Final Wish

 

Justice Served by Nancy Ohanian

-by Dorothy Reik
California state Democratic Executive Committee

RBG had a simple final wish-- let the newly INSTALLED president nominate her successor. But while her body was still warm Trump announced that HE would name her successor and have that nomination confirmed even before the election could take place. As her earthly body lay in repose at the Court and in state at the Capital, her heavenly spirit had other ideas.

As the COVID-spreading Trump gathered his worshipers in the Rose Garden to announce his nomination of the anti-RBG to the court, upstairs other plans were being made. RBG was angry. The gods were angry. A dying wish was not to be defied-- let alone defiled! The heavenly court was in session and justice would be served.

And so it came to be that they fell, one after another. Trump's closest friends and advisors, who had gathered to celebrate the appointment of a justice who would strike down health care, were themselves struck down by the very virus Trump had labeled a hoax. Poetic justice! The first to fall was third daughter, Hope Hicks, best known for steaming the wrinkles out of Trump's pants while he was wearing them! Trump himself was next along with Melania as they returned from spreading the virus to the most important people in their lives-- their donors!

But by Thursday no members of the Senate Judiciary Committee had been infected. Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tom Tillis (R-NC), both members and attendees at the would-be coronation, had to fall next. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) fell victim too-- collateral damage.

Just for good measure Trump's debate coaches, Chris Christie and Kelly Anne Conway were hit along with Bill Stepien, the latest campaign manager and Ronna MacDaniel Romney, head of the Republican National Committee. There goes the campaign mused RBG. Brad Parscale was gone already having succumbed to madness after Tulsa and locked away.

Amy Coney Barrett, the source of all the suffering, had already been infected so her Notre Dame mentor, Reverend John Jenkins took her place among the sickened.

Yesterday, Press Secretary Kaleigh McInerney tested positive after attempting to infect the press corps by not wearing a mask-- but the press corps fooled her-- they did wear masks. It was if Trumpsters were all under the same evil spell as always-- not caring whom they infect or kill. But now they were infecting each other! RBG smiled. McConnell, under the same spell, called for Senate hearing although many of the Senators needed to be in quarantine, so desperate was he to see this already damned appointment confirmed. As RBG looked down from her heavenly perch to survey the damage she noted that more work needed to be done. Republican members of the Judiciary Committee were still standing as was Mitch McConnell, who would carry out the wishes of a president laid low-- or was he already infected? He refused to say. RBG reached for the lightening.

Will Replacing RBG Become The Top Issue In The 2020 Elections?

 

Currently there are 53 Republicans in the Senate and all they need to confirmed a replacement for RBG is a simple majority-- 50 (+ Pence to break a tie). 4 consistently unreliable Republicans have said they would not vote to confirmed a new justice this close to the election: Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME), Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). And then there's Mitt Romney, who's become the conscience of the Senate GOP-- the anti-McConnell, so to speak.

Trump says he will nominate someone immediately. Arch hypocrite-- and deceitful closet queen who lies as an everyday reflex-- Mitch McConnell has already said that Senate Republicans will vote on a nominee despite all he said-- and didn't do-- after Scalia's death. The Republicans can either try to confirm a nominee before the election or in the lame duck session after the election assuming Trump loses (and they lose the Senate majority, both of which are likely). At the very least, a Supreme Court fight will be a mega-MAGA-mobilization exercise for the GOP.

Jonathan Chait pointed out in an interview yesterday that "It’s not in the interest of Republicans facing election in 2020 to resolve this. Vulnerable Republicans are much better off having the court seat hinge on the outcome of the election. Trump himself might also be better off this way, though I doubt he will be cunning enough to see this. (Social conservatives will push him to fill the seat and he will go along, picking the course of maximal partisan aggression, as he always does.) Roberts himself also stands to lose power. He would no longer be the decisive vote. His only power would be to say something against filling the seat, and I doubt he says anything like that, but it is conceivable... [T]he lame duck period is another possibility. The dynamic is different. Any defeated Republican senators would have an incentive to vote for the nominee. However, that might seem like a more severe norm violation that could conceivably spark opposition..."

When Obama tried, unsuccessfully, replacing Scalia, he bolstered his case by nominating a very conservative, Republican-friendly Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Merrick Garland. Progressive support for Garland was grudging. That's how Democrats play. Trump will do the opposite-- find someone as polarizing as possible. These six neo-fascists are all on his short list. First and foremost is Amy Coney Barrett, an anti-choice sociopath. The other 5 include 3 senators (traditionally easiest to confirm among their colleagues): Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton-- although each has presidential ambitions. Two others on Trump's short list are two former solicitor generals-- Noel Francisco and Paul Clement. Others Trump is said to say considering include Britt Grant, Barbara Lagoa, Joan Larsen, Allison Eid, Amul Thapar and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT).

In a letter this morning, Bernie reminded his supporters of what Republicans have said on the topic, when they were tanking the Merrick Garland:

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

"I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

"It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don't do this in an election year."

Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO)

"I think we’re too close to the election. The president who is elected in November should be the one who makes this decision."

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)

"I don’t think we should be moving on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term--  I would say that if it was a Republican president."

Senator Rob Portman (R-OH)

"It is common practice for the Senate to stop acting on lifetime appointments during the last year of a presidential term, and it’s been nearly 80 years since any president was permitted to immediately fill a vacancy that arose in a presidential election year."

Please Stop And Let Me Finish, Sir by Nancy Ohanian

If Trump pushes through one of his extremists and McConnell confirms them in a lame duck session after Trump has lost the White House and the Senate, the appropriate response for the Democrats-- one that runs against their cowardly instincts-- would be to increase the size of the Court to 11 and confirm two liberal justices. But... Biden? NEVER!

Yesterday, Ben Jacobs, writing for New York, warned of a constitutional crisis in the making, even before Trump tries stealing the election. Jacobs predicted that "The appointment of a Supreme Court justice under these circumstances would transform ending the filibuster and expanding the size of the Supreme Court from a niche issue on the left to a fundamental litmus test... [I]f Joe Biden is elected and Democrats take control of the Senate, there could be a constitutional clash of a magnitude not seen since the New Deal when a right-wing Supreme Court took on Franklin Delano Roosevelt before eventually buckling under the threat of courtpacking."

