Supreme Court

There has been this new meme developing since the SOTU address that President Obama somehow breeched protocol or tradition by criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision on allowing unlimited money to flow from corporations to campaigns. This seems to be mostly fueled by the right, including some who are also critical of the decision.

I wonder when the Supreme Court became exempt from any criticism? Tom Delay had no problem doing it. I don’t remember him coming under fire for it. So why can’t the President?

The Constitution specifically sets up three equal branches of government. The very basis of what the Supreme Court does is criticizing the other two branches. As matter of fact this very case is an example of that. They criticized law enacted by the other two branches by overturning it. That’s the very basis of how our system works. So acting like Obama violated some sort of rule or protocol is showing that you don’t understand the very bedrock of our form of government. Now if we can get Democratic operatives to call them out on this, then we will be doing great.

CBS is seeing the signs that Justice Stevens term in the Supreme Court could be coming to an end:

Justice John Paul Stevens has left some clues he’s planning to retire this year, shortly after he turns 90 years old. He’s only hired one law clerk for next term, for example, and not the four that sitting justices typically hire every year.

But Stevens is unpredictable, and he’s seemed as sharp as ever from the bench, so I thought maybe, just maybe, he would pull something out of his sleeve at the last minute and stick around for awhile.
Until today.

Stevens spent a good 20 minutes this morning reading a summary of his scathing dissent in the campaign finance case. And he showed his age.

The Supreme Court has just removed campaign donation restrictions on corporations:

The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

[SNIP]

However, Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting from the main holding, said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens' dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The conservatives on the court seem hell bent on transferring the power from the people to corporate America. The Democrats have said they will put through new restrictions, but I highly doubt it. They are caving to everything right now and why should this be any different. I’m sure if a bill hits the Senate then Harry Reid will just buckle as usual.

Just got the breaking news alert. God forbid people get to see what happens in our third branch of government. My guess is that the SCOTUS is afraid it would set precedent to open up their trials to the public.

68-31 was the final tally and now the white race will be destroyed – just ask Glenn Beck!

The Supreme Court issued a 8-1 ruling today that the strip search of a 13 year old girl by school officials was illegal. Clarence Thomas was the only vote for the strip search. Make sure you check his coke can later on today.

Conservatives are out with their talking points on Sonia Sotomayor and they are priceless. I guess they couldn’t find anything to go after her on, so they decided they would question her intellect.

So they want to compare Sotomayor to Harriet Miers. How many courts did Miers serve on when Bush nominated her? Oh yeah – none. Sotomayor has been serving for years, was nominated by Clinton and papa Bush and been confirmed by the Senate twice.

This is like comparing a doctor to a first aid person. Or how about comparing the fry cook at McDonalds to Emerald Lagossi? That is how ridiculous this neo-con attack it.

Get ready for the news to change over to nonstop Supreme Court coverage. MSNBC is reporting that President Obama will be announcing his pick at 10:15 am today.

This is very interesting:

Justice David H. Souter's retirement from the Supreme Court will open a window into whether President Obama is truly a coolheaded, moderate technocrat, as claimed by Democrats, or a standard-bearer for some of the left's most extreme ideas, as claimed by Republicans.

The stakes are high - the nine justices set national law on divisive issues such as affirmative action, abortion, and religion. But Obama's choice will not shift the court's balance of power, which is divided among four liberals (John Paul Stevens, Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer), four conservatives (John G. Roberts Jr., Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito Jr.), and one man in the middle (Anthony M. Kennedy). Obama's nominee will keep the liberal pack intact.

That’s written by non-other than Constitution shredding attorney John Yoo. I got a feeling Yoo is more worried about himself than the balance of the court. Chances are the next justice will hear arguments about things like torture and warrantless wiretapping, and who was one of the people who helped bring those things to life? John Yoo.

With President Obama’s first pick for a Supreme Court justice looming, I am sitting here wondering if the GOP will try to block his pick.

