing certain attendance limits at houses of worship in areas designated as hard hit by the coronavirus.  The court on a 5-4 vote granted requests made by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and two Orthodox Jewish congregations.  An October 6 decision by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo shut down non-essential businesses in targeted areas where infections have spiked, including some Brooklyn neighborhoods.

Supreme Court rules against Cuomo's coronavirus limits — with Barrett playing key role.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday night [11/26/2020] blocked New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo from reimposing strict attendance caps at worship services in areas hit hard by the novel coronavirus.  The court ruled 5-4 to bar Cuomo from enforcing his Oct. 6 "Cluster Initiative" against houses of worship that sued to challenge the restrictions.  The order was also the first in which Justice Amy Coney Barrett played a decisive role.  Barrett, who was President Trump's third Supreme Court nominee, joined the court Oct. 27, after winning Senate confirmation following the Sept. 18 death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

SCOTUS Rules 5-4 to Grant Catholic Diocese, Orthodox Jews' Request to Block Cuomo Attendance Limits.  The United States Supreme Court issued a ruling late Wednesday prohibiting the State of New York from enforcing "the Governor's severe restrictions on the applicants' religious services" in a case brought by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish organization, in a 5-4 vote.

He's just now saying this?  Where was he in May and June?
Alito: COVID Has Highlighted 'Disturbing' Trend of 'Lawmaking by Executive Fiat' and 'Rule by Experts'.  During a speech before the Federalist Society on Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said that the coronavirus pandemic has "highlighted disturbing trends" in the law such as "dominance of lawmaking by executive fiat, rather than legislation."  Which he characterized as "the movement toward rule by experts."  Alito began by cautioning that, aside from specific references to any Supreme Court cases, he isn't commenting on the legality of coronavirus restrictions and isn't making any statements as to whether the restrictions constitute good policy.

Justice Alito:  Pandemic Has 'Resulted in Previously Unimaginable Restrictions on Individual Liberty'.  Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday said the coronavirus pandemic has "resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty" and warned that religious liberty is "in danger of becoming a second class right."  Alito's comments came during his virtual keynote speech to a conference of the conservative Federalist Society, in which the 70-year-old justice warned that the U.S. can't allow the restrictions on personal liberty to continue after the pandemic has ended, noting that houses of worship have been treated particularly unfairly.

Kavanaugh, Roberts Signal They Will Uphold Affordable Care Act.  At least five Supreme Court justices, including two of the Court's six conservatives, have indicated that they are leaning toward upholding the bulk of the Affordable Care Act, clashing with Republicans who argue that the entire law is unconstitutional.  Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested during oral arguments Tuesday that the law's individual mandate, which required most Americans to obtain insurance or pay a penalty, can be separated from the rest of the law, known as Obamacare.

Key Justices Signal Support for Affordable Care Act.  At least five justices of the Supreme Court, including two members of its conservative majority, indicated on Tuesday [11/10/2020] that they would vote to reject the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act, an effort pressed by Republican state officials and supported by the Trump administration.  It was not clear whether the court would strike down the so-called individual mandate, which was rendered toothless in 2017 after Congress zeroed out the penalty for failing to obtain insurance.  But the bulk of the sprawling 2010 health care law, which is President Barack Obama's defining domestic legacy, appeared likely to survive its latest encounter with the Supreme Court.  In legal terms, the key justices said the mandate could be severed from the rest of the law.

Lawyers claim Supreme Court could declare Pennsylvania votes illegal, 9,000 non-residents voted in Nevada and witnesses say their votes were denied.  Donald Trump tweeted late into the night on Sunday, continuing to push claims of voter fraud as he refused to concede the election to Joe Biden.  In a slew of tweets sent around midnight Washington time — two of them flagged by Twitter for containing disputed information — the President pushed videos of his allies on Fox News alleging voter fraud and other irregularities, while calling for all claims to be fully investigated before the election result is allowed to stand.  It comes amid reports that Trump is planning a series of rallies where he will show off obituaries of dead people that his campaign claims were allowed to vote, while touting other allegations of fraud.

'Segregated And Secured': Alito Orders Late Pennsylvania Ballots Counted Separately.  Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an order Friday [11/6/2020] calling for the segregation of all Pennsylvania ballots received after 8 p.m. on Election Day. [...] Democratic Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar issued guidance Sunday that directed poll workers to count all mailed ballots that arrived after 8 p.m. on Election Day but before 5 p.m. on Friday, November 6.  Previous guidance called for late ballots to be kept separate from the ballots that were received on time, and they were to remain uncounted.

Supreme Court orders separate count of late-arriving Pa. ballots.  The Supreme Court on Friday ordered Pennsylvania election boards to separately count mail ballots that arrived after Election Day, while rejecting a GOP request to stop counting those votes.  The order, signed by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, left open the possibility that the justices could exclude the late-arriving ballots in a subsequent ruling, a move which Alito and at least two other conservative justices have previously signaled they may be inclined to take.

The U.S. Supreme Court Should Act On Pennsylvania's Vote Count.  The United States Constitution could not be clearer that state legislatures, not courts, make the laws that regulate how elections are held in each state.  That's not happening right now in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, one of a handful of states that elect state Supreme Court justices in partisan elections.  Earlier this year in Pennsylvania, the Democrat-dominated state Supreme Court ruled that ballots could be counted up to three days after Election Day, even if it could not be shown that they had arrived by November 3, as required by state law.  Earlier this year the United States Supreme Court rejected an action brought by the Pennsylvania Republican Party to block the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's actions.  The court rejected it with a 4-4 vote, but did not rule on the merits of the case, which are still very much at issue.  In addition, the court at the time did not include newly-minted Justice Amy Coney Barrett.  One can understand why the U.S. Supreme Court would want to avoid invalidating a state court ruling on an election before the election is held.  In other words, to take a wait-and-see approach, but now we have waited and what we see is an incredibly tight race in Pennsylvania that could well decide the presidency.

The Nasty Street Fight ahead for 2020: This is Why We Elected Trump.  [Scroll down]  Quite likely this is coming down to the Supreme Court, and they are flesh and blood human beings.  They do watch what's going on.  They have feelings and opinions and have to live in Washington.  Keep that in mind.  Aside from the three ultra-liberals, they are not drones.  Justice Barrett is new, and she needs a visible and obvious reason to support flesh and blood voters over pieces of mail.  She needs a reason she can support you and not be called a lackey.  Justice Kavanaugh had his testosterone drained by the vicious attacks on him, and you need to give him a reason to get it back.  Justice Gorsuch is one of those brilliant but annoying libertarian leaning guys who needs a public display of such common sense that he understands pieces of paper cannot disenfranchise real people by cancelling their votes.  Thomas and Alito are solid.  And Roberts?  Well, I've written him off but would be delighted to be wrong.

Pelosi Calls Amy Coney Barrett An 'Illegitimate Supreme Court Justice'.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is an "illegitimate" member of the court Tuesday [11/3/2020].  In a press conference with Democratic Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, Pelosi mentioned Barrett's confirmation, saying, "the president is installing an illegitimate Supreme Court Justice one week before the election, after 60 million Americans have voted, who will dismantle the ACA, and won't say, by the way, when asked, by Senator Feinstein, do you think Medicare is constitutional?  She said she really couldn't say."  Every Democrat opposed Barrett's confirmation.  Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was on the fence about how she was going to vote but ended up voting in favor of Barrett's confirmation.

Was This the Real 2020 Democratic Plan, which got Blown Up with Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Death?  [Scroll down]  So, what does [Larry] Schweikart think was the Democrats' plan before COVID?  He feels that with the Democrats knowing they would be beaten, they wanted to claim fraud and set off another round of the Russian collusion delusion.  They wanted a sequel, but the pandemic, he says, gave them hope of a win.  With lockdowns in place, let's do this all via vote-by-mail.  You all remember this was the Left's war cry throughout the summer until the mail-in ballots were being rejected at higher than projected rates because Democratic voters apparently cannot follow instructions.  The Democrats have now quietly changed course.  Yet, the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg killed all hopes of the voter fraud pitch ever working for Democrats.

Live Not By Lies.  At the same time that Facebook removed a salute to Paty, social media was flooded with bigoted images of Trump Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic.  Marc Murphy, editorial cartoonist at the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier Journal, alleged that Barrett, during her confirmation hearing, dressed in such a manner so as to send coded messages that she supports the misogynist agenda depicted in Margaret Atwood's novel and TV series, "The Handmaid's Tale." [...] "The Family Values party nominated a member of a sex cult," read one of many hysterical replies to Murphy's paranoid conspiracy theory, which was shared hundreds of times.  "Soon, with all the Catholics on the court, will they mandate the only religion allowed in this country is Catholicism?  And of course declare this to be a Christian nation and abolish the constitution for their bible," wrote a reader at Slate, responding to Slate's article arguing that Barrett was about to single-handedly take over America.  The New York Times went so far as to conduct an in-depth investigation of Barrett's adoption of Haitian children.

The Left Doesn't Fear Amy Coney Barrett, It Fears the Constitution.  Nothing threatens the progressive project more than the existence of a Supreme Court that adheres to the Constitution.  It's really that simple.  That's what the tantrum over Justice Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation is all about.  The notion that the same Democrats who shelved the judicial filibuster and now threaten to destroy the separation of powers with a revenge scheme to pack the Supreme Court — the same people, incidentally, so fond of smear-drenched confirmation hearings — are sticklers for process or decorum is simply ludicrous.  For one thing, no norms have been undone by the confirmation of Barrett.  If Democrats won a Senate majority in 2016, Merrick Garland would already be ensconced in the Supreme Court, election or no election.  Many of the same Democrats now feigning outrage over Barrett's confirmation, including Joe Biden, argued back then that it was the constitutional duty of the Senate to take up a vote.  Our living constitution apparently offers contradicting directions from one election to the next.  If Trump had nominated Garland to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Democrats wouldn't have any problem placing him on the Court — not even on Nov. 2.  Liberals act as if they are imbued with a theological right to dictate not only the terms but also the nominees, of confirmation hearings whether they win or lose elections.

Brett Kavanaugh Is Right about Wisconsin's Ballot Deadline.  For now, Vladimir Putin has been supplanted as the chief threat to the integrity of the presidential election by an American in a black robe — Brett Kavanaugh.  The Supreme Court justice's concurrence in an October 26 decision slapping down a district court's extension of a Wisconsin election deadline has been universally condemned by the center-left as a damning preview of an attempt by the Court to hand the election to President Donald Trump. [...] In the Wisconsin case, a federal district judge in late September tacked six days onto the state's deadline for receiving absentee ballots.  It was this court that overstepped its bounds and interfered in Wisconsin's election, not Kavanaugh, who voted simply to restore the status quo ante.  Kavanaugh's argument that "the rules of the road should be clear and settled" before the election would seem obvious.  Does anyone think it's better if they are confused and uncertain?  As Kavanaugh notes, a preference for rules established well ahead of time honors the so-called Purcell principle against late changes imposed by courts (the reference is to a 2006 case, Purcell v. Gonzalez).

Leftists Don't Fear ACB as Much as They Fear Her Protecting the Constitution.  Nothing threatens the progressive project more than the existence of a Supreme Court that adheres to the Constitution.  It's really that simple.  That's what the tantrum over Justice Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation is all about.  The notion that the same Democrats who shelved the judicial filibuster and now threaten to destroy the separation of powers with a revenge scheme to pack the Supreme Court — the same people, incidentally, so fond of smear-drenched confirmation hearings — are sticklers for process or decorum is simply ludicrous.

The left is flipping out over Brett Kavanaugh's common-sense opinion on election rules.  For now, Vladimir Putin has been supplanted as the chief threat to the integrity of the presidential election by an American in a black robe — Brett Kavanaugh.  The Supreme Court justice's concurrence in an Oct. 26 decision slapping down a district court's extension of a Wisconsin election deadline has been universally condemned by the center-left as a damning preview of an attempt by the court to steal the election for President Trump.  Mark Joseph Stern wrote a piece for Slate titled, "Brett Kavanaugh Signals He's Open to Stealing the Election for Trump."  The New York Times reported that civil-rights and Democratic Party lawyers viewed the concurrence "as giving public support to President Trump's arguments that any results counted after November 3 could be riddled with fraudulent votes."

Pennsylvania Agrees to Segregate Ballots That Arrive After Election Day While Republicans Fight State Supreme Court Ruling.  The US Supreme Court said on Wednesday [10/28/2020] that it will not fast track Republicans' challenge to Pennsylvania's extended deadline for absentee ballots.  The justices did leave open the possibility that they would ultimately rule in favor of Pennsylvania Republicans.  Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was just sworn in, did not participate in Wednesday's decision "because she has not had time to fully review the parties' filings."

Supreme Court Rejects GOP Appeal, Allows Democrats to Extend North Carolina Vote-by-Mail Deadline.  The Supreme Court has voted 5-3 to deny a request by Republicans to overturn a decision by Democratic authorities in North Carolina to allow mail-in ballots to be counted nine days after Election Day and without a witness signature.  Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas dissented, though only Gorsuch and Alito signed the dissent.  Newly-sworn-in Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not participate in the decision.