SCOTUS: What If The Worst Happens?

Pray RBG outlives McConnell and Trump

I often talk about how I went to the same high school as Bernie-- James Madison in Brooklyn. Bernie graduated in 1959, a couple of years before I started. And a few years before Bernie started, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a student there. I was just 2 years old when RBG graduated from Madison but somehow the school seems more worthwhile because she was a student there. (Carole King too.)

RBG, one of the most admired women in America, was born in 1933. She'll turn 88 next March 15th. Unless Mitch McConnell's and John Thune's and their Senate cronies' Satanic prayers are answered. CNN reported that the Senate Republicans are sitting around hoping they can fill another Supreme Court seat before they are swept out of power in November, even talking about confirming a neo-fascist between November, when they are defeated at the ballot box, and January when the new Senate is sworn in!

CNN's Ted Barrett and Manu Raju: "Senate Republican leaders, undeterred by the scathing criticism leveled against them for blocking President Barack Obama's election-year Supreme Court nominee in 2016, are signaling that they are prepared to confirm a nominee by President Donald Trump even if that vacancy occurred after this year's election. The push comes despite ample apprehension from influential Republicans that the GOP could pay a political price for treating a nominee under Trump differently than they did under Obama. It also comes as Democrats are increasingly worried about the fragile health of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the 87-year-old liberal jurist who recently made public a new bout with cancer, and the possibility of other retirements. 'We will,' said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Republican leader, when asked if the Senate would fill a vacancy, even during the lame-duck session after the presidential election. 'That would be part of this year. We would move on it.'" Thune is not up for reelection this year. But McConnell is... and so is Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham.

[T]he veteran Iowa Republican who chaired the Judiciary Committee in 2016 and helped block Judge Merrick Garland-- Obama's nominee -- by refusing to schedule election-year confirmation hearings, said he would not fill a fill a vacancy now for the same reason.

"My position is if I were chairman of the committee I couldn't move forward with it," Sen. Chuck Grassley told CNN.

The current Judiciary Committee chair, Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has professed differing views about whether he would try to confirm a nominee during the last year of Trump's term.

Asked about his past opposition to moving a nominee in a presidential election year after the primary season, Graham said: "After Kavanaugh, I have a different view of judges," referencing the brutal 2018 confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

"I'd like to fill a vacancy. But we'd have to see. I don't know how practical that would be," Graham told CNN Monday. "Let's see what the market would bear."

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who's a member of the Judiciary Committee, said that if a vacancy were to occur, he would like to get a nominee confirmed before the court's term begins in October.

Hawley said he would be "shocked" if Trump didn't try to fill a vacancy despite GOP arguments in 2016 that voters should decide which president selects a nominee during an election year.

Hawley said the difference between then and now is that Obama couldn't run again but Trump is on the ballot trying to win a second term.

"I think we have a different set of circumstances. We have a President who is very actively running for reelection," Hawley said. "He's going to be on the ballot. People are going to be able to render a verdict on him like they couldn't on Obama. My guess is he would absolutely nominate somebody. I would be shocked if he didn't."

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who is running for reelection, told Iowa PBS last week she supports confirming a potential nominee this year, according to the Des Moines Register.

"(If) it is a lame-duck session, I would support going ahead with any hearings that we might have," she said. "And if it comes to an appointment prior to the end of the year, I would be supportive of that."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has repeatedly vowed to fill a vacancy this year and has said the difference between now and 2016 is that by the time Obama, a Democrat, nominated Garland to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Republicans controlled the Senate. Right now, Republicans control both the White House and the Senate.

A vacancy could put some GOP senators in a tough spot. Asked if he supported filling a vacancy this year, Sen. Thom Tillis, a vulnerable Republican running for reelection in North Carolina, said, "I am praying for Justice Ginsburg's health. That's all I'm really focused on right now."

Asked about filling a vacancy caused by retirement, not death, he downplayed the likelihood that would happen.

"I don't think there are many indications that there are. Normally those moves are made back in June over the session. I don't see any real possibility that there will be one," Tillis said.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee include-- besides Graham, Grassley, Ernst and Tillis-- John Cornyn (TX), Mike Lee (UT), Ted Cruz (TX), Ben Sasse (NE), Josh Hawley (MO), Mike Crapo (ID), John Kennedy (LA) and crackpot neo-fascist Marsha Blackburn (TN). Instead of plotting to replace RBG, maybe they should be considering why Trump has set a pack of extrajudicial facsist goons loose on Portland and is threatening to do the same thing in Chicago and Detroit.

Or, in the words of David Graham (at The Atlantic): America Gets an Interior Ministry. "For decades, conservative activists and leaders have warned that 'jackbooted thugs' from the federal government were going to come to take away Americans’ civil rights with no due process and no recourse. Now they’re here-- but they’re deployed by a staunchly right-wing president with strong conservative support. In Portland, Oregon, federal agents in military fatigues have for several days been patrolling the streets amid ongoing protests about police brutality. These forces, employed by the Department of Homeland Security, have snatched people off the streets of the city, refused to identify themselves, and detained people without charges. Ostensibly, they are present to protect federal buildings from protesters. In practice, they seem to be acting on a much wider mandate, either to suppress protests or (more cynically) to provoke confrontation on behalf of a flailing White House that sees it as electorally beneficial." What can citizens do? Vote to defeat every single politician who doesn't speak out forcefully against this, on every single ballot, in every single constituency.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Sunday Thoughts:

Now that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has announced that her cancer has returned and she's being treated for it again, it would be a very good time to pray to whatever you pray to that she can hold on longer than the current administration. Unlike Trump and Pence, Justice Ginsburg is a true warrior for her country, it's people, and what is righteous. She is a woman who obviously is putting her country first. It's not a cheap slogan to her.

Scalia (1936-2016)

We mustn't pretend that Justice Nino
was anything but, you know, what he was

UPDATE: Noah passes along a totally to-
the-point thought for the day (see below)

Futurama Wiki

by Ken

It happens every time an American officeholder dies leaving behind a record of evil: Amid the conventional pieties about the great sorrow, the great evil gets lost in the shuffle. In the case of that giant blowhard Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court justice whose sudden death came as such a shock today, it's especially important not to let the subject pass through with the usual pieties.