There is an interesting timing here. On the same week Arlen Specter switched parties, Souter announces his retirement. Specter was the ranking member of the judiciary committee and the friendliest Republican towards Democrats. Now the Republicans can reorganize the committee a little bit and maybe filibuster an Obama pick at the committee level.

But how would this work out?

We have a President who has an approval rating in the upper 60s and a likeable rating over 80%. We are still on the heels of a historic election where the American people undeniably sounded the alarm for change. And then we have the Republicans, with their dismal approval ratings, who has been resoundingly the party of “no”.

This pick will play out into the summer – that’s a given. Everyday it plays out will put us a little bit closer to the next primary and mid-term election. Considering the power of liberal interest groups like MoveOn, if President Obama makes a choice that appeases our side and the GOP tries every move to block them, we can use this strong arsenal to fire back at the Republicans, putting them on the defense even more. This can even have an effect on House races, even though they have no part in the selection process.

Another thing we have on our side is plenty of footage of the Republicans throwing tantrums over the “up or down vote”. Remember the whole “nuclear option” thing when Alito was nominated? Republicans threatened to get rid of the filibuster if Democrats used it against a Bush pick. I don’t believe that should be done, but it would be a great tool to have on the table to fight back against the Grand Obstructionist Party.

President Obama has popularity and approval on his side. The Democrats have much more popularity and approval than their counterparts on their side. President Obama should use this capital to make a strong liberal pick. Let the Republicans try to block them and then we are given extra rounds of ammo to use against them in the upcoming mid-terms. If anything it will give us some summer entertainment.

I’m sure the right is outraged over Supreme Court Justice David Souter announcing his retirement only a few months into a Democratic administration. They probably view it as the final deception by the George H.W. Bush choice who turned out to be more to the left than right. Now we get the media frenzy over “who will Obama pick”.

This pick should be really interesting to watch, as I am sure President Obama will be much more hands on than previous Presidents. First off we have a President who is educated in Constitutional law, so his pick will be based largely upon a legal belief in the Constitution instead of an ideological one. Think back to George Bush and when the person he thought was the best legal mind in the country happened to be Harriet Miers. Not only did the left laugh her nomination out, but the right did also. It was an ideological pick, trying to turn the Supreme Court into an arm of the GOP.

So we got a President now who accepts the court as a third and equal branch of government and will respect that. President Obama’s pick will be an interesting one to watch and not a joke like George Bush.

This is a big decision:

In a stunning 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court today reversed its longstanding bright-line rule which had permitted warrantless car searches after an arrest, even when there was no concern for officer safety or the preservation of evidence. The case is Arizona v Gant.

Writing for the majority in this important decision, Justice Stevens held that the police may only search the passenger compartment of a vehicle, pursuant to the arrest of a recent occupant, if it is reasonable to believe that the arrested person might access the car while it’s being searched, or that the car contains evidence of the crime for which that person was arrested.

Drive up interstate 75, leaving dowtown Cincinnati and its common to see police with cars pulled over and them searching it. I got pulled over once and had to go through this. I know people who have been through this. Pulled over for speeding, then stuck with the police searching their car. It never did seem right, and now it isn’t.

Something else interesting in this case is how the votes went:

Interestingly, the votes were contrary to common stereotype. The majority, which limited police powers, included the two most right-wing justices in the popular mind, Scalia and Thomas. The minority, which would have expanded police powers, included two fairly liberal justices, Kennedy and Breyer.

Might take some work to get my mind around that.

The right wing conspiracy nut jobs have been having a field day bogging down our courts with claims that Obama isn’t eligible to be President, claiming he is not an actual citizen. Well the latest claim has been shot down by the SCOTUS:

The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.

The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election.

I wondered out loud the other day why the party that is all for tort reform is burdening our courts with such outlandish allegations. Will someone in the media ask some right wingers, who support these lawsuits, why they feel it important to burden the courts now?

The SCOTUS is set to rule on the D.C. gun ban today. This will be a huge decision, either way it goes.

Yeah the poor oil company couldn't afford the 2.5 billion for their disasters spill of the Valdez. Instead they only have to pay $500 million.

In other SCOTUS news, no death penalty for child rapists.