Walmart ruling favors The Corporatocracy.

Once again, SCOTUS has failed the people and in this case, women specifically. From SCOTUSblog's analysis of today's opinion:

For large companies in general, the ruling in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, et al. (10-277) offered a second message: the bigger the company, the more varied and decentralized its job practices, the less likely it will have to face a class-action claim.  Only workers who have a truly common legal claim may sue as a group, the Court majority made clear — and, even that claim will require rigorous proof that every single worker suffered from exactly the same sort of bias.  Sample statistics and anecdotes won’t do, it said.

The Court split 5-4 in shutting down, entirely, a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart that could have affected the legal claims of perhaps as many as 1 million women.  The Court’s four most liberal members, including the three women Justices, dissented.  The Court also ruled — unanimously — that the women could not bring a claim for backpay, as a remedy for discrimination, under the legal theory their lawyers had used.  The ruling was based primarily upon how the Court interpreted a federal court rule — Rule 23.  But there were overtones of constitutional protection for companies facing money claims in a class-action case, ensuring that they must be able to mount a full defense in trying to fend off such claims.

The main opinion, controlling both the 5-4 and 9-0 results, was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court’s most dedicated skeptic about the class-action approach to litigation — a method that allows a large group of individuals, whose own claims may not be worth enough to justify a lawsuit, to join forces as “a class” to pursue grievances that all of them share.  Almost certainly the most significant part of the new ruling was the stress it put on the Rule 23 demand that all of those in the class must have a “common” legal claim — in a workplace bias case, each must show, up front, that the bias they claim was targeted at each of them.

Ah yes, Justice Scalia. He got it right about the recent Westboro Baptist ruling..but not this case regarding institutionalized discrimination in the workplace.

The courts four most liberal jurists, three of whom are female, dissented against several of the key parts of the ruling. Again, from SCOTUSblog:

The part of the ruling dealing with the commonality requirement was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.   Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented on that facet of the ruling, joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

The dissenters argued that the evidence the women’s lawyers had offered “suggests that gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s company culture.”  Their evidence also indicated that the differences in pay and promotions between women and men workers could only be explained by bias, not “neutral variables,” the dissenters added, leaving the clear impression that the dissenters agreed with that assessment.

Repeatedly, the dissenting opinion offered positive reactions to the women’s claims of how the Wal-Mart “corporate culture” actually worked to bolster discretion at the store level, with that discretion exercised predominantly by men influenced by a culture of discrimination.

It's pathetic, to me, that the liberal judges actually found common ground, with the rightwing jurists, that provided them with an out and to rule for the 'corporate culture' of discrimination:

Because of the Court’s ruling on the “commonality” question, closing the class-action claim against Wal-Mart, this second part of the decision had little practical impact other than clarifying when a class-action lawsuit could pursue a money remedy.  The dissenters said they would have left the Wal-Mart women with a further opportunity to try a different section of Rule 23 for their backpay claim, but the majority had scuttled that by ending the class-action case altogether. (emphasis mine)

Letting the rightwing protectors/judges of all things 'corporate' win on this case and at every level, is bullshit.

UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi had some..cough..harsh words for SCOTUS today, with regard to this ruling:

 The Supreme Court's decision to block a class action lawsuit on gender discrimination against Wal-Mart sets back the fight for gender equality, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision sets back the cause of equality for women and for all Americans in the workplace and in our society. And it will make it more difficult for workers to come together to fight claims of gender discrimination," Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement on Monday.

Damn skippy sista woman. It's bullshit and bravado at our expense.  Read her entire statement on The Hill website here.

NYT article shows SCOTUS Justice Thomas has no ethics.

Sunday's NYT had a writeup about the most corrupt of all SCOTUS justices currently sitting on the bench.

Harlan Crow is a name that needs to be remembered as well as his ties to Thomas. He is a major player in all things/causes that are popular w/the rightwing nutter's. From the NYT article:

Clarence Thomas was here promoting his memoir a few years ago when he bumped into Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery that employed Justice Thomas’s mother as a crab picker.

Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery where Justice Clarence Thomas's mother worked, on the site of the old cannery. Mr. Varn said Justice Thomas put him in touch with a buyer to restore the property and build a museum.

Mr. Varn lived at the old cannery site, a collection of crumbling buildings on a salt marsh just down the road from a sign heralding this remote coastal community outside Savannah as Justice Thomas’s birthplace. The justice asked about plans for the property, and Mr. Varn said he hoped it could be preserved.

“And Clarence said, ‘Well, I’ve got a friend I’m going to put you in touch with,’ ” Mr. Varn recalled, adding that he was later told by others not to identify the friend.

The publicity-shy friend turned out to be Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate magnate and a major contributor to conservative causes. Mr. Crow stepped in to finance the multimillion-dollar purchase and restoration of the cannery, featuring a museum about the culture and history of Pin Point that has become a pet project of Justice Thomas’s.

The project throws a spotlight on an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship that appears to be markedly different from those of other justices on the nation’s highest court.

Thomas and his wife are up to their eyeballs in rightwing causes. Favors always get 'paid back' and to that end, Crow's association not only with Justice Thomas, but his wife, the queen of the rightwing nutters, Virginia Thomas should be challenged. Again from the NYT writeup:

The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas.(emphasis mine)

There are more instances in the four page article. The light now being shed on the previously unknown cannery site project and Thomas' involvement, just adds more fuel to the fire when it comes to Clarence Thomas' glaring lack of ethics.

Both Justice Thomas and Scalia have close ties to the Koch Brothers. Very close. So close in fact that they both attended a rightwing nutterfest held by the Koch Brothers recently. After that little rightwing love-in, the article states: A month later, more than 100 law professors asked Congress to extend to Supreme Court justices the ethics code that applies to other federal judges, and a bill addressing the issue was introduced.

One glaringly obvious question: Why doesn't the ethics code apply to the highest court in the land? 

It's absolutely fuckwitted that it doesn't. I couldn't believe what I read within the last few months when it comes to SCOTUS and ethics not being connected.

Back to Mr. Crow, one of the big time players in lies and obsfucations against Democratics running for office:

...Among his contributions were $100,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group formed to attack the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate....

That group did a hachet-job on John Kerry. More on Mr. Crow from the NYT writeup:

Mr. Crow has not personally been a party to Supreme Court litigation, but his companies have been involved in federal court cases, including four that went to the appellate level. And he has served on the boards of two conservative organizations involved in filing supporting briefs in cases before the Supreme Court. One of them, the American Enterprise Institute, with Mr. Crow as a trustee, gave Justice Thomas a bust of Lincoln valued at $15,000 and praised his jurisprudence at an awards gala in 2001.

The institute’s Project on Fair Representation later filed briefs in several cases, and in 2006 the project brought a lawsuit challenging federal voting rights laws, a case in which Justice Thomas filed a lone dissent, embracing the project’s arguments. The project director, an institute fellow named Edward Blum, said the institute supported his research but did not finance the brief filings or the Texas suit, which was litigated pro bono by a former clerk of Justice Thomas’s.

How does Justice Thomas keep his feelings in check when ruling on an issue his BFF Crow supports? Since Mr. Crow has given plenty of  'gifts' to Virginia and Clarence Thomas that can in no way be construed as 'cheap' or inexpensive:

There are a number of reasons Justice Thomas might be thankful to Mr. Crow. In addition to giving him the Douglass Bible, valued 10 years ago at $19,000, Mr. Crow has hosted the justice aboard his private jet and his 161-foot yacht, at the exclusive Bohemian Grove retreat in California and at his grand Adirondacks summer estate called Topridge, a 105-acre spread that once belonged to Marjorie Merriweather Post, the cereal heiress.

Christopher Shaw, a folk singer who said he had been invited several times to perform at Topridge, recalled seeing Justice Thomas and his family “on one or two occasions.” They were among about two dozen guests who included other prominent Republicans — last summer, the younger Mr. Bush stopped by.

“There would be guys puffing on cigars,” Mr. Shaw said. “Clarence just kind of melted in with everyone else. We got introduced at dinner. He sat at Harlan’s table.”