In a word, Nino Scalia was a monster, and leaves behind an almost unbroken 30-year career of judicial mayhem -- adjudicating and bullying his fellow justices to adjudicate according to the diseased perversions of his social and political philosophy.

It's all the more important to call Justice Nino on his record because of the pretense he was allowed to maintain that he was a judicial "originalist," that his decision-making process was based on the "original intent" of the framers of the Constitution. Like just about everything this blowhard blew, it was a lie. His opinions were almost always formed in his far-right-wing ideological cauldron, and then dressed up in language pretending to claim knowlege of framers' "original intent," which was always twisted to support his ideologically based opinion.

Justice Nino devoted untold energies in those 30 years on the High Court to transforming the U.S. into the stinking hellhole of his mind: a world of unchallenged privilege for already-overprivileged white male Christians. Justice Nino always got to decide who had what kinds of rights and how much of them; the "originalist" trappings were simply grafted on. When push came to shove, as in the far-rightists's preposterous misreading of the Second Amendment to guarantee a non-existent right of all citizens to own guns, our Nino could not only ignore the "original intent" but ignore the plain language of the amendment, which states clearly that it relates to maintaining militias.

So on matters of government power and economic privilege, we were asked to believe that the framers' original intent was always to favor the power and privilege of the ruling orthodoxy. In matters of civic rights too, the operative concern was for the most restrictive orthodoxies -- as long as it wasn't right-wing orthodoxies that might be restricted.

Finally, some thoughts on a few specific issues:

JUSTICE NINO'S LEGAL "BRILLIANCE"

We're still hearing about how brilliant Justice Nino was, and what a brilliant writer, and all I can say is, once again: WTF? As writing, his Supreme Court opinions were barely a step above gibberish -- thuggish, assaultive, take-no-prisoners gibberish, mind you, but gibberish still. I suppose you could say he was a master of sophistry -- phony-baloney arguments dressed up to sound like simple logic. But I don't get how this passes for brilliant legal argumentation.

Hardly a word of his bombastic blithering ever made actual sense except as shameless bullying, substituting raw prejudice and aggression for argumentation. If any of his opinions had been submitted as a freshman English composition, it would have to have been graded somewhere between a peak of D-minus and a closer-to-typical F-minus. All the self-confidence in the world doesn't make logic-free, ad hominem ranting minimally acceptable argumenation.

THE SUPREME COURT SUCCESSION

I know there's already outrage being voiced at Republican leaders' bald statement that they won't consider an Obama nomination. This is certainly cheeky, but the reality is that as our system has evolved, there isn't much chance of Senate consideration of a Supreme Court nomination that's made in the final year of a presidential term, even though the Constitution doesn't offer any such proscription. But it is the reality, isn't it?

FOOTNOTE: IF THE SHOE WERE ON THE OTHER FOOT

I always like to play this little game, If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot. Of course if it was a Republican president faced with a Supreme Court vacancy in February of the fourth year of his/her term, any attempt by Democrats to interfere with his/her constitutional responsibility to name a replacement would be greeted with choruses of right-wing outrage and cries of "tyranny!"

But for right-wingers nowadays, hypocrisy is considered not just "no foul" but a virtual obligation. If you aren't being hypocritical, it's assumed you aren't really trying.

It's sobering enough to consider that right-wingers now have effective control of the Supreme Court confirmation process, as long as there isn't a 60-vote majority against them, and there isn't ever going to be one. And that means that the Right has influence amounting to veto power over the Supreme Court appointment process, since the right-wingers have effective veto power over any nominee they can muster 41 votes against.

This explains, I think, why -- notwithstanding right-wing invective against "liberal Supreme Court justices" -- we haven't in fact had a liberal Supreme Court justice, as far as I can see, since the retirement of Thurgood Marshall in 1993, and probably won't ever have another. The best we can hope for is moderate justices as distinguished as John Paul Stevens (1875-2010) and David Souter (1990-2009) -- both great justices, I think, for the intrepidity of their support for authentic constitutional values, at a time when those values were being increasingly assaulted by the right-wing thug justices, but neither in any sense a liberal.

The same goes for the Court's current block of moderates: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993-), Stephen Breyer (1994-), Sonia Sotomayor (2009-), and Elena Kagan (2010-), honorable moderates all. Godspeed to them all.

There is, of course, an opportunity here for the DSCC --

To campaign for Democratic Senate candidates to retake control of the Senate, arguing the importance of Supreme Court confirmations (and confirmation of other presidential appointees). Democratic control wouldn't change the grim reality of the power of the filibuster, but it would certainly make a difference whether the Judiciary Committee holding confirmation hearings is chaired by a D or an R.

Yeah, I know this is pretty hilarious. I just thought I'd mention it.

ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION: THE
IMMEDIATE POST-SCALIA COURT

My gut response to the prospect of the current eight-member Supreme Court configuration remaining in place for, probably, more than a year: This is probably as good as we're going to get -- a case of addition by subtraction. At least now none of the nightmares that were set to ensue with the old 5-4 majority can happen. (Presumably the Court is sitting on a stack of cases it thought it had "decided" by that majority. Sorry, guyz!) Of course not much good can happen in this configuration except insofar as Slow Anthony K (or just possibly Chief Justice "Smirkin' John" Roberts) is prepared to make it happen, but how is this any different from the situation we've been in?

Obviously there are a lot of cases where the remaining justices will have to try to finesse 4-4 splits, trying to see if there's any kind of decison for which either side can negotiate a fifth vote. This will be especially problematic where federal appellate courts dump conflicting rulings in the High Court's hopper. It will be a mess. But can anyone say that the history of the Roberts Court has been anything but a mess?


UPDATE: NOAH SHARES THIS TOTALLY
TO-THE-POINT THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"For some reason," he says, "I've been thinking of the attached quote attributed to Clarence Darrow's 1932 memoir."

#

Justice Ginsburg argues that justices claiming to uphold the eternal definition of marriage don't know what they're talking about

by Ken

When I went yesterday with the Washington Post team's account of the Supreme Court's oral arguments on the cases it's hearing regarding same-sex marriage, I kept meaning to check ThinkProgress to see what legal eagle Ian Millhiser had to say about the proceedings. For general coverage I think we did OK, but now I'm happy to say that we can turn to Ian M for his particular take.