The Kavanaugh Court.  [Scroll down]  During his two years on the bench, [Brett] Kavanaugh has been a cautious conservative.  He is sometimes unwilling to issue decisions that are as far-reaching as fellow conservatives Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas would prefer.  At the same time, Kavanaugh has separated himself from Roberts by sticking with conservatives on big cases in which the chief "defects" to the liberals.  This subjective assessment finds quantitative support in Martin-Quinn scores.  Based on those scores, the Court's conservatives can be ordered from least conservative to most:  Roberts, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas.  Barrett's appointment probably means that Kavanaugh is the new median justice.  He will move the Court rightward, but how much so remains to be seen.

It's Now The Barrett Court.  It's common to identify eras of Supreme Court history by reference to the name of the presiding chief justice, but the Court's dynamics can change with the appointment of each new member.  With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, we may now be entering the era of the Barrett Court.  Her arrival is likely to have the most profound effect on the nation's highest court since simultaneous appointments of William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell in the 1970s and the replacement of Thurgood Marshall by Clarence Thomas in the early 1990s.  The most obvious consequence will be the presence of six justices appointed by Republicans and only three appointed by Democrats, where the Republicans are all more conservative than the Democrats.

Amy Coney Barrett joins the Supreme Court and faces immediate baptism of fire.  Amy Coney Barrett was officially sworn in as a justice of the Supreme Court by Chief Justice John Roberts Tuesday — returning the court to nine members but with conservative 6-3 majority.  The 48-year-old took her oath in front of a fireplace with her husband Jesse holding the Bible as Roberts administered the pledge, just after 10am.  Her arrival on the bench ends a tumultuous month since the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and sees her face a barrage of politically fraught cases in her first days on the job, as the court weighs election disputes and prepares to hear a challenge to the Obamacare health law.

Barrett officially becomes Supreme Court justice as John Roberts administers oath in private ceremony.  Judge Amy Coney Barrett officially became Justice Barrett following a private ceremony in the Supreme Court's East Conference Room Tuesday morning.  Chief Justice John Roberts administered the Judicial Oath to Barrett, officially making her the court's 103rd associate justice.  "Upon administration of that oath, she will be able to begin to participate in the work of the Court," the Supreme Court said in a press release prior to the ceremony, adding that a "formal investiture ceremony will take place at a special sitting of the Court in the Courtroom at a later date."  The ceremony took place at 10 a.m. with all of the justices participating, although Justice Stephen Breyer attended virtually, according to Supreme Court public information officer Kathy Arberg.  Retired Justice Anthony Kennedy was in attendance, as were the wives of Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.

Democrats go ballistic after Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation.  Before describing the Democrats' psychological collapse, it's essential to understand that the Barrett confirmation was constitutionally correct and had historical precedent.  The Constitution states that the president shall nominate candidates for the Supreme Court, and the Senate shall confirm them.  Seating Supreme Court justices used to be a fairly mechanical process.  However, as the left has shifted its efforts from convincing voters to support their policies to placing leftist partisans on the Supreme Court who need no convincing, the process has become increasingly fraught.  While Republicans have routinely accorded a Democrat president's nominees the courtesy of voting for them if they appeared competent, Democrats have imposed various litmus tests and, if those tests seemed futile, accused them of sexual assault.  Fraught or not, it was perfectly constitutional to nominate Justice Barrett.  Trump would not have bothered if he was facing a Democrat-majority Senate, but that was not the case.

A peculiar choice of words from one of the leaders of the Abortion Party:
Schumer: 'Generations Yet Unborn' Will Regret Pro-Life Judge's Elevation to the Supreme Court.  "Generations yet unborn" will come to regret Amy Coney Barrett's elevation to the Supreme Court, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor, shortly before a majority voted on Monday to confirm the pro-life, conservative judge onto the bench.  Schumer was not likely thinking of unborn babies in the womb; his next sentence began with an allusion to climate change.  But the same sentence also included a reference to abortion, as he lamented what he described as "reactionary state legislatures curtail[ing] a woman's right to choose."  Now-Justice Barrett said at her swearing-in ceremony on Monday night that she would carry out her duties "independently of both the political branches and of my own preferences," saying that "a judge declares independence, not only from Congress and the president, but also from the private beliefs that might otherwise move her."

Despite Democrats' hysteria, public favored Amy Barrett's confirmation.  Democrats want to portray the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett as a raw power play that was antithetical to our democracy.  Yet, public opinion polls tell us that, had Justice Barrett's nomination been put to a vote by the American people, she would have been confirmed by a margin comparable to or greater than the one provided by the Senate. [...] It seems, then, that the more the public learned, the more it liked the idea of her serving on the Supreme Court.

Biden Expresses Openness To Rotating Justices Off The Supreme Court.  If court packing sounds too extreme, then maybe court rotation will do the trick.  Now that Judge Amy Coney Barrett has been confirmed to the Supreme Court, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said he will consider rotating justices if he gets elected next week.  Speaking at a campaign stop in Chester, Pennsylvania, Biden said he will consider shifting the Supreme Court justices to lower courts during his tenure.

Out of the gates, calls for Justice Amy Coney Barrett's impeachment emerge over Pennsylvania.  Less than 24 hours after she was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett is already being asked to recuse herself from a case and liberals are calling for her impeachment.  Barrett will begin hearing oral arguments next week after being sworn in at a private ceremony at the Supreme Court Tuesday.  But her confirmation late Monday — with not a single Democrat vote — set off apoplectic reactions from the left and calls for packing the high court in revenge.  Critics of President Donald Trump have already begun the impeachment narrative against his Supreme Court pick should she not recuse herself from a Pennsylvania election case.

The Editor says...
All this talk about impeachment is just a way to agitate the Democrat base and get out the vote.  The impeachment hype will disappear after the election.

Why packing the Supreme Court would not be easy for Democrats.  The size of the Supreme Court isn't dictated by the Constitution.  It's set by statute.  That's why the high court has had as few as five justices and as many as 10.  The size of the Court has remained locked at nine justices after a dispute over justices in the 1860s.  Liberal Democrats are making lots of noise now about growing the size of the Supreme Court to tilt the now conservative advantage back in their favor.  And Republicans are more than happy to deploy Democratic threats as a wedge issue, one week before the election.  GOPers warn of what Democrats may try to do if Joe Biden wins the White House and Democrats flip the Senate.  Such chatter is great, pre-election fodder.  It electrifies the base of both parties.  That's why Democrats and Republicans alike are willing to dump as much gasoline as possible on these scenarios.

Barrett's Speech After Swearing In: 'I Will Do My Job Without Any Fear Or Favor'.  Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday night amid whoops and cheers from the audience on the White House lawn.  After President Trump opened the proceedings with a speech, Justice Thomas swore Barrett in, and Barrett followed with a speech in which she vowed, "I will do my job without any fear or favor," adding, "I love the Constitution and the democratic republic that it establishes, and I will devote myself to preserving it."  President Trump began, "This is a momentous day for America, the United States Constitution, and for the fair and impartial rule of law.  The Constitution is the ultimate defense of American liberty; the faithful application of the law is the cornerstone of the Republic.  That is why, as president, I have no more solemn obligation and no greater honor than to appoint Supreme Court Justices."

Amy Coney Barrett sworn in as Supreme Court justice at White House.  Judge Amy Coney Barrett, fresh off her confirmation to serve as an associate justice on the nation's highest court, took her constitutional oath on Monday [10/26/2020] at the White House.  The Supreme Court said in a press release that Barrett will be able to start her new role after Chief Justice John Roberts administers her judicial oath on Tuesday.  Justice Clarence Thomas administered the constitutional oath at Monday's ceremony.  Thomas has long been considered one of the more conservative justices on the court, along with Barrett's mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia.  Echoing her mentor, Barrett underscored the need for a separation of powers between the judicial and legislative branches.

Amy Coney Barrett Confirmed to Supreme Court as Susan Collins is Lone Republican to Oppose.  Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Senate Monday evening, filling the vacancy left by liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  The vote was nearly entirely along party lines:  Senator Susan Collins of Maine was the only Republican to dissent, voting with all 47 members of the Democratic Caucus against the conservative Trump nominee over concerns of the proximity to the election.  The final vote was 52-48.  "Because this vote is occurring prior to the election, I will vote against the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett," Collins said in a statement over the weekend.  "To be clear, my vote does not reflect any conclusion that I have reached about Judge Barrett's qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court."

Sore loser:
Schumer: Barrett Confirmation 'One of the Darkest Days' in Senate History.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said on Monday that Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the Supreme Court will "go down as one of the darkest days" in the Senate's history.  At the close of his speech ahead of the Senate's confirmation vote, Schumer lamented that "generations yet unborn will suffer the consequences" of Barrett's nomination and characterized Monday as "one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the United States Senate."

After Barrett Confirmation, AOC Immediately Tweets 'Expand The Court'.  Moments after Amy Coney Barrett was officially confirmed to the Supreme Court, AOC had a meltdown on twitter demanding that Democrats expand the Supreme Court.  Her first tweet simply read 'Expand the court':  [Tweet]

Amy Coney Barrett Confirmed To Supreme Court, Cementing Conservative Majority.  After weeks of partisan back-and-forth over whether a justice should be appointed so close to the presidential election, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court on Monday, eight days before Election Day — making her the third successful nomination during President Trump's tenure and the sixth conservative justice on the nine-person court.

The Editor says...
There is a solid conservative majority only if you count John Roberts as "conservative," which I don't.

Handmaid's Fail:  Liberal Cosplay Couldn't Stop Amy Coney Barrett from Joining Supreme Court.  Amy Coney Barrett officially joined the Supreme Court on Monday, one year to the day after President Donald J. Trump successfully assassinated ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and 38 days since the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Barrett was sworn in at the White House after the Senate voted 52-48 to confirm her nomination, an outcome favored by a majority of Americans.  Barrett's "her-storic" ascension to the High Court is a victory for Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party, and all Americans who support greater female representation in government.  Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said today "will go down as one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the United States Senate," while Sen. Ed Marley (D., Mass.) denounced Barrett as a "racist," sexist" "homophobe." Others suggested Barrett was secretly plotting to reinstitute slavery in the United States.

The Editor says...
Do the Democrats really think people are that stupid?  Do they really think the voters will believe that one person can "reinstitute slavery in the United States?"

5 Reasons Amy Coney Barrett's Confirmation Is Entirely Legitimate.  The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's third Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, on Monday.  Democrats have argued that the process was illegitimate, either because it took place during a global pandemic or because it took place as Election Day drew near or because the Senate refused to consider President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016.  On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) effectively rebutted these arguments, and he had previously rebutted one more.  Here are 5 reasons Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation was entirely legitimate. [...]

Kamala Slams 'Illegitimate' Justice Amy Coney Barrett: 'We Won't Forget This'.  Democrat vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) called the Senate's confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court on Monday "illegitimate" and vowed that the Americans "will not forget" the Republicans' constitutional responsibility to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [...] Although the Democrats, who unanimously voted against the confirmation, claimed that the process to put Barrett on the court was hypocritical because the Senate refused to confirm Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland during his last year in office, the Senate, in fact, has the right to advise and consent on nominations if it agrees.  In this case, Republicans control the White House and the Senate, so the latter agreed to proceed with Barrett's confirmation.

Senate Democrats to boycott Barrett's Judiciary Committee vote Thursday.  Senate Democrats plan to boycott Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's Judiciary Committee vote Thursday in an act of protest, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Wednesday [10/21/2020].  "We will not grant this process any further legitimacy by participating in a committee markup of this nomination just 12 days before the culmination of an election that is already underway," the New York Democrat said.

As Schumer Schemes to Block Barrett, Kennedy Suggests Chuck Should 'Fill Out a Hurt Feelings Report'.  On the eve of Judge Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation by the Judiciary Committee, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted:  "I am forcing a vote to adjourn the Senate until after the November election.  We are not going to have business as usual here in the Senate while the Republicans try to use an illegitimate process to jam through a Supreme Court nominee."  Even before Schumer said that, Committee Democrats were talking about boycotting today's committee hearing.  But Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, is unfazed.  "Let me just say, and I say this with deep confidence, Judge Barrett's nomination is going to be reported favorably out of the Judiciary Committee today," Kennedy told "Fox & Friends" on Thursday [10/22/2020].

Ted Cruz introduces constitutional amendment to limit Supreme Court to nine justices.  Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, along with other GOP senators, has introduced a constitutional amendment that, if it were to pass, would prevent court packing on the Supreme Court.  Additionally, the Texas senator is pushing a separate proposal to forever block Democrats, should they regain control of the Senate, from passing any legislation to add additional justices to the high court.  The amendment proposal states simply, "the Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices."

Senate Will Hold Amy Coney Barrett Confirmation Vote on Hillary Clinton's Birthday.  2016 presidential election silver medalist Hillary Clinton will be celebrating her birthday next Monday, and will be provided with yet another reminder that she's not president, and the consequences that has caused for her party.  President Donald Trump has already confirmed two Supreme Court justices, and Republicans have the votes in the Senate to confirm his third nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.  Mitch McConnell announced earlier today that the vote on Barrett will be held on October 26th — which just so happens to be Hillary's birthday.