Mr. Crow’s $175,000 donation to the library in Savannah in 2001 started out anonymous, but it was eventually made public amid opposition to the project by some local black leaders who did not like Justice Thomas’s politics. Similarly, Mr. Crow sought to keep his role in the museum quiet. 

Kinda makes you go..hmmm..don't it? Well, it makes 100 law professors question his ethics, so why shouldn't the President and the Congress do the same?

Or don't they give a shit about the ethics of the highest court in the land and the rightwing nutters that sit on the bench and rule in favor of The Corporatocracy over the rights of individuals in these United States.

If you wish, please sign the CREDO petition that questions Justice Thomas' ethics here. Already, they have received over 35,000 signatures...just since this morning when they sent out the email.

We know he is a crooked, unethical sumbitch. It's time for him to be publicly outed for his role in favoring rich folks over the other 98% of us.  

1st amendment rights trump all others according to SCOTUS.

SCOTUS ruled for the pigs at Westboro this morning. From TPM:

"Simply put, the church members had the right to be where they were," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of the majority. "Westboro alerted local authorities to its funeral protest and fully complied with police guidance on where the picketing could be staged. The picketing was conducted under police supervision some 1,000 feet from the church, out of the sight of those at the church. The protest was not unruly; there was no shouting, profanity, or violence."

The court's decision came after a hearing on the case of Albert Snyder, the father of a Marine who sued the church for picketing his son's funeral in October. There was universal condemnation of the Church's message, but ultimately the court found that the First Amendment protected the church's protests. 

Don't hand me the horseshit that free speech is painful. Hate speech is wrong, its just fucking wrong.  The right to spew hate and venom should not outweigh all other rights.

The ruling was an 8-1 decision. Only Alito voted against the fucktards at Westboro. Color me surprised as hell over that. Alito had the following to say over this ruling:

"In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like petitioner,"

Damn skippy dude. Damn skippy.

SCOTUS to hear case re: Cali's planned Medicaid reimbursement cuts

Under Ahnold, Cali attempted to cut funding for Medicaid reimbursements to physicians, dentists, pharmacies, health clinics and other medical providers.The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said hell no to that.

Governor Brown wants to do the same and to that end...SCOTUS will get the case now. This doesn't really bode well for the Medicaid providers and ultimately the citizens of the state that must avail themselves of this form of healthcare as at least four of the Supreme's find fault with the Ninth's logic in how they ruled.  From McClatchy:

The court's decision to hear three combined California legal challenges is good news for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who wants to enact budget cuts similar to those that courts have previously struck down. Potentially, hundreds of millions of dollars in proposed savings are at stake.

"The fact that the court agreed to hear these cases is a big and important step for California," Elizabeth Ashford, a spokeswoman for Brown, said Tuesday night.

The court's decision also could please 22 states that have sided with California, including Florida, Idaho and South Carolina. California and the other states want to restrict the kinds of private lawsuits that can be filed over public benefits.

The Ninth Circuit of Court of Appeals previously rejected California's proposed reimbursement cuts, initially put forward under Brown's Republican predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Supreme Court's decision issued without comment Tuesday means at least four of the nine justices question the Ninth Circuit's reasoning. The impending review by a conservative-dominated high court worries the medical professionals and patient advocates opposed to the reimbursement reductions.

Thanks Jerry, you are looking more like a republican governor every, fucking day.

Todays wingnut alert: Justice Antonin Scalia

Misogynist is an appropriate description to use when describing Scalia and his 'thoughts' on the Constitution and what and/or who it represents. From RawStory:

Roe v. Wade 'a total absurdity,' Scalia told audience

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's belief that women have no protection under the constitution could herald the return of officially-sanctioned gender discrimination, a prominent Washington lawyer says.

Justice Scalia reiterated his position that the Constitution's 14th Amendment doesn't guarantee protection against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation in a magazine interview published this month.

"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex," Scalia told California Lawyer(Q&A w/Scalia). "The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that."