It turns out that he has taken particular note of a comment by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in response to some usual blithering from the Court's biggest blowhard-jackass, Nino Scalia. (There may be dumber justices. "Sammy the Hammer" Alito, for an instance. And the Hammer may be as vicious as Justice Nino. But he's nowhere near as overbearingly loud.) Here's Ian:

During Tuesday’s marriage equality arguments in the Supreme Court, several of the Court’s conservative members suggested that same-sex couples should not be given equal marriage rights because these couples have not enjoyed those rights for most of the past. As Justice Antonin Scalia summed up this argument, “for millennia, not a single society” supported marriage equality, and that somehow exempted same-sex couples from the Constitution’s promise of equal protection of the law.

Not long after her conservative colleagues raised this argument, however, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained exactly why marriage was long understood to be incompatible with homosexuality in just five sentences:

[Same-sex couples] wouldn’t be asking for this relief if the law of marriage was what it was a millennium ago. I mean, it wasn’t possible. Same-sex unions would not have opted into the pattern of marriage, which was a relationship, a dominant and a subordinate relationship. Yes, it was marriage between a man and a woman, but the man decided where the couple would be domiciled; it was her obligation to follow him.

There was a change in the institution of marriage to make it egalitarian when it wasn’t egalitarian. And same-sex unions wouldn’t — wouldn’t fit into what marriage was once.

It was a blunt reminder, or an attempt at a blunt reminder (subtlety is so wasted on many of Justice Ginsburg's fellow justices that even hammerlike bluntness may come across as filigreed nuance) that justices who imagine they're defending an eternal and unchanging definition of marriage are full of doody, because until surprisingly recently a concept as simple-sounding as "a man and a woman" not only wasn't simple but in fact from a legal standpoint meant something not at all like what the doody-strewers think.

Here's Ian again:

Justice Ginsburg’s point was that, until surprisingly recently, the legal institution of marriage was defined in terms of gender roles. According to Sir William Blackstone, an eighteenth century English jurist whose works are still frequently cited today to explain the common law principles we inherited from our former colonial rulers, “[t]he very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything.” As late as 1887, fully one third of the states did not permit women to control their earnings. And married women could not even withhold consent to sex with their husband until shockingly recently.

Under the common law, “by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given herself up in this kind unto her husband,” and this consent was something “she cannot retract.” The first successful prosecution in the United States of a husband who raped his wife did not occur until the late 1970s.

So American marriage law, and the English law that it was derived from, presumed that the wife was both financially and sexual subservient to the husband. In a world where marriage is defined as a union between a dominant man and a submissive woman, each fulfilling unique gender roles, the case for marriage discrimination is clear. How can both the dominant male role and the submissive female role be carried out in a marital union if the union does not include one man and one woman? This, according to Justice Ginsburg, is why marriage was understood to exclude same-sex couples for so many centuries.

But marriage is no longer bound to antiquated gender roles. And when those gender roles are removed, the case for marriage discrimination breaks down.

IAN'S TAKE YESTERDAY, BY THE WAY . . .

. . . was: "The Lawyer Defending Discrimination In The Supreme Court May Have Just Talked Himself Out Of Victory." He pointed out that lawyer John Bursch, when he took the podium, focused on the argument that "When you change the definition of marriage, that has consequences," and when pressed on those consequences trotted out an argument that was used in Sammy the Hammer's dissent in United States vs. Windsor, that the Court majority was siding with, as Ian put it, "a 'traditional' view" of marriage" which sees it "as an 'exclusively opposite-sex institution and as one inextricably linked to procreation and biological kinship' " over "a 'consent-based' view 'that primarily defines marriage as the solemnization of mutual commitment -- marked by strong emotional attachment and sexual attraction - between two persons."

The problem? In Windsor, "Only one other justice, however, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined this part of Alito’s dissent."

As Bursch pressed this view, he was challenged by Justice Kennedy -- whose position is generally considered crucial to the outcome of the present bundle of cases -- and in Ian's view "Bursch's response to Kennedy's concerns was a disaster." You can read more in the post at the above link.

#

"Justice Ginsburg explains everything you need to know about religious liberty in two sentences" (Ian Millhiser)

Plus: Justice Nino daydreams about mandatory polygamy


"Unlike the exemption this Court approved in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., accommodating petitioner's religious belief in this case would not detrimentally affect others who do not share petitioner's belief. On that understanding, I join the Court's opinion."

-- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ruling
with a unanimous Court today in Holt v. Hobbs

by Ken

The case itself, this Holt v. Hobbs, turned out to be so simple constitutionally that not only was the Supreme Court's verdict unanimous, but even dim bulb "Sammy the Hammer" Alito actually got it well enough to explain it almost right in the Court's ruling.

The "almost right" refers to the distinction Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg understood was necessary to set forth, which she did in the two sentences quoted above, the two sentences in question in Ian Millhiser's ThinkProgress post "Justice Ginsburg explains everything you need to know about religious liberty in two sentences."

The one tricky thing about the case was that it called on the Roberts Court to apply the religious liberties it has become so protective of to a non-Christian. And this court, in common with the far-right-wing ideology it now champions, while pretending to be great believers in "freedom," in fact generally supports only the precise kinds of freedom for the precise kinds of people it believes are right -- meaning, usually, Right. However, in this case even the easily fooled Sammy the Hammer wasn't fooled.

The case concerns a Muslim inmate in an Arkansas maximum-security prison, one "Gregory Houston Holt AKA Abdul Maalik Muhammad," who claims that preventing him from growing even the half-inch beard he's willing to settle for violates his religious requirement to have a beard, without the legal justification in terms of actual harm required by the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. And Justice Alito agrees in his ruling that Arkansas prison officials haven't met the test of RLUIPA, to provide credible examples of how allowing the limited beard imposes a security burden on the prison.