Chuck Schumer Tries, Fails To Force Senate Out Of Session In Midnight Vote.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tried and failed to vote the Senate out of session Monday night [10/19/2020], as the GOP reversed his last-ditch effort to derail judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court.  Late Monday, Schumer announced that he would hold an emergency, near-midnight vote to send the Senate out of session until after the presidential election, effectively ending all votes before November, preventing the Senate Judiciary Committee from electing to send Barrett's nomination to the Senate floor, and blocking the GOP from seating Barrett on the Supreme Court before the presidential election. [...] The idea was a novel one, particularly given that many Democrats spent the last week complaining that Republicans were distracting from efforts to pass a coronavirus-related stimulus package by focusing on Barrett's confirmation.  Adjourning the Senate would effectively guarantee that no relief bill would pass in the next two weeks, [...]

Schumer Says He Had 'Long And Serious Talk' With Feinstein After She Embraced GOP Sen. Graham At Barrett Hearings.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that he had a "long and serious talk" with Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein after the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  The 87-year-old Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, was cordial throughout last week's hearings.  She notably hugged Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham when things wrapped up, telling the chairman it was the "best set of hearings that I've participated in."

Supreme Court Rejects Republican Challenge to Pennsylvania Vote-by-Mail Changes; 4-4 Split; Roberts Sides with Liberals.  The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Republican application to stay the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to grant the Democratic Party's request to make several changes to mail-in voting that critics have decried as vulnerable to fraud.  As Breitbart News reported last month, "The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled ... that ballots received three days after Election Day will still be counted — even if there is no evidence they were postmarked on time."  Republicans sought a stay.  The Supreme Court, however, split 4-4 on the request, leaving the decision of the lower court in place.  Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the Court's liberal minority; the remaining four conservative justices sided with the Republican request.

SCOTUS allows 3 day extension for PA ballots.  Thanks to the Supreme Court, the odds of knowing who won the presidential election on the night of November 3rd just fell even lower.  Pennsylvania voters have been requesting absentee ballots in record numbers this year and those ballots traditionally had to be received by election day so the counting could begin as soon as the polls closed.  But state Democrats went to court asking for ballots to be considered valid if they were postmarked by election day and received within three days later, on November 6th.  The state supreme court sided with the Democrats on Saturday and the issue was appealed to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis.  Last night [10/19/2020] the nation's highest court weighed in by failing to weigh in.  The court was deadlocked 4-4, allowing the state court's decision to stand.

The Unapologetic Bias of the American Left.  [Scroll down]  Given the similarly asymmetrical record of the Senate in grilling and voting on Supreme Court picks, one would have thought after the Kavanaugh hearing, which cost Democrats a chance to take back the Senate, the Left would have tried to appear respectful and professional in questioning the brilliant, learned, personable, and charismatic Amy Coney Barrett.  Such an expectation was not absurd, given that in just a few weeks they bragged that they would recapture the Senate in a way they had failed in 2016 and 2018.  Left unsaid was the tic of the Left to destroy not just the nomination chances of a Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh, but their very characters and careers — while assuming that an Elena Kagan or Sonya Sotomayor deserved overwhelming bipartisan support given they were progressive and enlightened.

Democratic Senator 'Open' To Packing Supreme Court If GOP Won't 'Step Back' From Barrett Confirmation.  Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) threatened to "rebalance" the federal judiciary under a potential Biden presidency should Senate Republicans confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  Coons appeared on CNN's "State of the Union" with host Jake Tapper on Sunday [10/18/2020] to comment on Barrett's ongoing confirmation process in the Senate.  Coons said that if former Vice President Joe Biden beats President Trump in November, the Delaware senator would be "open" to packing the Supreme Court in response to Barrett's confirmation.

Democrats Lost More Than a Supreme Court Seat This Week.  [Scroll down]  As many viewers believe Donald Trump packs the court by replacing RBG with ACB as believed that Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, or Stephen Breyer represented court packing because they replaced jurists appointed by Republicans.  Ironically, the push to pack the court that depended on the Democrats taking back the Senate jeopardizes taking back the Senate because packing the court strikes normal people as a violation of norms and a banana-republic kind of cheating.  When President Franklin Roosevelt proposed adding members to the Supreme Court in 1937, Democrats held a 76-16 advantage in the U.S. Senate (really an 80-16 advantage as the four senators not affiliated with the major parties all fell well to the left of center).  The previous year had witnessed Roosevelt winning all but Vermont and Maine in the presidential election.  Yet even he, with all those advantages, still could not pack the court.

Chuck Schumer:  Dems Will Deny GOP A Quorum To Advance Barrett.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says that Democrats will not supply a quorum with which to advance the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  Schumer defended this move, saying that Barrett's nomination is "illegitimate, dangerous and unpopular."  There's no point debating Schumer on these partisan claims.  The question is whether the Democrats can block Barrett's nomination through this ploy.  I don't think they can.  A quorum in the full Senate is 51 members.  In the Judiciary Committee it's nine members including two from the minority party.  A quorum in the full Senate won't be a problem for the GOP and Barrett unless a few Republican Senators get sick and can't make it for the vote.

Schumer says Democrats won't give GOP quorum to advance Barrett nomination.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday night promised that Democrats will not "supply quorum" for votes to advance Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation effort, essentially meaning that Democrats will boycott the votes in an attempt to stall the confirmation ahead of the election. [...] There are ways around this.  Most notably, the Senate can vote on a discharge resolution that would remove the responsibility of considering the Barrett nomination from the committee, allowing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to call the nomination for a full vote.  The committee itself could also change its rules to get rid of the requirement that two Democrats be present, James Wallner, a senior resident fellow for governance at the R Street Institute told Fox News.  "The key for Democrats is to make Republicans' doing so as painful as possible," Wallner said about the move to force Republicans to change the committee rules, as well as other procedural moves they could try.

Jonathan Turley:  Dems trying to get Barrett to recuse herself to 'influence' case outcomes.  Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has been "extremely nimble" in the Senate confirmation hearings despite Democrats' "utterly absurd" attempts to get her to recuse herself if she gets a seat on the bench, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley said Thursday [10/15/2020].  The 48-year-old appellate court judge declined to say whether she would recuse herself from any election-related cases involving President Trump, who nominated her to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  "The judicial rules on recusal are meant to deal with issues where you have a personal or financial interest in the case or you were involved in the underlying litigation.  None of those apply," Turley told "Fox & Friends."

If Republican Senators Were Like Crazy Mazie.  [Scroll down]  But the most despicable of all is the really obscene circus act from Hawaii, Mazie Hirono.  She has no limits, knows no bounds. [...] The line of questioning in which Crazy Mazie engaged this week while interrogating Judge Barrett was so despicable that she should have been censured.  Ten years ago, she would have been.  Her voters would have been ashamed.  But the Democrats have redrawn the lines of engagement.  Now anything goes.  Harris, while running for vice president, gives voice encouraging violent rioters, looters, and arsonists.  Feinstein, Harris, and Hirono attack religion, people of faith, and cut into their very souls with obscene questions that never should be asked, questions like those that Crazy Mazie asked Judge Barrett.  Trump is not the cause but the effect.  There is just no other way to speak to such people.

Feinstein's hug of Lindsey Graham sparks outrage on the left.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) praise of her Republican colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), which she followed with a friendly hug, is stirring outrage on the left and prompting calls by prominent liberals for her to step down as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Democrats, liberal activists and left-leaning pundits, many of whom were dismayed that Democratic senators didn't put a tougher fight against President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett expressed outrage.  Demand Justice, an advocacy group that has staunchly opposed Trump's effort to fill the judiciary with conservative nominees, was first out of the gate with a statement calling for Feinstein to resign.

The Editor says...
Indeed, she should resign from the Senate, if only because she is 87 years old.

New Poll on Amy Coney Barrett's SCOTUS Nomination Is All Bad News For Democrats.  Well, it's becoming clearer.  This is the third day of hearings on the Supreme Court nomination for Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  And support for her confirmation in the polls are soaring.  In liberal America, they think confirming her is an unpopular position.  It's not.  It's risen 17 points, with nearly half the country supporting her placement on the Supreme Court, 48/31.  Twenty-one percent are still undecided, but it has remained the case that more Americans want her confirmed than not.

8 Big Moments From Day 3 of Barrett's Confirmation Hearings.  [Scroll down]  Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said she was "impressed" by an answer from Barrett.  A key attack from Democrats has been that Barrett's confirmation would mean the end of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.  That's because a case called Texas v. California is heading to the Supreme Court.  Texas and other states assert that because Congress removed the law's individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance, the rest of the law is unconstitutional.  They note that the high court held in 2012 that the Obamacare law was constitutional because the individual mandate was a tax.

The Deep State conspiracy that gave us Obamacare.  Taking into account the criminal deportment of congressional Democrats over the last four years (one could reasonably argue for more) and the disgraceful confirmation process attendant to President Donald Trump's nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018, it was a foregone conclusion that these Democrats would vigorously oppose anyone the president nominated to fill the seat vacated by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Evidently, this goes double for someone with the bona fides of Amy Coney Barrett, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the 7th Circuit, who was nominated by President Trump and is currently undergoing the confirmation process.  Obviously, the confirmation of any conservative to the Supreme Court is viewed by Democrats as a threat not only to all the political left has accomplished with regard to its agenda, but to all that it seeks to accomplish in the future.  It's also apparent that hyperbole is the order of the day, as far as liberal rhetoric goes, with projection and schoolyard invective running as close seconds.

Unflappable: Amy Coney Barrett Sees Through Kamala Harris' Trap, Won't Take the Bait.  Amy Coney Barrett schools Durbin on originalism: [...] Durbin attempted to weaponize originalism against an originalist.  "It strains originalism if the clear wording of the Constitution establishes a right and you will not acknowledge it," the senator charged.  "Well, senator, it would strain the canons of conduct, which don't permit me to offer off-the-cuff reactions or any opinions outside of the judicial decision-making process.  It would strain Article III, which prevents me from deciding legal issues outside the context of cases and controversies, and as Justice Ginsburg said, it would display disregard for the whole judicial process," Amy Coney Barrett responded.

Chris Cuomo:  Amy Coney Barrett not 'just an ordinary Catholic'.  CNN host Chris Cuomo declared Tuesday [10/13/2020] that Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett is no "ordinary Catholic" and that she has a "fundamentalist" approach to her faith that many Christians don't share.  "She does have an affiliation in a religious organization, which I think makes her different than most Catholics," the prime-time host said while interviewing Sen. Mazie Hirono following the second day of Judge Barrett's confirmation hearings.  "I think that her faith is by design more central to her value system and her behavior and thoughts than it would be for just an ordinary Catholic who doesn't belong to People of Praise," he said.

Still More Dem Lies About Obamacare.  Democrats have spent the bulk of the Amy Coney Barrett hearings warning that she would overturn Obamacare if she makes it to the Supreme Court, causing 130 million Americans to lose protections for preexisting conditions and costs to skyrocket.  None of that is true.  But then again, Obamacare was built on a Big Lie — "you can keep your plan."  On Monday [10/13/2020], Joe Biden warned that "This nominee has said she wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. ... This is about less than one month (until) Americans are going to lose their health insurance."  Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., used his time at Judge Barrett's confirmation hearings to spin a bizarre conspiracy theory in which "big donors" are trying to eliminate Obamacare by "stacking" the courts with conservative judges. [...] But the lies go much deeper than that.  First, the notion that a Justice Barrett is certain to vote to overturn all of Obamacare is false.  Biden simply made up the claim that she "wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act."

The Anti-Constitution of Joe Biden.  Joe Biden has promised to complete the "fundamental transformation" of America that Barack Obama started.  Toward that end, he vows to radicalize the judiciary.  He intends to stack it with as many liberal activists as possible, whose rulings would eliminate the actual Constitution in favor of a warped worldview rooted in a political and moral philosophy alien to the founding fathers.  The hearings this week provide a window on that warped worldview, one that insists judges deliver health and death at the same time.  One moment, the Democrats bashed Amy Coney Barrett for not supporting health care; in the next, they excoriated her for not denying it to unborn children.  The Democrats surrounded themselves with pictures of young children who could lose Obamacare.  Yet they remain unmoved by the far more arresting images of unborn children killed under it.  The party of "science" averts its gaze from sonograms.

Suspicious Dem questions for Amy Coney Barrett suggest a set-up.  [Scroll down]  When have the Dems ever been courteous and respectful toward Republican nominees to the High Court?  When haven't they gone to extremes to press a perceived advantage or one they carved out of whole cloth without any regard for the lives and reputations they destroy?  All the bells and whistles went off in my head when Mazie Hirono asked Judge Barrett, "Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?"  She claims to ask this of every nominee — someone should look that up.  And then Cory Booker asked the judge if she condemns white supremacy.  No, folks.  This hearing is not just a four-day infomercial for Biden/Harris.  Instead, it's more likely a set-up.  They had to anticipate she'd answer "no" to the first question and readily condemn white supremacy.  It doesn't take a political genius to suspect they will spring something on us as the hearing winds down Thursday — in the hopes of delaying the vote and possibly scoring points for Biden/Harris.