This mental midget sits on the highest court in the country and has for 24 friggin years. That he would suggest such a strict interpretation of the Constitution is worrisome and downright disgusting. Why does he think he is the only individual that knows what the founding fathers meant? SCOTUS has steadfastly upheld civil rights for all citizens, except of course gay individuals, and hopefully will continue to do so, even though one of the sitting justices doesn't accept the premise of equal protection under the law for everyone.

From our dept of WTF?

Orly got Alito to go along? Are you fucking kidding me? Seriously, is this a friggin joke? From TPM:

Birther queen Orly Taitz has spent the better part of a year fighting a $20,000 fine slapped on her by a federal judge for filing frivolous birther lawsuits contesting President Obama's eligibility to hold the office. A few weeks ago, she applied to the Supreme Court to reverse the fine.

When Justice Clarence Thomas denied her application, she vowed to apply to each of the other justices in turn. The next justice she applied to was Samuel Alito, who has now referred the matter to the to the entire court.

As per her usual, she did it ass-backwards too...read the rest of the writeup. I now firmly believe that Justice Alito is mentally-challenged...a nice way to say he is eff'n retarded. This shows us how far up the federal ladder an idiot and/or rightwing nutter can go folks...sad ain't it? Damn sad.....scary really.

SCOTUS rules against the NFL

In a 9-0 ruling, that surely will piss off the owners, SCOTUS reverses a lower court decision regarding the NFL's powerful anti-trust position.  From DeadSpin:

American Needle doesn't actually score a victory here, at least, not yet. The case merely returns to district court, where it will be reconsidered under what's called the "Rule of Reason." A doctrine dating back to Standard Oil, it states that monopolies aren't inherently illegal, only if they "unreasonably" restrain trade. That's still up for debate with the NFL's licensing deals, and the Supreme Court gave no indication on that one way or another.


The NFLPA wins big. They had been terrified of a league with unchecked power to act unilaterally in labor issues, especially with an expiring CBA. Not that the player's union is particularly powerful as is, but at least the league won't be able to dictate salaries, free agency conditions and age restrictions without getting into the CBA first. If the NFL had won this case, those would all have been very real possibilities.

The NFL doesn't so much lose as they fail to win. The league had been hoping for that antitrust exemption, which would have been a hammer to bring down in myriad smaller cases against the league. It would have given them sweeping powers enjoyed by no other business other than Major League Baseball. Now, those other cases proceed on their own merits.

Other sports leagues are not happy right now. Both the NBA and NHL filed amicus briefs in support of the NFL, hoping the precedent would give them more powers. With the NHL recently having to bail out a handful of teams, and a labor stoppage looming for the NBA, it could have been big. NASCAR, MLS, and most chillingly, the NCAA also publicly supported the NFL.

Baseball, on the other hand, still enjoys the country's only antitrust exemption, dating back to a 1922 ruling that's considered curious today. There's no indication the High Court would revisit that ruling, but should it be challenged there's certainly a precedent for it now. A limited one, however; American Needle v. NFL appears to apply specifically to merchandising.

My personal opinion is that none of the major sports groups in America deserves an anti-trust exemption. The rightwing nutters should support my opinion as well because they supposidly worship free trade. Protecting large groups by giving them anti-trust exemptions goes against everything the nutters believe in.

From our Dept of WTF?

SCOTUS has ruled that corporations now have civil rights. I shit you not. SCOTUS just opened up a huge can of vile, carpetbagging, worms.

You can read the ruling here (pdf). This decision is total crap. Corporations are not human, they are always money-making operations.

I am pretty sure the First Amendment was not created to protect The Corporatocracy.From Public Citizen:

Today, in the widely-publicized Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC, the Justices ruled in a 5-4 decision that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

        Shed a tear for our democracy.

Today, in the case Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding the policy making process in Washington, state capitals and city halls. Today, the Supreme Court tells these corporate giants that they have a constitutional right to trample our democracy.

In eviscerating longstanding rules prohibiting corporations from using their own monies to influence elections, the court invites giant corporations to open up their treasuries to buy election outcomes. Corporations are sure to accept the invitation.

The predictable result will be corporate money flooding the election process; huge targeted campaigns by corporations and their front groups attacking principled candidates who challenge parochial corporate interests; and a chilling effect on candidates and election officials, who will be deterred from advocating and implementing policies that advance the public interest but injure deep-pocket corporations.