IN THE ORAL ARGUMENTS --

The justices devoted a fair amount of questioning to the half-inch-beard standard, understandably wondering if there is an enforceable standard. Justice Ginsburg began by raising the utterly reasonable question: "If this prisoner wanted to have a full beard, would RLUIPA require that the prison administration allow him to do that?" Again, it's a fair question, even though, as the petitioner's advocate pointed out, 40 other state prison bureaus allow beards without any restriction of length, and it would seem under RLUIPA that it's the prison's burden to establish the dangers of the requested beard. But Justice Scalia, pointing out rightly that the actual Islamic requirement would be for a full beard, not a half-inch one, pursued his questioning with the analogy of a hypothetical religion that requires polygamy, and whether that requirement would be satisfied by allowing just two wives.

Now, let's assume in the religion that requires polygamy. I mean, could ­­-- could I say to the prison, well, you know, okay, I won't have three wives; just let me have two wives. I mean, you're still violating your religion, it seems to me, if he allows his beard to be clipped to one ­­ one inch, isn't he?

Again, there's a legitimate issue thrashing around in this thicket, but it's couched in such a whacked-out form as to raise two obvious questions: [1] Would Justice Scalia conjure such a bizarre analogy in discussing possible limitations of a Christian religious requirement? [2] What the hell is wrong with that man?

ANYWAY, JUSTICE SAMMY DID SEEM TO GRASP . . .

. . . in his opinion that the Arkansas prison folks had failed to make the kind of need-based case justifying a religious infringement which would be required under RLUIPA, and that's pretty much the end of the story.

Except that, as Ian notes, it's not quite the end of the story. At least it wasn't for Justice Ginsburg. Ian explains (links onsite):

Though Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins Alito’s opinion, she also penned a two sentence concurring opinion explaining why Tuesday’s decision is a proper application of an individual’s religious freedoms — and why she believes that the Court’s birth control decision in Hobby Lobby was erroneous. “Unlike the exemption this Court approved in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.,” Ginsburg explains, “accommodating petitioner’s religious belief in this case would not detrimentally affect others who do not share petitioner’s belief. On that understanding, I join the Court’s opinion.”

Prior to Hobby Lobby, the Court’s precedents honored a careful balance between religious liberty and the legal rights of others. People of faith have robust rights to honor their beliefs and act on their conscience, but they couldn’t interfere with someone else’s legal rights. Indeed, Hobby Lobby’s claim that they could defy a federal rule requiring them to include birth control in their employee health plan was especially weak because Hobby Lobby is a for-profit business. As the Court held in United States v. Lee, “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.”

Unlike Hobby Lobby, Muhammad sought a concession to his faith that has no impact on anyone other than himself. As Alito’s opinion in Holt lays out, the prison’s concerns about the consequences of allowing him to grow a beard were unwarranted. And no one else will have to do anything with their facial hair (or, for that matter, lose access to important medical care), because Muhammad will be allowed to grow a beard.

Score a good catch for Ian, I would say, and a good catch for Justice Ginsburg.

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The Supreme Court sends a message to would-be job discriminators: Discriminate away, baby!

The new president signs the Lilly Ledbetter Act in January 2009, with Lilly Ledbetter visible seen behind him and members of Congress looking on.

by Ken

Howie has already called attention to the Roberts Court's extremist coup with its Voting Rights Act slapdown. I suppose it's possible that the five thug-justices really don't understand what they did, but the signs all over the country are that the message has been received by the country's vote suppressors, indeed all the felons who have been toiling so prodigiously to disenfranchise people they don't like. Last week he wrote:

The 5 conservative bastards did something far more destructive the day before by striking down the Voting Rights Act. It's a much bigger deal than letting gays marry-- because it will inevitably lead to a far more conservative and intolerant government, one that could do a great deal of harm to, among others, the LGBT community.

Now I really don't want to minimize the importance of the rulings striking down Section 3 of DOMA and affirming the demise of California's Prop 8. There are a lot of people for whom marriage equality is a paramount issue, and it's kind of astonishing to find the weight of the Supreme Court -- not least as conservative a court as this one -- behind it, even with all that remains to be done. There should also be a certain amount of momentum. If the homophobes are worried that it may be hard to prevent marriage equality from spreading, or being forcibly spread, to the 37 holdout states.

At the same time, there's no sign of a groundswell of support at either the federal or state level for making equality in such arguably more important areas as employment and housing the law of the land. I think such developments are more possible now that they've ever been, but it's hard to detect a lot of momentum carrying over from marriage-equality victories.

And the happy vibes of those rulings are overshadowing other dark doings of the Roberts gang. Myself, I don't think it's any coincidence, as is suggested by the stage-managing of the dispensing of the term's decisions in those final weeks.

The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin focuses in a new blogpost, "Will Ginsburg's Ledbetter Play Work Twice?," on the decisions that "Sammy the Hammer" Alito read the same day he was noticed ridiculing Justice Ginsburg while she read her dissents. Toobin recently did >an interesting profile of the justice, "Heavyweight: How Ruth Bader Ginsburg has moved the Supreme Court" (available free to subscribers only), noting that her history isn't that of the standard liberal people generally assume, given her focus on issues outside the standard ideological boundary markers, like job discrimination against women.

In the new post, Toobin notes that those cases "recalled the biggest loss -- and biggest victory -- of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's career on the bench."

The subject was job discrimination, which is prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Six years ago, the Court threw out a case that a woman named Lilly Ledbetter brought against her long-time employer, Goodyear Tire & Rubber. Ledbetter had been paid less than her male counterparts for many years -- something she didn't know until shortly before she left the company. The Justices, in an opinion by Samuel Alito, said that she had waited too long to bring her case, and extinguished her claim on statute-of-limitations grounds.

Ginsburg wrote a strong dissent in the Ledbetter case, in which she was joined by three other Justices. She called on Congress to amend Title VII and undo the damage of the Court's decision. She pointed out that it was unfair to force Ledbetter to sue before she knew she had been a victim of discrimination. But Ginsburg knew that Congress, not the Court, framed the meaning of any federal law. She said Congress could, and should, amend Title VII to make it clear that Ledbetter and others like her had the right to sue. "The ball is in Congress's court," Ginsburg said, in an opinion that she read from the bench.

"Ginsburg's timing was exquisite," Toobin writes.

In 2007, Democrats had just retaken control of the House of Representatives and were on the verge of winning the Presidency. The first bill that Barack Obama signed as President was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, just as Ginsburg had hoped. A framed copy of the bill, inscribed by Obama, has an honored place in Ginsburg's Supreme Court chambers.