6 Key Issues Aired on Day 2 of Barrett's Confirmation Hearings.  [#6] Attacks on Faith, Family:  Since her nomination, Barrett's critics have attacked her deeply held Catholic faith and ridiculed her for adopting two black children.  The judge said she has attempted a "media blackout for the sake of my mental health," but couldn't avoid it entirely.  "I'm aware of a lot of the caricatures floating around, so I think what I would like to say in response to that question is that, look, I've made distinct choices.  I've decided to pursue a career and have a large family.  I have a multiracial family.  Our faith is important to us.  All of those things are true, but they are my choices," Barrett said.  "I have a life brimming with people who have made different choices.  I've never tried in my personal life to impose my choices on them.  The same is true professionally.  I apply the law."  She went on to discuss why she exposed herself to the historically brutal Supreme Court confirmation process.

ACB Is Asked What It Feels Like to Be a SCOTUS Nominee, Gives Best Answer.  It has been fascinating to watch as President Trump's SCOTUS pick Judge Amy Coney Barrett sits calmly and listens patiently as condescending Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee "question" her on a variety of issues in hopes of tripping her up and getting her to reveal the way she would rule on future cases that will inevitably come before the court.  Without missing a beat, she answers the senators in a manner befitting a nominee for the highest court in the nation, making sure to observe the so-called "Ginsburg rule" at every opportunity.  But perhaps to break up the monotony of the confirmation hearings as they went into the second full day, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Judge Barrett to explain to those listening what it felt like to be a nominee for the Supreme Court.  The answer she gave was pretty powerful: [...]

Democrats can't 'Kavanaugh' unflappable Justice-to-be Amy Coney Barrett.  With a history of vicious misbehavior and the political calendar limiting their ability to smear Amy Coney Barrett, Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee were reduced to being annoying nags and finger-wagging scolds.  They were never going to vote for any Supreme Court nominee of President Trump's to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but they don't even have the option of giving Barrett the Brett Kavanaugh 2.0 treatment.  Another character-assassination attempt of the kind visited on Kavanaugh two years ago — now Justice Kavanaugh — would have been risky business so close to the election, so it was politics, not decency, that stayed their bloody hands.  Make no mistake, though, if they could have, the Dems would have trashed Barrett as too religious and too conservative and done everything they could short of setting the building on fire to stop her from joining the high court before the election.  As it was, they spent their time during the first day of questioning largely trying to trip her up [...]

Whitehouse Cites Group Funded by Dark Money to Attack Dark Money.  Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) on Tuesday savaged conservative dark-money groups, citing the work of a left-wing group funded by dark money in his attacks.  In an exchange with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett that Whitehouse used to deliver a soliloquy attacking "dark money" — groups that do not disclose their donors — Whitehouse cited research from the Center for Media and Democracy, a group funded by anonymous left-wing donors.  The Center for Media and Democracy received $520,000 in 2011 from the Schwab Charitable Fund, which conceals the sources of its funding.

Merriam-Webster Alters Definition Of Sexual "Preference" To Say It's Offensive After Hirono Attacked Barrett For Using It.  As far as I can tell, critics have them dead to rights on this. [...] Check the Wayback Machine and you'll find that Merriam-Webster's definition of "preference" said nothing about the term being offensive as of September 28, the last time the page was archived.

Barrett uses, later apologizes for using term deemed 'offensive' by GLAAD.  While answering a question about how she would rule in potential Supreme Court cases involving LGBTQ+ people's rights during her confirmation hearing Tuesday, Judge Amy Coney Barrett used the term "sexual preference" — a term classified as "offensive" by GLAAD.  Barrett used the term while denouncing discrimination against gay and lesbian people, during questioning by Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, D-California.

The Editor says...
If that's the only complaint they have against this nominee, the hearings should be over in no time.

Feinstein Tries To Rattle Amy Coney Barrett, Fails Miserably.  During Tuesday's confirmation hearings, Senator Dianne Feinstein tried to rattle Amy Coney Barrett, and it failed miserably.  Feinstein tried to get the SCOTUS nominee to spout off political opinions about different issues, but it was met with a brick wall of common sense and rationality.  "If I give off-the-cuff answers then I would be basically a legal pundit and I do not think we want judges to be legal pundit.  I think we want judges to approach cases thoughtfully and with an open mind," Barrett responded.  [Video clip]

The Iconic Moment ACB Demonstrated Her Brilliance Without Saying a Word.  Judge Amy Coney Barrett repeatedly demonstrated her judicial brilliance during Tuesday's [10/13/2020] hearing, but the most iconic moment of them all came during Texas Senator John Cornyn's questioning.  "Most of us have multiple notebooks and notes and books and things like that in front of us," observed Senator Cornyn.  "Can you hold up what you've been referring to in answering our questions?"  With a grin, Judge Amy Coney Barrett held up the notebook that had been provided to her.  "Is there anything on it?" asked Senator Cornyn.  "The letterhead that says U.S. Senate," replied Barrett.

Amy Coney Barrett Has Perfect Response to Senator Asking if She is 'Reading From Notes'.  The Senate Judiciary Committee began day two of their confirmation hearing for Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.  Amy Coney Barrett gave the perfect response when asked if she was reading from notes.

Barrett Asked To Hold Up Notes She's Using To Answer Questions.  She Holds Up A Blank Notepad..  Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett held up a blank notepad when Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) asked her to show the public the notes she's been using to answer the numerous questions spat at her during day two of the confirmation hearings.  "Most of us have multiple notebooks and notes and books, things like that in front of us," said Sen. Cornyn.  "Can you hold up what you've been referring to in answering our questions?"  Barrett held up a blank notepad.  "Is there anything on it?" asked Cornyn.  "The letterhead that says United States Senate," the judge replied.  [Video clip]

Sheldon Whitehouse Presents 'Dark Money' Conspiracy Theory, Asks Amy Coney Barrett Zero Questions.  Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) used his entire time on the second day of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Tuesday to present a "dark money" conspiracy theory.  He asked Judge Barrett no actual questions.  Using a series of posters, a magic marker, a highlighter, and an indeterminate number of Post-it notes, Whitehouse sketched a complicated theory — called "The Scheme" — in which he claimed that "dark money" groups influenced the selection of judges.

Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono Asks Amy Coney Barrett if She Has Ever Committed Rape.  The Senate Judiciary Committee began day two of their confirmation hearing for Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.  As expected, Democrat Senators are using this hearing as an opportunity to abuse Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic and mother of seven who is already a vetted judge.  There's stupid, and then there's Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono (HI).  Hirono on Tuesday [10/13/2020] asked Amy Coney Barrett if she has ever committed rape.

Mazie Hirono Cements Her Insanity, Asks Amy Coney Barrett if She's Ever Raped Someone.  Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono is a certified insane person.  That's been known for a while, yet she continues to up the bar every time she ends up in the spotlight during a hearing.  After previously trying to disqualify Amy Coney Barrett over her religion back in 2017, something that's blatantly unconstitutional, Hirono strapped on the water skis and had the guy driving the boat floor it towards the shark in today's confirmation hearing.  This woman is legitimately the dumbest person to ever serve in the U.S. Senate, and that's a position with an awful lot of competition. [...] Hirono is legitimately upset that Barrett is pledging to interpret the law as it is written by Congress.  In what was a convoluted, nonsensical series of "questioning," the Hawaii Senator decides that judges should in fact rule based on sympathies and not the law.  Think about how crazy that is?  Hirono also apparently has no idea what a term as basic as "severability" means.  Keep in mind, this woman graduated from Georgetown with a law degree.  My word, if there was ever sufficient proof a university should be shut down, this qualifies.

Amy Coney Barrett hearing was a hostage video.  When it comes to wasting time, it's tough to beat the United States Senate.  But even for that august body's pedantic standards, Monday's confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett was beyond pointless, it was downright bizarre.  The nominee sat wearing a black mask, and looked like the prisoner in a hostage film, as senator after senator talked not so much to her but at or past her.  Let's hope the mask protects against drivel as well as coronavirus.  When they weren't railing against the hearings happening at all, the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee seemed to be under the impression that it was the Affordable Care Act, not Barrett, whom President Trump nominated for the Supreme Court.  They spoke of little else, flanked by blown-up photographs of constituents they say were helped by Obamacare — despite not knowing how, or even if, Barrett would rule on a case involving the legislation.

9 Takeaways From Day 1 of Barrett Confirmation Hearings.  The opening day of Senate confirmation hearings for federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett was filled with speechifying, with Democrats on the Judiciary Committee previewing their line of attack on the Supreme Court nominee.  In her opening remarks, Barrett, currently a judge on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, stressed that the role of a judge is not to make policy, while Democrats focused almost entirely on policymaking.  President Donald Trump nominated Barrett on Sept. 26 to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had died eight days earlier.  Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., predicted Barrett's confirmation would likely pass the Senate on a party-line vote.

Senator Josh Hawley Calls Out Democrats for Religious Litmus Tests and Bigotry on Judicial Nominees.  Article six of the constitution, and the first amendment outlining the bill of rights within the United States constitution, affirms that every American citizen has the unassailable right to practice their religion in accordance with their own beliefs; no litmus tests are permitted.  However, under the doctrines of Marxism religion is a threat to state control.  Modern Democrats are Marxists.  In a push-back to the preferred doctrine of modern democrats U.S. Senator Josh Hawley gives a passionate opening remark during the senate committee hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  [Video clip]

AP called out for adopting Democrat language on court-packing.  The Associated Press was forced to add an editor's note to a recent story about the Supreme Court on Saturday, in which the outlet made it seem as if the Democratic strategy to pack the high court would "depoliticize" the bench.  The article, written by Iris Samuels, centered on a debate between Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Gov. Steve Bullock, his Democratic opponent in the upcoming election.  The AP's original post reportedly read, "Bullock said that if Coney Barrett was confirmed, he would be open to measures to depoliticize the court, including adding judges to the bench, a practice critics have dubbed packing the courts."  The report referred to President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

The Audacity Of Amy.  [Scroll down]  In her opening remarks on Day 1 of the hearing she reminded us that "I would be the first mother of school-age children to serve on the Court."  Not only would she be the first minivan-driving mom to serve, she would be the only woman on the current Court with ANY children at all.  Sotomayor and Kagan, perhaps unsurprisingly, have a total of zero children between them.  This matters!  As I wrote in an earlier piece, having "kin in the game" when it comes to making big decisions is absolutely crucial.  Amy's angriest feminist interlocutors this week, Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein, have a grand total of one offspring combined.  But as Amy points out in her remarks, making judicial decisions through the lens of a parent whose own child may be affected by the ruling is the best way to make sure justice is served, for both sides.

Biden cautions Senate Democrats against any questions about Amy Coney Barrett's faith.  Former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday said that Judge Amy Coney Barrett's faith "should not be considered" during her Senate confirmation hearings. [...] Biden instead said that Democrats need to "stay behind the ball" and focus on Barrett's alleged opposition to the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama's signature achievement, which the Supreme Court will revisit after the November elections.  "Everyone knows that in 28 days, 20million Americans may lose their healthcare," Biden said.  "This nominee said she wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act."  Barrett has never stated that she would rule against the Affordable Care Act.  At the hearings Monday, many Democratic senators accused her of opposing it, with Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Sheldon Whitehouse of New York making passionate speeches about the legislation.

Also posted under Lies about Obamacare.

Amy Coney Barrett:  Judges Can't 'Walk in Like a Royal Queen' and Impose Their Will on the World.  Judge Amy Coney Barrett addressed the widespread misinformation that judges can brazenly make rulings based on the whims of the day, explaining the process and stressing judges cannot just "walk in like a royal queen" and "impose" their will on the world.  Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) prompted Barrett to explain how the process works, using the District of Columbia v.  Heller as an example.  Barrett briefly explained there has to be a law, lawsuit, appeal, and the court granting cert before it makes a ruling.  When asked if the process remains the same no matter the issue — including guns, health care, abortion, campaign finance — Barrett emphasized judges cannot just impose an agenda at random.

Hawley, Sasse Unleash On Harris, Democrats, Media For Treatment Of Barrett.  Republican senators Josh Hawley and Ben Sasse criticized Democratic and media treatment of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett Monday morning [10/12/2020].  Both senators decried attacks on Barrett's Catholic faith and said that religious freedom is a fundamental American principle that has come under attack from Democrats.  "This committee isn't in the business of deciding whether the dogma lives too loudly within someone," Sasse said.  "This committee isn't in the business of deciding which religious beliefs are good and which religious beliefs are bad and which religious beliefs are weird."

Sen. Patrick Leahy Tells Amy Coney Barrett That Her Confirmation To SCOTUS Would Be 'Harmful' To Women.  Only a handful of Democrats were able to make opening statements Monday [10/12/2020], leading into confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, whom President Donald Trump nominated to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) made the most of his precious few minutes.  In a statement made directly to Barrett, Leahy told the Supreme Court nominee — a law professor, federal Circuit Court judge, wife, and mother — that confirming her to the highest court in the land would be "harmful" to women.

At Supreme Court hearing, Democrats talk about everything except Amy Coney Barrett.  Evidently, polling showed Democrats that their scorched-earth tactics against Brett Kavanaugh backfired in the 2018 Senate races.  And they got the memo that the attacks on Barrett's religious beliefs that they deployed during her appellate court confirmation hearings were likely to go over about as well as a Yankees parade in South Boston.  Furthermore, they cannot question the credentials of Barrett, who is widely respected by lawyers regardless of their ideology and earned the American Bar Association's highest "well qualified" rating.  As a result, Democrats have decided to use the hearings as another platform for their 2020 campaign.  Their opening statements were treated simply as another forum for peddling predictable attacks on President Trump and on his administration's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.  But more than anything, Democrats talked about threats to Obamacare and individuals with preexisting conditions.