It was a pair of Title VII cases that Sammy the Hammer screwed up Monday, joined naturally by his four fellow thug-justices for 5-4 majorities.

In Vance v. Ball State University, the Court narrowed the definition of "supervisor." This is important because plaintiffs can win in Title VII cases only if they suffer discrimination from a supervisor, not from a peer in the workforce. In the other case, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the Court cut back on the definition of "retaliation," which is a key term underlying many Title VII cases.

In the dissent (joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) that she read from the bench, she wrote, ""The Court's disregard for the realities of the workplace means that many victims of workplace harassment will have no effective remedy." And as Toobin notes, she "ran her Ledbetter play again," writing:

Six years ago the Court read Title VII in a similarly restrictive way. In 2009, Congress corrected that error. Today, the ball lies again in Congress's court to correct this Court's wayward interpretation of Title VII.

The chances aren't great, though, first because the job-discrimination cases "they will be swamped by the other, more dramatic cases at the end of the term"; second, because "there is no compelling figure, like Ledbetter, to bring the cause to life."

But, most important, the politics of the day are different. In 2009, Democrats controlled sixty votes in the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives. The new President's honeymoon was in full swing. Today, the Republican House shows little interest in the plight of victims of job discrimination; the Senate, too, has a Republican veto in the form of the filibuster. This time, Ginsburg's call was no less eloquent, but it's far less likely to be heard.

There is a temptation to think that the cases decided are merely technical refinements to Title VII law. The very fact that the Supreme Court took the cases, and then wrestled them to 5-4 decisions, suggests otherwise. And there's the additional message factor. Once again the Roberts Court has sent a signal that the kinds of people who need the kind of protection Title VII was designed to provide sure ain't gonna get it from this court. Discriminate away, baby. We've got your backs.

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Democratic Senators Who Voted To Confirm Fascists To The Supreme Court

Justice Ginsburg, who, like Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, went to my high school, James Madison in Brooklyn, knows what she's talking about when she says the decision by the 5 right-wing Republican activists on the Supreme Court, each of whom is also a corporate whore, produced an anti-democratic ruling stinking of "hubris." She pointed out how illogical their nakedly partisan arguments were:

In the Court’s view, the very success of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act demands its dormancy. If the statute was working, there would be less evidence of discrimination, so opponents might argue that Congress should not be allowed to renew the statute. In contrast, if the statute was not working, there would be plenty of evidence of discrimination, but scant reason to renew a failed regulatory regime.

Our fellow Madison alumnus, Bernie Sanders, was even more to the point: "The Supreme Court has turned back the clock on equality in America by striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The landmark civil rights law that Congress passed almost five decades ago, and reauthorized with overwhelming bipartisan support only seven years ago, has been an important tool to protect voters in places with a history of discrimination. The law is as necessary today as it was in the era of Jim Crow laws. We must act immediately to rewrite this vital law." I think Republicans have a different agenda than Bernie. Speaking for all the racists and bigots who dominate the GOP, neo-fascist Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-SC) was positively giddy with the decision:

Today’s Supreme Court’s ruling invalidating the preclearance requirements contained within the Voting Rights Act is a win for fairness, South Carolina, and the rule of law. The preclearance requirement forced South Carolina to spend millions of dollars to defend a photo identification requirement for voting that had already been ruled constitutional by the US Supreme Court. The court’s ruling will hopefully end the practice of treating states differently and recognizes that we live in 2013, not the 1960's.

Michael Keegan, President of People for the American Way called the Supreme Court riling a "terrible blow to the Voting Rights Act."

As the Supreme Court swerves further to the right, our constitutional liberties continue to take a beating. Today, the Supreme Court seriously undermined an important piece of the premier civil rights legislation of the past century-- legislation that civil rights heroes gave their lives for. This decision sends a chilling message to all those Americans who continue to face politically-motivated hurdles on their way to the ballot box.

In his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice John Roberts pledged to behave like an umpire-- just calling balls and strikes, and staying out of the game. Today that umpire upended decades of civil rights law. His decision substitutes his own opinions for the findings of America’s elected representatives in Congress, who found numerous cases of ongoing, racially-based political gerrymandering and trickery. Moreover, it does so in an area in which the Constitution specifically and intentionally gives Congress wide discretion. Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act received near unanimous support in both houses of Congress just a few years ago, and was signed into law by President Bush. Today’s decision is a blatantly inappropriate exercise in legislating from the bench. Conservatives who have spent decades decrying judicial activism should take note.

In two separate cases yesterday, Justice Ginsburg called on Congress to fix the damage done by decisions handed down by our nation’s highest court. That need is even greater today. Congress should move quickly to enact a coverage formula under Section 4 to protect voters whose right to participate in our democracy was badly undermined today. The American people deserve no less.

So how did these 5 corporate whores and GOP political hacks wind up on the Supreme Court? Who's to blame? Glad you asked, especially in light of a tweet from Matt Canter, Deputy Executive Director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee:

These are the 5 right-wing extremists on the Court with some info about how each got there, chronologically. First came Reagan's second pick, Antonin Scalia, who got the job when Reagan elevated former GOP Arizona voter fraud operative William Rehnquist to be Chief Justice. Although Scalia is probably the most extreme ideological rightist appointed to the court since Jackson appointed Roger Taney in 1836, he faced no opposition from the Judiciary Committee and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Among the Democrats voting for him were Joe Biden, Carl Levin, Ted Kennedy, Max Baucus, and Pat Leahy. Take a bow, guys.

Reagan's next appointment was Anthony Kennedy, who had previously drafted California Governor Reagan's pro-corporate and very reactionary tax policies. He was Reagan's third choice after the Senate rejected Bork (who almost made Scalia seem mainstreamish) and Douglas Ginsburg, who withdrew after it came out he was a pothead. He was confirmed 97-0 in 1988. The same bunch of Democrats still kicking around today who voted for Scalia-- Biden, Levin, Baucus, and Leahy-- also voted for Kennedy.