Red herring alert!
It isn't Judge Barrett's job to provide treatment or insurance for people with "preexisting conditions."  It isn't the government's job to provide medical treatment for everyone or to make everyone buy insurance.

Can Democrats Bork Amy Coney Barrett?  Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court begins on Columbus Day [10/12/2020] in the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee.  We can expect four days of an attempt to convince the public that she is, alternately, a straight-laced appeals court judge and a radical religious zealot.  Unless Barrett goes off-script, or something truly new and scandalous emerges, the Republicans' 53 seat majority in the Senate should result in her appointment.  As a viewer's guide, it's safe to assume that any senator's first goal is to elevate themselves — and this goes for members of both parties.  The election looms, however, making Democrats' jobs during the hearings a good bit more complicated.  Catholic women in the battleground states are said to be the most precious commodity this cycle.

Schumer Says Democrats Will Try To Block Barrett Confirmation By Not Giving Republicans Quorum.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats will not "supply quorum" for votes in the Senate as a way to try and block the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett before the election.  During a Sunday night [10/11/2020] press conference, Schumer slammed Republicans for pushing Barrett's confirmation forward, saying Senate Democrats will do everything they can to prevent Barrett from being confirmed.  Schumer went on to say that one way Democrats are considering blocking the confirmation is by not supplying quorum, meaning Democrats would not show up so work could not be done.

Democrats don't dare say why they oppose Judge Barrett, so they lie instead.  Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee devoted their opening statements on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to repeating a shameless lie.  Why can't they share their real reasons for opposing her?  The Democrats, one after another, claimed that confirming Barrett would result in ObamaCare being overturned when the court takes it up Nov. 10, with Americans dying as a result.  It's plainly false:  Several conservative justices clearly don't buy the arguments made for striking down the law in this case.  And Barrett, based on her overall philosophy, is likely to agree with them.  Plus, Republicans are universally in favor of keeping protections for those with pre-existing conditions and have vowed to put it into law if ObamaCare does get overturned.

Court-Packing Is More of a Monstrosity than You Think.  The Biden-Harris court-packing plan is a plan to destroy the Constitution and replace it with a disguised dictatorship.  Democratic court-packing is a plan to leave the forms of the Constitution intact while destroying its essence, much in the same way that Augustus dealt a death blow to the old Roman Republic.  The Biden-Harris court-packing plan is a virtual enabling act, a law that would bypass all the normal lawmaking processes and turn national policy over to unelected far-left judges acting in response to the complaints of ultra-left lawyers and activists.  If you think that sounds over-dramatic, let me take you to a federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, where a group of activists are seeking to have the Judiciary seize control over most of the nation's economic policy.  In 2015 those activists filed a lawsuit known as Juliana v. United States.

'Americans aren't idiots!' The AP's use of 'Democrats' language' to explain 'packing the court' doesn't go well.  Since the Associated Press considers itself "an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting," it would be problematic for an AP article to contain commentary packaged as news and facts.  Real Clear Politics co-founder and president Tom Bevan captured the following excerpt from an AP story.  ["]With lightning speed, the Associated Press adopts Democrats' language on SCOTUS: adding members is now 'depoliticizing' the court, only 'critics' refer to it as 'packing.'["] [...] To call increasing the number of Supreme Court justices "depoliticizing" would be an egregious political overstatement if made by a Democrat politician, much less a news organization.

Amy Coney Barrett Will Defend America's Borders and Laws.  With the disgraceful spectacle of the Kavanaugh hearings still fresh in many people's memories, America is about to witness another Supreme Court confirmation process, one that may make the last one look dignified by comparison.  That would be a shame, because Judge Amy Coney Barrett is a sterling nominee who has shown a reverence for America's laws and sovereignty.  In her Rose Garden introduction as the nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Judge Barrett threw down the gauntlet.  "I love the United States and I love the United States Constitution," she said.  While that may sound admirable to most people, those are fighting words to those on the left.  She then doubled down when referring to her mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia.  "His judicial philosophy is mine, too," she added.  "A judge must apply the law as written."

Ben Sasse:  Court Packing Is 'Suicide Bombing of Two Branches of Government'.  Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) on Sunday [10/11/2020] called Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's refusal to say whether he would add seats to the Supreme Court if elected "grotesque," saying court packing amounts to the "suicide bombing of two branches of government."  "It's grotesque that Vice President Biden won't answer that really basic question," Sasse said in an appearance on Fox News Sunday.  "And it isn't just one branch of government, what they're really talking about or refusing to talk about, is the suicide bombing of two branches of government."

Beyond Court Packing:  Here's How Dems Plan To Create A One-Party State.  Joe Biden has so far refused to answer the question of whether he'd pack the Supreme Court with leftist justices.  But he hasn't even been asked about a more worrisome scheme he and his party are cooking up to ensure Democrats' election victories well into the future.  So far, Biden has inartfully dodged the question of whether he would support adding justices to the Supreme Court.  All he would say in the debate was "Whatever the position I take, that will be the issue" and in Arizona, he said, "You'll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over."  Biden knows court-packing doesn't poll well, and so with the help of the press, he is avoiding the topic.  But Senate Democrats have already made it clear that they will take that route should President Donald Trump get Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the bench.

Behind the scenes of Democrats' half-century quest to destroy the Supreme Court.  For nearly 50 years now Democrats have plotted to annihilate the Supreme Court. [...] The reigning euphemism of the day is "court packing," which former Vice President Joe Biden openly refuses to discuss with voters until after the election.  A more accurate term is "expanding" the Supreme Court by adding seats to dilute the currently sitting justices.  Or "exploding" the federal judiciary.  Or "annihilating" the independence of an entire branch of the federal government.  They do this by installing puppet "jurists" who no longer believe that the Constitution actually means what it says.  It's a "living document," according to this death squad.  The judiciary, to these people, is actually just a super-legislature that is unelected and holds office for life.  This kind of constitutional thuggery is the hallmark of socialist dictatorships and banana republics — dress up the institution designed to protect democracy and individual liberty with unelected authoritarians specifically designed to make a mockery of both.

Democrat Threats to Pack the Supreme Court Deflect Attention from Their Own Errors.  [Scroll down]  The next Democrat forced error was Ruth Bader Ginsberg not stepping down when Obama was in power.  Democrats should have been calling for RBG to step aside because of her advanced age and health issues, but that never happened.  If she would have taken one for the team, Obama's nominee would have likely sailed through the Senate confirmation process since Republicans do not resort to the slash and burn techniques of destroying judicial nominees as Democrats do.  Ginsberg's selfishness and Democrat hubris that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016 have placed the Democrats in the position they find themselves in today.  As always, instead of looking inward and admitting their errors, Democrats choose to instead blame their enemies.

Democrats delegitimize the Supreme Court because they fear losing power over the rest of us.  "It is a decision of the Supreme Court," Rep. Nancy Pelosi said in 2005, speaking about the eminent domain ruling in Kelo v. New London.  "If Congress wants to change it, it will require legislation of a level of a constitutional amendment.  So this is almost as if God has spoken."  This florid reverence for the high court ought not be lost on the reader, especially given where Pelosi and other Democrats find themselves today.  As the Senate prepares to confirm President Trump's third Supreme Court nominee, they have begun to say outright that the nomination and confirmation procedure outlined in the U.S. Constitution is illegitimate.  In some cases, they are even insinuating that the court itself lacks legitimacy, for which outlandish claim the only visible justification is that they don't like the direction it's going.

Sen. Chris Coons:  Amy Coney Barrett Has 'Extreme,' 'Disqualifying' Views, Confirmation Push 'Constitutes Court Packing'.  Senate Judiciary Committee member Chris Coons (D., Del.) on Sunday said that Republicans' push to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett ahead of the November 3 election "constitutes court packing" and called the judge's views "not just extreme," but "disqualifying."  Coons's comments came during an appearance on Chris Wallace's "Fox News Sunday," in which he defended Democrats' calls to add additional seats to the Supreme Court — the actual definition of court packing — in retaliation for the Senate going forward with Barrett's confirmation hearings only weeks before the election.  "I'm going to be laying out the ways in which Judge Barrett's views, her views on reaching back and reconsidering and overturning long settled precedent are not just extreme, they're disqualifying," he said.

C'mon, man:  Biden must answer court-packing question.  The Commission on Presidential Debates will become irreversibly illegitimate unless it reverses course on in-person debates, which alone can force Joe Biden to answer the single most important question in this election: whether Biden would pack to the Supreme Court with additional seats, forever transforming our Constitution's three-branch form of government into a two-branch system.  The Constitution allows Congress to set the number of Supreme Court seats.  After several decades of trial and error, in 1869, Congress settled on nine seats, which has been a bedrock of stability in America's form of government for 151 years.  For more than half of our nation's existence, there has been only one attempt to change that number.

Democrat Joe Biden:  Voters 'Don't' Deserve To Know If I'm Going To Pack Supreme Court.  Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told a local news reporter on Friday afternoon [10/9/2020] that voters do not deserve to know whether he will pack the Supreme Court if he wins the upcoming the election.  "Sir, I've got to ask you about packing the courts and I know you said yesterday you aren't going to answer the question until after the election, but this is the number one thing that I've been asking about from viewers in the past couple of days," the reporter said to Biden.  "Well, you've been asked by the viewers who are probably Republicans who don't me continuing to talk about what they're doing to the court right now," Biden responded.  "Well sir, don't the voters deserve to know--" the reporter pressed.  "No, they don't," Biden responded.

Biden Makes False Claims:  Republicans Are The Ones 'Packing The Court Now,' 'Not Constitutional What They're Doing'.  Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden made false claims on Saturday [10/10/2020] while speaking to reporters before he boarded his campaign plane, saying that Republicans are the ones engaged in court-packing and claiming that what the Republicans are doing is not constitutional.  Biden made the remarks while standing right next to the plane while it was running, making it very difficult to hear his responses.  A reporter asked Biden about his controversial stance of not telling voters before the election whether he supports court-packing.  The reporter's question comes after Biden said late last night that voters don't deserve an answer from him on the issue.

The Editor says...
"Nominating a supreme court justice during an election is not court packing.  Adding justices to the supreme court is."  [Source]

Carlson: Democrat Court-Packing Plans 'Closer Than a Lot of Republicans Want to Admit and You Should Be Worried About It'.  Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson opened his Friday [10/9/2020] broadcast with a warning about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris regarding potential plans of court-packing if they are elected on November 3.  According to Carlson, the objective is to change the American form of government, and he urged Republican lawmakers to be concerned.

'Staggering' Is the Word for Suggestions Barrett Recuse Herself on the Election.  It looks like the Democrats are going to try to hector Judge Amy Coney Barrett into recusing herself from any cases on the election.  "One of the things I want to ask her," Senator Cory Booker told NBC in respect of the pending confirmation hearing, "is will she recuse herself because of, ah, in terms of any election issues that come before us because if she does not recuse herself, I fear that the court will be further delegitimized."  Don't wait up, we say.  Senator Booker might want to take a look at a 2004 opinion by The Great Scalia.  It sketches Justice Scalia's logic in refusing to recuse himself in a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney.  The Sierra Club had asked Scalia to recuse himself because he and the vice president had gone duck hunting together at Louisiana.  And had allegedly flown there in a private jet.  Turns out that it wasn't a private jet.  It was a jet owned by their employer, the American government.  That, though, was the least of the points that Scalia makes in a dense but hilarious — and also sage — opinion.  In the course of its 21 pages Scalia draws to an astonishing conclusion.  Which is that not only was there no basis for his recusal but that because there was no basis, he could not recuse, even if he wanted to.  He had a duty.

Joe Biden Under Pressure from Democrats to Publicly Embrace Supreme Court Packing Plan.  At a campaign stop on Thursday, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden once again refused to publicly state whether he supports packing the U.S. Supreme Court with more justices.  But some Democrats are pushing for him to do so, even though he has previously opposed it.  Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts recently urged Democrats to support court-packing if Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moves to confirm President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

New York Times Reporter:  Kamala Harris Told Me Last Year She Was Absolutely 'Open' To Court Packing.  New York Times reporter Alexander Burns said during a Thursday episode of the newspaper's podcast that Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) told him last year that she was "absolutely open" to packing the Supreme Court.  "Senator Harris told me in an interview, actually, that she was absolutely open to doing that," Burns said. [...] The remarks from Burns come after Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told reporters yesterday:  "You'll know my opinion on court packing when the election is over."

The Editor says...
If Trump wins the election, you won't hear another word from Joe Biden on this subject.  If Biden wins, he will implement whatever plans he may choose, because it will be too late for you to object.

Biden: 'You'll Know My Opinion on Court Packing When the Election Is Over'.  Joe Biden told reporters Thursday [10/8/2020] he would reveal his stance on expanding the size of the Supreme Court the day after the election.  "You'll know my opinion on court packing when the election is over," Biden said during a joint appearance with his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) in Arizona.  He said his position would become a "distraction" if he were to state it.  Biden has repeatedly dodged on the question of whether he supports expanding the size of the Supreme Court.  During the first presidential debate, Biden refused to take a position on court packing.  "Whatever position I take on that, that will become the issue," he said.