Then we get Clarence Thomas, George H.W. Bush's second appointment-- and, ironically, the second African-American to serve on the Court. (Bush's first appointment was David Souter who has already retired.) Because Thomas was so clearly unqualified in every way, this was a very contentious confirmation process. Thomas' career has always been serving as a professional Uncle Tom for the GOP and he's easily the least qualified justice nominated to the Court in the 20th Century, Jeffrey Toobin remarking that he was the only "plausible" African American the GOP could come up with to replace Thurgood Marshall, who would be a lockstep corporate whore and right-wing ideologue. He hasn't disappointed. The American Bar Association was astounded about his unsuitability for the appointment. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-7 and sent his nomination to the full Senate without a recommendation. He was confirmed by a 52-48 vote on October 15, 1991, the narrowest margin for approval in more than a century. All the normal Democrats (plus mainstream Republicans Bob Packwood and Jim Jeffords) voted against him. But 11 conservative Democrats, mostly from the South, joined the Republicans to confirm him. None of the Democrats are still in the Senate except Dick Shelby (AL), who soon after switched parties and joined the GOP.

The final two monsters on the Court, Roberts and Alito, were nominated by George Bush. Bush nominated Roberts to take over from Sandra Day O'Connor when she retired in 2005, but just as the process was getting underway, Rehnquist-- who was already horribly senile-- finally died. Bush realized they could slip Roberts-- a total Chamber of Commerce kind of guy-- in as Chief Justice. With Ted Kennedy, Richard Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden voting against him, the Judiciary Committee approved the nomination 13-5. The following week he was confirmed by the Senate 78-22, all the Republicans and exactly half the Democrats voting for him. Democrats still serving in the Senate today who voted to confirm Roberts:

• Max Baucus (MT)
• Tom Carper (DE)
• Tim Johnson (SD)
• Mary Landrieu (LA)
• Patrick Leahy (VT)
• Carl Levin (MI)
• Patty Murray (WA)
• Bill Nelson (FL)
• Mark Pryor (AR)
• Jay Rockefeller (WV)
• Ron Wyden (OR)

Do you think they would vote for him again today? I might add that among the other Democrats who voted to confirm Roberts were Russ Feingold, Joe Lieberman (before he was kicked out of the party), and Blanche Lincoln. Among the 22 senators voting NO were Barack Obama, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

And the final piece of shit in a judicial robe, also nominated by Bush-- after his girlfriend Harriet Miers was laughed out of Washington by Democrats and Republicans-- was Sam Alito, another Big Business hack. Bush nominated him for the O'Connor seat in November, 2005 and he was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a 10-8 party line vote. John Kerry decided to filibuster the nomination because Alito was so extreme. The filibuster was shut down in a 72-25 vote, paving the way for confirmation. The cloture vote was the one that counted and the Democrats still serving today who crossed the aisle and voted with the GOP to end the filibuster were:

• Max Baucus (MT)
• Maria Cantwell (WA)
• Tom Carper (DE)
• Tim Johnson (SD)
• Mary Landrieu (LA)
• Bill Nelson (FL)
• Mark Pryor (AR)
• Jay Rockefeller (WV)

This week Alito was caught making juvenile faces while women members of the Court read their opinions. Among the Democrats backing the filibuster were Obama, Feingold, Clinton and-- finally-- Leahy.

A Citizens United sequel? Do Justices Ruth and Steve know something about their Supreme Court thug-colleagues that we don't?

Is one of the loons in the group secretly harboring non-elitist thoughts?

by Ken

The WaPo headline is tantalizing:

Two justices suggest Citizens United ruling
should be reconsidered in Montana case

The obvious thought is that one or more of the justices responsible for the Citizens United abomination, which made it official that elective office in the U.S. belongs exclusively to the highest bidder, has been sufficiently shamed by the spectacle of the 2012 election season to date to be willing to think about doubling back on that decision's shamefully ignorant and dishonest legal gibberish.

And the Post's Robert Barnes's lead sustains this impression: "Two Supreme Court justices suggested Friday that the court reconsider its controversial 2010 decision that allowed unlimited corporate and union spending in elections."

But then the illusion seems to me to disappear.

For one thing, it came as the court was blocking a decision by the Montana Supreme Court "upholding a century-old ban on corporate campaign spending in the state."

The Montana ruling seems squarely at odds with the court's 5 to 4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed unlimited corporate spending. The U.S. Supreme Court majority had said such independent spending did not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

In other words, the Supreme Court, in turning thumbs down on the Montana high court's ruling, was doing just what you would expect. So what's the story?

In Friday's order, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer said the upheaval in the world of campaign finance since the Citizens United decision does not bear out the majority opinion.

"Montana's experience, and experience elsewhere since this court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations 'do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,' " Ginsburg wrote.

"A petition for certiorari [from those challenging the Montana court's decision] will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates' allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway."

(Barnes later explains: "Ginsburg appeared to refer to the vast amounts of money spent by super PACs that have flourished in the aftermath of Citizens United and subsequent decisions by lower courts and the FEC.")

My takeaway? Justices Ruth and Steve are whistling in the dark. Unless, that is, they know something about one of their right-wing-loon colleagues. "Slow Anthony" Kennedy, maybe? Or maybe they're just hoping that one or more of their colleagues won't have the gall to "do it again."

But I really don't think so. Not from the confident way the court slapped the Montanans down. And the right-wing bloc on the High Court has hardly shown itself lacking in gall, or especially rich in shame. Of course, as reporter Barnes points out, there's no reason to assume the court would even take the case as envisaged in the Ginsburg-Breyer proposed scenario. And even if it does, the outcome I would expect would be requiring plaintiffs who complain about the powers of the rich to pay all the court costs of their "foolishness." In the era of the Roberts Court, we know who owns access thereto.

For the record, Barnes explains:

The Montana court's action has given rise to the first challenge of the Citizens United decision. By a 5 to 2 vote, the state court upheld Montana's 1912 Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits certain political spending by corporations.

The Montana court acknowledged the conflict with Citizens United, but Chief Justice Mike McGrath said the state was especially vulnerable to "continued efforts of corporate control to the detriment of democracy and the republican form of government."

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Has Jim Bunning's Alzheimer's Made It Impossible For Him To Function?