Barrett confirmation hearing may pressure Feinstein, Harris to subdue their political instincts.  California's Democratic senators forged their political brands during high-profile Supreme Court confirmation hearings like the one to be held next week with Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  But as they prepare to quiz President Trump's third nominee to the bench just three weeks before the presidential election, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris face distinct challenges that may call for them to rein in their natural political instincts.  Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, needs to prove to skeptical progressives that her preference for bipartisanship and comity won't prevent her from taking an aggressive stance against Republicans — not only during a confirmation process most Democrats view as illegitimate, but as chair of the panel next year if Democrats take the Senate majority in 2021.  In contrast, Harris, now the Democratic vice presidential nominee, may be tempted to tone down her prosecutorial style.

Biden is blatantly hiding the single biggest issue in his campaign.  The first action of all elected tyrants is to change the rules to prevent future challenges.  In America, the way to achieve this end is to pack the Supreme Court, making it a Democrat-run, unelected super-legislature with lifetime tenure.  Both Biden and Harris, though, are refusing to say whether they will pack the court, claiming the issue is too important for voters to know in case that knowledge influences their votes.  Democrats have politicized for Supreme Court decades, starting with the Bork hearings, in which Biden played a prominent and disgraceful role.  They consistently place on the Court judges who believe their role is to create rights out of whole cloth — that is, to legislate — and then to retrofit the Constitution to support their legislation.  Whenever they've had activist majorities, Democrats have used the Supreme Court to force initiatives that Americans do not support (e.g., abortion, gay marriage, and Obamacare).  Indeed, for almost 100 years, activist justices have been the primary vehicle leftists used to work fundamental changes in America.

Fact Check:  Kamala Harris Makes Up False Quote from Abraham Lincoln.  CLAIM: Abraham Lincoln declined to fill a Supreme Court seat because it was too close to the election.  VERDICT: FALSE.  The Senate was out of session.  He filled it — in one day — as soon as it was back.

Joe Biden Says 'You'll Know My Opinion on Court-packing When the Election Is Over'.  Former Vice President Joe Biden has refused, once again, to reveal his stance on "packing" the Supreme Court:  "You'll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over," he told reporters in Arizona on Thursday [10/8/2020].  Court-packing involves expanding the number of justices on the nation's highest court and filling the new seats with liberals to overcome the current conservative majority.  It was rejected the last time it was proposed, in the 1930s.  Biden has remained vague on court-packing since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month.  In Arizona, he tried to frame the issue as something only the media cared about.

Why the public, even liberals, should want Amy Coney Barrett.  The Washington Examiner/YouGov poll published on Wednesday reveals a public passionate about, and deeply split on, the Supreme Court.  Perhaps surprisingly, given this, it also reveals a public averse to extremes.  For fully 79%, the appointment of a new justice will weigh heavily when they vote in the presidential election, with 58% regarding it as "very important."  But agreement here doesn't imply concurrence over how the matter should be handled; 51% say the nomination should wait until after the election and 42% want it done now.  The poll's 3.6% margin of error means that split could be as close as 47%-46%.

Fact Check:  Lincoln Didn't Delay His Supreme Court Nomination Because He Cared About Election Integrity.  Democratic VP Nominee Kamala Harris dodged a question on court packing during Wednesday night's debate by telling a historically inaccurate tale about President Abraham Lincoln. [...] While it is true that Lincoln postponed a nomination in 1864 right before the election, "Honest Abe" didn't save his nomination of Salmon Chase, former Ohio governor, and Senator, because "it's the right thing to do."  "As ever, Lincoln was the shrewd politician and in October of 1864 he saw no profit in alienating any of the factions of his political support by making a selection before the election," writes President Lincoln's Cottage (PLC), a historical group and museum dedicated to preserving Lincoln's legacy.  Not only was the Senate out of session in October when Taney died until December 5 making it difficult for Lincoln to move forward with the confirmation proceedings necessary for a new justice, but Lincoln also strategically delayed the nomination to ensure he had Chase and other potential picks' political support through the November election.

Kamala Harris's Dishonesty on Abe Lincoln.  It was impossible to miss how Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden, refused to answer questions about their plans to expand the Supreme Court.  But she also misrepresented history.  Harris claimed at the VP debate that Abraham Lincoln refused to nominate a candidate for Chief Justice in October 1864 because "Honest Abe said, it's not the right thing to do" and wanted the people to vote first.  Lincoln, of course, said no such thing.  He sent no nominee to the Senate in October 1864 because the Senate was out of session until December.  He sent a nominee the day after the session began, and Salmon P. Chase was confirmed the same day.  And Lincoln wanted to dangle the nomination before Chase and several other potential candidates because he wanted them to campaign for him.  Lincoln's priority was winning the election, which was necessary to win the war — and he filled the vacancy at the first possible instant.  Kamala Harris is simply inventing history.

Don't fall for Democrats' bad-faith delay tactics on Amy Coney Barrett confirmation.  As President Trump and several Republican Senators battle COVID-19, Democrats are trying to use the news as an excuse to call for delaying Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearings, which begin next Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Nobody should fall for such desperate and disingenuous attempts to derail a nomination that Democrats would be opposing under any circumstances. [...] This is complete hogwash.  For months, Congressional committees have functioned by allowing for both members and witnesses to testify remotely.  Anthony Fauci has testified this way on the coronavirus.  Just last week, James Comey testified remotely about the Russia investigation.  The Judiciary Committee, in particular, has been functioning in a hybrid way that allows members to participate either remotely or in person and ask questions of nominees.  This has included many hearings for the lifetime appointments of federal judges.

Has the campaign against Barrett fizzled out already?  Or has it even really begun yet?  Democrats and the media have taken aim at Amy Coney Barrett since the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, correctly guessing that Donald Trump planned to nominate the Seventh Circuit jurist in that eventuality.  Despite all of the attacks on Barrett over the past two weeks, nothing has landed, Rich Lowry writes today at National Review, and it looks like Democrats have already emptied the quiver for the Supreme Court nominee.

The Unborkable Amy Coney Barrett.  [Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney] Barrett is too squeaky clean for [the Democrats'] usual tactics to work.  Democrats have instead gone to plan B, making clear what they've worked to obscure for the past three decades in previous attempts to derail Republican judicial nominations.  If they can't attack Barrett's qualifications for the Court, they'll explicitly attack the political consequences of her nomination.  Finally, the mask has slipped.  Forgoing even the pretext of principled opposition, Democrats now admit they oppose judges like Barrett for no other reason than that they would rein in their ability to legislate as they please and without regard for the constraints of the Constitution.

The White House Outbreak Won't Derail Amy Coney Barrett's Nomination.  An outbreak of coronavirus at the White House, which has infected not just the president and his senior staff but also at least three Republican senators, has presented Democrats with an opportunity.  They seem eager to make the most of it.  In a letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, the committee's Democratic members insisted that confirmation hearings (to which they had already objected on procedural grounds and which some Democrats had already threatened to boycott) must be postponed indefinitely due to concerns about the health and safety of senators and their staffs.  The letter reminds its readers that at least two of the three Republican senators who contracted COVID-19 are Judiciary Committee members, and CDC guidance advises anyone exposed to this disease to isolate themselves for at least 14 days — even if they test negative.  Moreover, the remote hearings that the committee has conducted throughout this pandemic are "not an adequate substitute."  The whole thing must be put on hold.  "To proceed at this juncture with a hearing to consider Judge Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court threatens the health and safety of all those who are called upon to do the work of this body," the letter insists.

Americans Back Amy Coney Barrett's Confirmation By Double-Digit Margin.  A new national poll shows Americans support the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett by double-digit margins.  A new Morning Consult poll shows Americans support Barrett on a 46-31% margin and that 15% margin of support is an increase from the polling firms last national survey in September following her nomination.  That poll had Americans backing Barrett 37-34%, a resulting 12% increase from the 3% margin previously.

Democrats Haven't Landed a Punch on Amy Coney Barrett.  The Supreme Court fight of the century is, so far, a fizzle.  The ratio of progressive outrage over the nomination of federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to supposed reasons that the U.S. Senate shouldn't confirm her is completely out of whack — there's a surfeit of the former and almost none of the latter.  Barrett has received extraordinary testimonials from her colleagues and students, who say she is brilliant, conscientious, and kind.  The opposition has countered with a dog's breakfast of nonsense, including that her confirmation hearing can't be held in the middle of a pandemic — when the Senate has continued its business since the pandemic began.

Senate Judiciary Committee Schedules Hearings On Amy Coney Barrett SCOTUS Nomination.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made good on his promise to schedule a formal hearing on Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court.  On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that Barrett's hearing will begin, as expected, on Monday, October 12, 2020, at 9 am.  "The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing on the nomination of the Honorable Amy Coney Barrett to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to begin Monday, Oct. 12 at 9:00 am & continue through Thursday, Oct. 15," the committee tweeted Monday, alongside an official statement and calendar item.

Senator Cruz says Chief Justice John Roberts 'despises Donald Trump'.  Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz says Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts "despises Donald Trump," which accounts for a number of the decisions he had made from the top seat on the high court in recent years.  In an appearance on David Brody's recently launched show "The Water Cooler," Senator Cruz, an attorney and author of the new book "One Vote Away:  How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History," told the host that "John Roberts has become the new Sandra Day O'Connor."  Cruz said he agrees with Vice President Mike Pence, who in an interview last month, told David Brody that Justice Roberts has been a "disappointment to conservatives."  However, Cruz believes that part of Roberts' pivot away from conservative-minded jurisprudence is motivated by personal hatred toward the president.  "I think it is personal," said the senator.

Biden Threatens Religious Freedom, Suggests Christians With Certain Traditional Views Are 'Dregs of Society'.  Biden's rhetoric and policies single out those who adhere to traditional religious beliefs and moral convictions, aiming to limit their ability to live by their consciences and ostracizing them from polite society.  The Democrat may outwardly campaign on a platform of unity and diversity, but his candidacy truly represents a threat to traditional religious believers.  The most recent evidence of this insidious threat came last week, when a Biden staffer suggested that traditional religious beliefs that homosexual acts are sinful and that marriage is between one man and one woman should be so "taboo" as to disqualify someone from serving on the Supreme Court.

Infected Sen. Ron Johnson vows to wear 'moon suit' for vote on Trump's court pick.  Shuttered by COVID-19 infections, the Republican-led Senate is refusing to delay confirmation of President Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court.  They are even willing to make special arrangements so sick senators can vote for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and Democrats appear powerless to stop them.  Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Monday [10/5/2020] that he'll go to the Capitol "in a moon suit" to vote if he's still testing positive for the coronavirus, which has killed more than 209,000 Americans and infected millions.  The push to put conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the high court before Nov. 3 is like nothing seen in U.S. history so close to a presidential election.  Trump's nomination of Barrett in a Rose Garden ceremony apparently became ground zero for the infections now gripping the president, his White House and its Senate allies.  Three GOP senators, including Johnson, have now tested positive for the virus and several more are quarantined at home — denying Republicans a functioning majority.

Amy Coney Barrett's Bright Future On The Supreme Court.  "Elections have consequences," former President Barrack Obama told us repeatedly during his Presidency.  In the 2016 election, voters chose Donald Trump to be President, with the power to appoint Federal Judges and Justices with the advice and consent of the Senate for his entire four-year term.  Voters should have their choice respected, not nullified by power-hungry Democrats.  The concern of voters on this issue is why Trump released a list of well-qualified legal conservatives in 2016 as prospective judicial nominees, promising to fill vacancies from the names on that list.  Trump has kept that promise faithfully during his entire term in office.  Voters elected him in part because of those respected and well-qualified names, and his appointments.

Justices Thomas, Alito slam Obergefell same-sex marriage decision as Supreme Court denies Kim Davis case.  Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said Monday that Obergefell v.  Hodges, the Supreme Court case that mandated all states recognize same-sex marriages, is "found nowhere in the text" of the Constitution and threatens "the religious liberty of the many Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred institution between one man and one woman."  The statement was written by Thomas and joined by Alito about the case of Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who said she would not give same-sex couples marriage licenses.  The two justices said they agreed with the consensus of the court that it should not take Davis' case, but only because it did not "cleanly present" the "important questions about the scope of our decision in Obergefell."  Thomas and Alito dissented from the original Obergefell decision and their statement Monday could indicate that they would vote to overturn it if presented the chance.

Democrats Hate Amy Coney Barrett Because They Hate the Constitution.  President Trump has nominated a recognized legal scholar, and a respected judge, to be the next Supreme Court Justice of the United States:  Amy Coney Barrett.  Judge Barrett is also a mother of seven children, two of whom are adopted.  In her public appearances she seems to have a pleasant personality.  Yet Democrats hate her.  One has to wonder why.  Judge Barrett has openly acknowledged that the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was her mentor:  she served as a clerk to Justice Scalia at the Supreme Court 20 years ago.  Barrett says that she "shares his judicial philosophy."  What is that philosophy?  It is called "originalism."  Originalists have the legal view that justices should adhere as closely as possible to the original text of the U.S. Constitution.  They believe judges have a responsibility to refrain from letting their personally held ideological, political or religious beliefs influence their opinions on cases brought before their Court.  Arguably, most importantly, originalists are ardently against the judicial branch attempting to legislate from the bench.

Schumer: 'A Virtual (Confirmation) Hearing Is Virtually No Hearing at All'.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday accused Republican leader Mitch McConnell of "jamming through the hearings on Amy Coney Barrett, even though three senators have COVID, even though he has said it's not safe for the Senate to meet in session, but it's OK to have the hearings."  McConnell tweeted on Saturday:  "Senate floor proceedings will be postponed until October 19th.  The @SenJudiciary confirmation hearings for Judge Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court will convene on October 12th as scheduled by Chairman Graham."  In an accompanying statement, McConnell said the Senate's floor schedule "will not interrupt the thorough, fair, and historically supported confirmation process previously laid out by Chairman Graham."

Kamala vs. ACB? Democrats Should Avoid It.  Even some of the most iconic politicians have had to hide their achilles heel. [...] Worse than a candidate having obvious flaws is when she and her campaign cannot acknowledge them.  Such is the case with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the Democratic nominee for vice president.  With the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the real Kamala Harris could be thrust front and center by virtue of her position on the Senate Judicial Committee that holds confirmation hearings for court appointees.  Such sudden and unforgiving exposure could very well implode her already lethargic ticket with Joe Biden.  The Democrats have only one precaution available to them in order to avoid this humiliation:  Ask Harris to remove herself from the confirmation hearings on the pretext that she needs to concentrate on campaigning.

The brilliance lives loudly within her.  When Amy Coney Barrett came before that microphone in the Rose Garden to make her official introduction to the wider public, you knew you were getting a different sort of Supreme Court nominee.  This wasn't polished civics instructor Neil Gorsuch or earnest political operator Brett Kavanaugh.  Here was a joyous, American-as-apple-pie judge next door. [...] Barrett's resume is impressive:  Latin honors in college and law school, a Supreme Court clerkship, a distinguished professorial career with prolific scholarship.  Yet the unassuming nature of this Notre Dame professor-turned-7th Circuit judge sets her apart from the Ivy-festooned club she's set to join.  As the mother of seven, including two adopted from Haiti, she would become the first female justice with school-age children.

5 major cases to watch at the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court on Monday will kick off a new term in which the justices will hear the latest Republican challenge to ObamaCare, a bid to reinstate voting limits in Arizona that were struck down as racially biased and House Democrats' long-running pursuit of secret Russia probe materials.  The court resumes its business just weeks after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a stalwart liberal, left a vacancy that is expected to be filled by President Trump's third nominee to the bench, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who would cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court.  Senate Republicans hope to seat Barrett prior to the Nov. 3 election, and the pace of her confirmation may have a bearing on how some of the term's cases are decided.

Lefties' silly attacks on Barrett show they really have no real complaint.  It's truly remarkable how silly the lefty commentary on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has gotten — a clear sign the critics don't dare discuss her actual merits.  First the flap over whether a multidenomational prayer group she enjoys was "the inspiration" for Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale."  What difference would it make — since Atwood went hog-wild with her imagination?  The real group plainly doesn't push subordination of women — or Barrett, an ambitious and successful woman, wouldn't go for it.  Yes, she's an observant Catholic — which prompted Sen. Dianne Feinstein to charge that "the dogma lives loudly in you" the last time liberals tried to derail a Barrett confirmation.  But she's simply on track to be the sixth Catholic on the high court, even as Joe Biden hopes to become the second Catholic president.

Cotton: Sick GOP Senators Will Be 'Wheeled in' to Personally Cast SCOTUS Vote.  Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) said that Judge Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court confirmation would move forward despite three Republican senators having tested positive for coronavirus during this week's broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Sunday Morning Futures."  Anchor Maria Bartiromo said, "Your colleagues have tested positive.  It looks like it was that Amy Coney Barrett gathering at the White House to introduce her to lawmakers.  That really was the place where so many people were exposed."

Democrats would destroy Supreme Court with scheme to pack justices.  Subtlety has been a stranger to our politics.  This is the age of rage, and there is little room for nuance.  That is evident in the intense debate over the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  Democrats have dispensed with any pretense in their calls to block her and pack the bench with more justices.  What they want is a new reliable Supreme Court created through litmus test confirmations where Senate votes are conditioned on judicial pledges.  Several Democrats have said they will ask Barrett about her view of any challenge to Roe versus Wade, and of cases like the pending challenge to the Affordable Care Act.  Barrett faced such demands from Richard Blumenthal and others for her confirmation as an appellate judge, and many Democrats voted against her because she did not promise to uphold Roe.  In their campaigns for president, Kirsten Gillibrand and Bernie Sanders pledged to nominate only those who would uphold Roe.

The secular left, Democrats can't impose a religious test on Amy Coney Barrett.  Democrats may disagree with Judge Barrett's political views or even her judicial philosophy; they have every right to do so.  But when they took their oath to uphold the Constitution, lawmakers, by definition, swore to disregard nominees' religious beliefs.  During the Barrett hearings, they should uphold their vow to the Constitution and to the American people.

Democrats threaten to block Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation by refusing to take part in the remote hearing.  Leading Democrats have described pressing ahead with Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court nomination 'irresponsible and dangerous' and said a virtual confirmation is not acceptable, after seven people at her nomination ceremony tested positive for COVID-19.  Six of the 12 Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were present at Saturday's event — Mike Lee, Marsha Blackburn, Ben Sasse, Josh Hawley, Thom Tillis, and Mike Crapo.  Two — Lee and Tillis — tested positive on Friday [10/2/2020].

The Dogma Lives Loudly in Everyone, Including Democrats.  Now that Amy Coney Barrett stands at the threshold of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, a second round of Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee members posing as an inquisition seems inevitable.  How dare this woman live as a committed Catholic right in our faces?  Is she not aware that religion generally and Christianity in particular are on the wane among Millennials, Gen Z, and costal elites and that restoration of "God" to the Democrat party platform stirred more than a little controversy just four short years ago?  And since it is the Constitution of the United States, not the manifesto of Black Lives Matter, that explicitly prohibits the application of a religious test to court nominees, the Democrats' insistence upon imposing one anyway is also inevitable, because of the dogma that lives loudly inside them.

Feinstein Again Calls For Delayed SCOTUS Hearings, Cites Trump's, GOP Senator's Positive Coronavirus Test.  Only two days after calling on Republicans to delay the Supreme Court nomination process until after the presidential election, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has, once again, called on Republicans to delay Judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination process.  In a joint statement Friday morning [10/2/2020], Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-CA) and Feinstein called on Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to delay the hearing, in part because of President Donald Trump's recent positive coronavirus test.

The Editor says...
The President's day-to-day health has no bearing on a Senate confirmation hearing.

Here's A List Of Democrats Who Have Attacked Amy Coney Barrett For Her Faith.  A number of Democratic lawmakers and liberal media figures have attacked Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett for her Catholic beliefs. [...] [#1] Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin:  Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin also questioned Barrett over an article she co-authored as a law student that included the term "orthodox Catholic," asking Barrett:  "Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?" [...] [#2] Democratic Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono:  Democratic Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono raised Barrett's "closely held views" on Wednesday [9/30/2020], suggesting that these views may make Barrett unfit to serve on the Supreme Court.  Hirono questioned "whether her closely held views can be separated from her ability to make objective, fair decisions[.]"  "She has very closely held views that will impact a woman's right to choose," Hirono said September 26, "and certainly she has already expressed her willingness to vote down the Affordable Care Act as well as other Supreme Court precedents."

The Editor says...
"A woman's right to choose" is a euphemism for infanticide.  No one has a right to commit homicide.  Incidentally, Senator Hirono is a Buddhist.*

SCOTUS Could Use More Skeptics Like Amy Coney Barrett.  Democrats worry that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, an originalist and textualist who clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia in the late 1990s, will emulate him if she is confirmed by the Senate.  We could do a lot worse.  Although progressives often portrayed Scalia as an authoritarian ogre, he was a more faithful defender of First, Fourth, and Sixth amendment rights than some of his purportedly "liberal" colleagues on the Court.  Barrett's track record during three years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit suggests she also would frequently prove to be a friend of civil liberties.  In a 2018 opinion, Barrett concluded that an anonymous tip did not provide reasonable suspicion for police to stop a car in which they found a man with a felony record who illegally possessed a gun.  "The anonymous tip did not justify an immediate stop because the caller's report was not sufficiently reliable," she wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel, noting that the report of gun possession by itself did not indicate criminal conduct.

Cardinal Dolan to Senate:  Imposing a religious test on Barrett "out of bounds," you know.  What makes this episcopal throat-clearing notable is its source.  Cardinal Timothy Dolan has good relations with politicians across the political spectrum and tries his best to foster bipartisanship and comity in tone, at least — as one should expect from faith leaders.  That has its limits, however, and for Dolan that limit was exceeded in the 2017 confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett.  "There should be no religious tests for candidates," Dolan noted on his SiriusXM show earlier today, and complained about attacks by Senate Democrats on Barrett's Catholic faith during that process.

Trump has a new running mate now.  Donald Trump has picked a new running mate.  Yes, Vice President Mike Pence is still around.  And no, the near-constant chatter about former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley did not come to pass.  But since Saturday, when Trump nominated her to the Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett has become Trump's new running mate.  No matter how you slice it, it's now "Trump-Coney Barrett 2020."

Why Do Some Republicans Drift Leftward?  A devout Catholic, [Amy Coney] Barrett will endure the unrelenting slings and arrows of oh, so tolerant Democratic senators (should they even decide to attend the hearings) and the ever fair-minded liberal MSM.  Her seven children will be presented as exhibits of evidence of her unsuitability to serve, proof that anyone who would choose to raise seven children in a stable household with a spouse, complete with homework, birthday parties, and new clothes, is someone who is hopelessly out of touch with today's new societal norms and is therefore incapable of rendering relevant judicial decisions in the modern world.  However, let's assume that Barrett survives all the procedural, legal, and personal attacks that the Democrats can muster and is confirmed to the Court.  What then?  Can conservatives be confident that Barrett will be the kind of Justice that brings a commonsense, constitutional, reliably traditional voice to the bench?  Or will she soften over time; stray from her roots; and become more of an unpredictable, random vote?

From picking up classes to cooking meals:  Notre Dame pulling for Amy Coney Barrett.  Notre Dame helped launch Judge Amy Coney Barrett's journey to the federal bench, and the community is going all out to get her confirmed to the Supreme Court.  Eager to see an alumna, professor and fellow Domer on the Supreme Court, members of Judge Barrett's university community are writing letters of support to senators, picking up her classwork and cooking meals for the Barrett family.  Nicole Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor and longtime friend, said many at Notre Dame dropped everything to attend the formal appointment ceremony at the White House.

Turning the Clock Forward.  Putting a strict constructionist in Justice Ginsburg's seat is the precursor to another four years of Trump that would move the federal courts in this direction for decades to come.  This essay suggests ten key areas of change for SCOTUS, each of which could help turn America around.  These changes might not contain all that needs to be done to restore the republic, but they would move us far down the path.  These categories allow a cohesive, united country to emerge to solve our problems in an innovative process not possible under the current administrative state. [...] The Supreme Court can be a positive or negative force.  When it is in a "living constitution mode," it is a dangerous oligarchy with the final say over everything, making it the most powerful institution in America.

Democrats Want Term Limits for the Supreme Court but not Themselves.  Yet another variation of "change the rules in the middle of the game" has arisen from Democratland.  In addition to the "mail-in" ballot scheme to cast confusion on the presidential election, peppered with a good, old-fashioned, FDR-like threat to "pack the Court," congressional democrats fuming about Amy Coney Barrett now want "term limits" for Supreme Court justices.  Sometime this week, in a shameless stunt of hypocrisy, House Democrats, led by Rep. Ro Khanna of California, will introduce a bill that would (a) limit the tenure of a Supreme Court Justice to 18 years and (b) limit a president to appointing only two justices during his term in office.  Why is this a shameless stunt of hypocrisy?  Because congressional Democrats want term limits for the Supreme Court, but they don't want term limits for themselves.

Stephen Colbert Admits 'Justice Barrett Is Inevitable, Like Death'.  Late-night host Stephen Colbert sees the writing on the wall:  "Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett" is a future that the Democrats must come to terms with.  Speaking on his show Monday night, the comedian who has turned his platform into a political forum, with jokes largely torching President Donald Trump, admitted Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the last Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat "is inevitable, like death."

Exactly what one would expect from the KKK:
Left Targets Barrett For Adopting Black Children.  [Scroll down]  The fact that Amy Barrett has adopted two black kids makes her a "white colonizer," according to Mr. Kendi of BU.  But if adopting a black child (two, in Barrett's case) makes Barrett a "white colonizer", whose goal was to have "'civilized' these 'savage' children in the 'superior' ways of White people" — then, quite effectively if unknowingly, Kendi has just accused Madonna, Jane Fonda, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Mariska Hargitay, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, Sandra Bullock and all the rest on The Root's list of the same.  To state the obvious — except to Mr. Kendi — not one of the celebs deserves to be attacked like this any more than does Amy Coney Barrett.  Suffice to say, unless Kendi or anyone else comes forward with news to the contrary, one can easily believe that all the white celebrities on this list adopted their black kids for the same reason Amy Barrett did — to love them.  The real lesson here?  In the now budding drive to bork Amy Coney Barrett, nothing is off the table.