Jim Bunning pauses to try to remember his name... fails

It wasn't even a month ago that Kentucky and national Republican leaders were desperately trying to persuade KY Secretary of State Trey Grayson to mount a primary campaign against unpopular and severely senile extremist Jim Bunning. Grayson says he'd like to run in the general but won't move against the doddering Bunning who many think is likely to either die or be declared incompetent because of his dementia before the 2010 election. Bunning was unable to campaign at all in 2004 and barely managed to retain his seat. Recent polls show him losing by a substantial margin in 2010. He has been gambling on a 100% obstructionist course and is hoping that Obama and not GOP policies will be blamed for a continuing economic downturn in America. But with Bunning digging in his heals and directing a hissy fit towards McConnell and Cornyn-- the two who are most eager to push him into retirement-- the GOP has turned to Kentucky's state Senate president, an ambitious and extremist maniac named David Williams. Williams barely got a third of the vote when he ran against incumbent Senator Wendell Ford in 1992.

Although Bunning bristles when people bring up his increasing derangement and fragile physical, mental and emotional health, on Saturday he publicly declared that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would die of cancer within 9 months, causing more people to question his mental well-being. His point was not necessarily to celebrate the progressive justice's death but to point out that he could somehow make sure she is replaced by a conservative. "Ruth Bader Ginsburg… has cancer. Bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better from," he told a crowd of voters.

"Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," he said.

Ginsburg, who is 75, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer earlier this month and surgeons removed a small tumor that had not spread. Doctors termed it a "Stage 1" cancer, meaning they found it in the early stages when it is most curable.

According to the American Cancer Society, people diagnosed with Stage 1 pancreatic cancer have between a 21 and 37 percent chance of living for more than five years with the disease.

Only about 20 percent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer live for more than a year, but that's because the cancer is difficult to detect and generally is found in later stages.

Once a staffer told him that his remarks were reported by the press, his office issued a typically insincere apology this morning... misspelling her name.

Because Bunning is considered among the walking dead-- politically and physically-- he has been unable to raise any money. Increasingly frustrated, he lashed out insanely at NRSC chairman John Cornyn, a right wing extremist like himself, accusing him of starving the wingnut incumbents-- himself, DeMint, Coburn and Vitter-- while lavishing campaign cash on hated moderates Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe. Speaking on condition of anonymity a Snowe staffer explained that the wildly popular Maine senator won't be facing voters for another three-and-a-half years and that everyone in her office feels badly about Bunning's mental deterioration and inability to cope with the fast pace of the modern world.


UPDATE: MORE REPUBLICANS CALL ON BUNNING TO HANG UP HIS CLEATS

Republican strategist Phil Musser told MSNBC yestreday that although Bunning was "a great baseball player," his time is up and the Republicans should get a primary opponent to get his embarrassing dead ass out of the Senate. "We need a Grand New Party; we need a new generation of leadership... He's increasingly erratic. His public statements are an embarrassment." Meanwhile, Bunning says he'll sue Cornyn and the NRSC if they try to replace him.

High Court, slashing Exxon Mobil tab, declares itself the Official Tool of CorporateAmerica, a wholly owned subsidiary of CheneyCo

"The new law made by the court should have been left to Congress."

-- Justice Ginsburg, dissenting from the made-up majority opinion that
punitive damages can't exceed actual economic compensation

With Justice David Souter of all people writing for the Roberts Court's CorporateAmerica majority, the Supreme Court voted today 5-3 to slash the punitive damages Exxon Mobil Corp. must pay to victims of the Exxon Valdez oil wreck -- previously halved to $2.5 billion by lower courts -- all the way down to $500 million, on the theory that the company can't be made to pay victims more in punitive damages than they were paid in economic compensation, according to the Associated Press.

Writing in dissent (along with Justice John Paul Stevens), both Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer registered the technical objection that, hey, bub, there's no such law, and law-making is kind of what, y'know, Congress is there to do. "The new law made by the court should have been left to Congress," Justice Ginsburg suggested.

Justice Souter seems to have been concerned that the courts not give up their traditional role as judge of punitive damages.

Justice "Slammin' Sammy" Alito, who recused himself from the case on the ground that he owns Exxon Mobil stock, was allowed by Chief Justice Roberts to carry his Exxon Mobil-colored pompoms to Court deliberations. "I'm sure I could have been impartial," Justice Alito said. "Actually, I think what would have been fair is if all those bird and bunny lovers had been made to pay Exxon Mobil $500 milliion in partial compensation for the $3.4 billion it's already paid out. Nino and Clarence [i.e., Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas] were all set to go for it too. I mean, accidents happen."

On a more personal note, Justice Anthony Kennedy was jubilant. "Oh man, this is sweet," he said. "Ever since Sandy O'Connor left, whenever we do crap like this, I'm usually the swing vote, and people jump up and down and curse me and my family. Personally, I think Soutie's been sniffing too much model-airplane glue. You know, for my last birthday he gave me a model he built, it's really great. Anyway, when he announced his vote, I told him, 'I'm buying lunch.' He got hysterical, 'cause if there's anyone cheaper on the Court than me, it's him."


NOTE: THE ABOVE ITEM PARAPHRASES SOME REPORTING
FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AS WELL AS . . .

However, since we can't afford to pay the AP the rates they're now trying to charge bloggers -- more from each blogger, we have to think (even if you use only 50 of their golden words), than they paid the actual writer -- we've supplemented their material with stuff from, er, other sources.

Okay, the Alito and Kennedy quotes we made up. But can anyone prove that this isn't what they were thinking?


UPDATE FROM ALASKA: SENATE CANDIDATES MARK BEGICH
AND TED STEVENS HAVE VERY DIFFERENT VIEWS ON THIS

Ted Stevens continues taking massive campaign donations from Big Oil in general, and from Exxon in particular, and he continues voting for their very special interests. Mark Begich, the progressive seeking the bring sane representation back to Alaska, points out that "the thousands of Alaskans whose lives were devastated by this disaster are hurt, once again, by this ruling. What we're seeing today is another example of how Washington is out of touch with real people. The justices have sided with corporate America rather than with Alaska families who have suffered for nearly 20 years. Sen. Stevens continues to show he works hard for special interests, but where has he been when it comes to doing what's right for Alaskans? No more delays. Exxon needs to write those checks today."

If you'd like to see a senator representing Alaska's families, workers and consumers-- instead of another well-paid off shill for Corporate America, please consider giving Mark Begich a hand at our Blue America page.

-- Howie

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