Yes, The Vice President Breaks A Senate Tie On SCOTUS Nominees.  There was never any doubt that Democrats would fight tooth and nail to prevent President Trump from nominating a successor to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  That some of those teeth and nails would shred the Constitution in the process is disappointing, but not altogether unexpected.  To that end, Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe wrote in the Boston Globe on Wednesday that if the vote on Trump's eventual nominee to the seat should be tied in the Senate, it would fail.  In Tribe's telling, the vice president's tie-breaking vote does not apply to judicial nominees.  It's a very convenient epiphany, but one supported by neither the Constitution's text nor the Senate's historical practice.

ACB vs. 'Know-Nothing' Democrats.  he Democrats have essentially given up on blocking the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  This does not imply, however, that they will fail to turn her hearings into a nasty farce of smears of the nominee as an adherent to a voodoo-like religious devotion, and a passionate seeker of an America with no assisted healthcare and back-alley abortions.  The strategy mirrors the malicious fiction then-Senators Joe Biden and Teddy Kennedy threw at Robert Bork in 1987.  Barrett, like Bork, is obviously a person of outstanding character and intelligence with impeccable credentials as a law professor and judge.  It will not be easy for Democrats to portray such an accomplished and attractive person and personality, who departed for Washington with her husband and family of seven in a minivan, as the slavering primitivist that is their preferred caricature.

When the Dogma Lives Loudly.  When Sen. Dianne Feinstein grilled federal circuit court nominee — and now Supreme Court nominee — Amy Coney Barrett three years ago, she fretted that "the dogma lives loudly within you.  And that's of concern."  Given the senator's obvious prejudices, she should indeed be concerned.  Ms. Barrett's life story suggests that she actually believes and seeks to live what her Catholic faith teaches.  Worse, she has a superb intellect, a deep grasp of the law, and an excellent record as a jurist.  In other words, she's a nightmare for a certain kind of political tribe.  Let's put aside for a moment Sen. Feinstein's Know Nothing-style vulgarity.  After all, she's hardly alone in her bigotry.  Disdain for vigorous religious convictions, especially the Catholic kind, is a virus that's going around.  It seems to infect a number of Democratic senators, including Sen. Kamala Harris, Feinstein's California colleague and vice presidential nominee, who saw looming peril in that dangerous national conspiracy otherwise known as the Knights of Columbus.

Democrats can't smear Amy Coney Barrett.  [Scroll down]  In 1987, it was Robert H. Bork, nominated to the nation's highest court by President Reagan, who was a gentleman.  Democrats held all the advantages in that fight because instead of a gentleman, they had Sen. Ted Kennedy, a slovenly drunk menace to women.  Before the sun set, Mr. Kennedy strode to the well of the Senate to accuse Judge Bork of murdering women by denying them abortions — a darkly ironic slur given Mr. Kennedy's own sick history when it came to women.  Little more than a decade later came Miguel Estrada, a superlative jurist nominated by President George W. Bush to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — a frequent stepping stone to the Supreme Court.  Democrats, led by present-day Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Whip Dick Durbin, didn't like Mr. Estrada and blocked his nomination because, their staffers said, he was "Latino."  You know, "especially dangerous."  With each federal cours cage fight, Democrats got more and more unhinged from humanity.  More dishonest.  More ridiculous.

Biden Says Moving Forward With Barrett Nomination Before Election Day Is An 'Abuse Of Power'.  During remarks on Sunday [9/27/2020], Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden accused Republicans of engaging in an "abuse of power" for moving forward to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before election day, emphasizing that early voting has already started in some states.  "U.S. Constitution provides one chance — one — for the Americans to have their voices heard on who serves a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, who makes those big decisions about their healthcare, their civil rights, and much else," said Biden.

The Barrett Nomination Leaves Democrats With No Options but to Whine, Threaten, and Quiver.  Americans who are fair and real recognize that Notre Dame's Amy Coney Barrett is an excellent jurist worthy of sitting on the United States Supreme Court.  It is about time that other great law schools besides Harvard and Yale get that recognition.  She has all the credentials needed — and more, having just established herself in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.  Yes, the Democrats are upset that Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not have the prescience of a Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan nominee who humbly stepped aside during a Republican administration to make way for a like-minded successor, Brett Kavanaugh, who had clerked for him.  Ginsburg chose not to step down during the Obama Years, even though she was urged and even pressed to do so.

Democrats say Judge Barrett should recuse herself in election disputes.  Senate Judiciary Democrats are demanding Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett pledge to recuse herself from any election challenge, saying she would side with President Trump.  Sen. Cory A. Booker, a member of the Judiciary Committee that will hold the confirmation hearings, said he will press her about recusal when they meet one-on-one before the hearings.  "I'm going to make it very clear.  One of the things I want to ask her is will she recuse herself in terms of any election issues that come before us because if she does not recuse herself, I fear that the court will be further delegitimized," Mr. Booker, New Jersey Democrat, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The Editor says...
What does that tell you?  The Democrats plan to contest the election and take it to the Supreme Court.

Kamala Harris previews Barrett showdown in Senate statement.  Sen. Kamala Harris ripped President Trump's Supreme Court pick in a searing statement, setting up a showdown between the 2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee and Judge Amy Coney Barrett when she appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee next month.  "Just yesterday, I paid my respects to the legendary Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who devoted her life to fighting for Equal Justice Under Law and a more fair and just world," Harris wrote Saturday [9/26/2020].  "Her passing is devastating, and it would be a travesty to replace her with a justice who is being selected to undo her legacy and erase everything she did for our country."

The Most Important Line in Amy Coney Barrett's Speech.  When Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett spoke in the White House Rose Garden following her formal nomination on Saturday evening, she was everything she's been made out to be: poised, smart, and kind-hearted. [...] Then she delivered the most important part of her speech:  ["]I clerked for Justice Scalia more than 20 years ago, but the lessons I learned still resonate.  His judicial philosophy is mine, too.  A judge must apply the law as written.  Judges are not policymakers, and they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they might hold.["]

Amy Coney Barrett and the Zealots.  [Scroll down]  There is only the true and the untrue — anything obscuring this reality is dark unreality.  And the truth about Amy Coney Barrett is, quite possibly, not that the Democrats are afraid she'll impose Catholicism.  They're perhaps afraid that because she honors God, she'll also honor her oath and impose constitutionalism.

NBC Warns 'Committed Conservative' Barrett 'Instantly Controversial'.  On Saturday evening [9/26/2020], shortly after President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, NBC Nightly News let the ideological labels fly as the nominee was repeatedly identified as a "conservative" who was popular with the "religious right" and "instantly controversial."  By contrast, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was never given any left-wing political label in the report. [...] In the report that followed, correspondent Hallie Jackson emphasized:  "From President Trump, a move to cement a more conservative Supreme Court for a generation."

The Editor says...
Where is the verb in that last sentence?  That's not English, it's Headline-ese.

Barrett Will Sail.  The wheels of government tend to turn slowly, but Donald Trump has once again demonstrated that if need be, they can be made to turn with dizzying speed.  He did it last spring when he mobilized the awesome resources of American business to produce a mountain of medical materiel in record time to meet the emergency sparked by the Chinese virus.  And he just did it again by nominating Judge Barrett to meet the political emergency threatened by anti-democratic forces massing to upset the 2020 election.  Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has already announced that Barrett's confirmation hearings will begin October 12.

The Supreme Court fight of our lives.  President Trump has never been known to back away from a political fight, and choosing to nominate a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg immediately was in character.  Now he probably ends his term with the most consequential fight yet.  The result could be an enduring 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court or an embarrassing political defeat just as voters head to the polls to decide if he merits a second term.

Hawley Warns Democrats A Religious Litmus Test For SCOTUS Nominee Amy Coney Barrett Is Unconstitutional.  Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., urging him to pledge not to use "anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-faith" interrogations in the upcoming confirmation hearing for President Trump's SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett.  "There is a long history of anti-Catholic hatred by some in this country, and a growing tide of anti-religious animus on the Left now, and I hope you and your colleagues will not play any further part in it," Hawley wrote.  "Already, members of your caucus have said that they will do this again — that the nominee's religious views will be a prime focus," Hawley added.  In the letter, Hawley draws attention to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, who made "egregious personal attacks" on Barrett during her previous confirmation to become a federal judge.

Liberal Tantrums Over Amy Coney Barrett Were Expected, With Rose Garden Decoration Being Very Triggering.  [Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg passed away on September 18 at the age of 87, which sent liberal America into meltdown mode.  The liberal wing on the Court is crumbling and to make matters worse for them, President Trump is picking her successor.  Nothing could be more delicious.  And what's better is that this isn't much discontent among Senate Republicans this time.  We're pretty united.  The only solid 'no' vote right now is Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) because Maine is weird and frankly, this SCOTUS fight will not help her.  It will help everyone else.  Nothing gets the conservative base more animated than a fight for the Supreme Court.

The four Democratic overreaches that got us here.  If Amy Coney Barrett joins the Supreme Court later this year, conservatives will rightly be thrilled, but maybe Democrats and the Left will question their scorched-earth tactics of the past few years.  Had Democrats been more restrained and more bound by norms of the judicial confirmation process, Barrett wouldn't be in the position she is today, as the nominee, with 51 very likely votes in the U.S. Senate.  When talking about the judicial wars, it's always possible to go back to Miguel Estrada, Robert Bork, or even Roe v. Wade, but here it's not necessary.  We can go back to 2013 and look at four decisions made by Senate Democrats.  If they had declined to overreach in just one of these four, Barrett wouldn't be here.

Brace for a bitter debate on America's religious freedom in Senate.  If Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed for the Supreme Court, the credit will go to President Trump for nominating her and the GOP Senate for producing the votes.  But Barrett will also owe a big thank you to Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  It was Feinstein, a California Democrat, who inadvertently made the Roman Catholic mother of seven a conservative star two years ago.  At Barrett's confirmation hearing for a federal Court of Appeals seat, Feinstein complained that Barrett's faith was apparent in her writings and said she was concerned because "the dogma lives loudly within you."  The overt expression of anti-Catholic bigotry made Barrett an instant hero among religious conservatives and it's no leap to conclude Trump's embrace of Barrett has something to do with Feinstein's attack.  After all, the disrupter in chief has a special fondness for those who drive Dems crazy.

Amy Coney Barrett: 'I Love the United States and I Love the United States Constitution'.  Judge Amy Coney Barrett declared that she loves the United States and its Constitution during the Saturday ceremony where President Donald Trump nominated her to serve on the Supreme Court.  Speaking in the Rose Garden, Coney Barrett said that she was "deeply honored" by the confidence that President Trump had placed in her and expressed appreciation for his support and kindness.

'Leaked' document contains blueprint for left to disrupt Supreme Court nomination proceedings.  A document posted online by investigative journalist Millie Weaver provides an in-depth blueprint for left-wing demonstrators and groups on how to disrupt upcoming Supreme Court nomination proceedings after President Donald Trump's scheduled announcement Saturday [9/26/2020], in which he is expected to name Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's successor.  The link to the document, which is titled, "SCOTUS Rapid Response Action Guide," was tweeted by Weaver Friday evening, who tagged the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and the Justice Department.

Watching the Democrats compulsively attack Judge Barrett is kind of fun.  On Saturday, as many expected, President Trump announced that Judge Amy Coney Barrett was his nomination to fill the empty seat on the Supreme Court.  On the grounds of her intellect and abilities, Barrett is a superb choice.  All who have worked with her, regardless of their political leanings, admire her, both professionally and personally.  Barrett's also an excellent choice because the Democrats are incapable of refraining from attacking her on grounds that make the Democrats look awful.  Trump must have known that the leftists' compulsions would be their Achilles' heels.  Barrett's confirmation is a done deal because Sen. Mitch McConnell has been able to wrangle the votes he needs for Senate consent.  We also know that there is no practical or constitutional reason for the Senate not to schedule a speedy hearing and an equally swift vote.

The Canonization of Saint Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  [Scroll down]  After the memorials in her honor are complete, Ginsburg doubtless will be accorded hagiographies.  What is perhaps more troubling than the accordance of sainthood on the former justice by the left are the obsequies of Christians and others who have almost fought one another in conferring honors on a person who was unalterably and ferociously opposed to everything Christianity once stood for without apology:  the sacredness of every human life, the sanctity of marriage, the biological distinctions of the sexes, and the integrity of the Church. [...] Continuing in a similar vein, Ginsburg called for the "sex-integration of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts" because they "perpetuate stereotyped sex roles."  College fraternities and sororities were to be replaced with "college social societies."  In the interest of equality, Mother's Day and Father's Day were not to be celebrated separately[.]  Worse, "Ginsburg called for reducing the age of consent for sexual acts to people who are 'less than 12 years old.'  She wrote that laws against 'bigamists, persons cohabiting with more than one woman, and women cohabiting with a bigamist' are unconstitutional.

Note:   To conserve (my) time and bandwidth, older news and commentary about the Supreme Court has been moved to this page.