Because today’s decision is made on First Amendment constitutional grounds, the impact will be felt not only at the federal level, but in the states and localities, including in state judicial elections.

So, wtf were those five assholes thinking?

SCOTUS rules 13 year old school girl strip search illegal..

Holy fuckamoly..really? That's a friggin no-brainer for me folks. She was also accused of bringing naproxen to school..not an illegal drug..an over the counter medication.

It was an 8-1 ruling. The lone idiot..I mean dissenter is...drum roll please...

Justice Clarence Thomas

Christ, was a tool Thomas is. From the McClatchy writeup:

"What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear," Souter wrote.

The "combination of these deficiencies was fatal" to the legitimacy of the search, the court concluded. This ruling is likely to clarify for other school administrators nationwide how and when intrusive searches of students might be conducted.

Carrying pills in her underwear..give me an effin break.

Sotomayor's cases show us she is what?

They show that she swings both ways, as in right and left of the center. Which means no one can really call her a liberal or conservative.

Justice David Souter was supposed to be right of the center, which is why Bush41 nominated him. He was as far from that description as you can get.

Same goes for Sandra Day O'Connor. She was moderate on some issues, left on others. Very seldom was she right of center.

The NY Law Journal and Law.com have articles up about her cases. Her one case that bothers me is her siding with Bush43 on the gag order regarding groups that support abortion and receive federal funding. Marc Ambinder from The Atlantic has this:

David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) News breaks down Sonia Sotomayor's most notable abortion-related decision, in which she ruled in favor of the "Mexico City Policy," finding that the U.S. government is free to ban aid to foreign groups that support or perform abortions. (As The Hill notes, this decision won her praise from at least one Republican.) Brody's prediction: that since Sotomayor has never ruled directly on the legality of abortion, she will be pressed even harder on the issue during her confirmation process.

Of course, that doesn't really tell us much about her opinion regarding the legality of Roe v Wade.

I like Dahlia Lithwick's article on Sotomayor and the logic she presents on why the Rethugs haven't got a leg to stand on with regard to tarring and feathering her as a friggin liberal, activist, racist Judge:

Instead of wading into a bruising identity politics war they cannot possibly win, conservatives—even the angriest conservatives—should wade into Sotomayor's vast legal writings. There are hundreds of cases for them to read and parse and quote out of context. Let's have this confirmation battle on the merits, rather than in the sinkhole of unfounded character attacks. The real problem for Sotomayor's opponents is that anyone who has closely read her opinions won't find much to build a case on. As the indefatigable team at SCOTUSblog has chronicled here and here, on the appeals court, Judge Sotomayor has taken a fairly moderate, text-based approach to the cases before her, placing her much closer to retiring Justice David Souter than to the late Justice William Brennan on the judicial activism spectrum.

She has been overturned three times at the Supreme Court, and may well be again soon. But she was also a state* prosecutor, a corporate lawyer, and a Bush I appointee to the federal bench. As the White House points out in its talking points today, "In cases where Sotomayor and at least one judge appointed by a Republican president were on the three-judge panel, Sotomayor and the Republican appointee(s) agreed on the outcome 95% of the time."

Lithwick tackles all the bs the Rethugs will throw at her. It's a good read and I highly recommend it.

So, the bottom line for me, is this: She really isn't known to be left or right of the center all the time. My hope is that she turns out like David Souter and surprises the shit out of everyone, including Obama. Below is Jonathan Turley this evening on Countdown, discussing Judge Sotomayor's cases and rulings. Plus how does she feel about equal rights for the LGBT community?

Sotomayor-Muy Bueno!!!!

What a great way to wake up this morning..to the presser that announces Sonia Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court Justice.

As Obama stated, she will be the only Justice with trial experience. She will need it to deal with the rightwing justices.From a HuffPo article:

A Puerto Rican woman with 16 years of court experience who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Sotomayor is a graduate of Yale Law and served as an editor of the Yale Law Review. Administration officials note that Sotomayor would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years.

Irony alert: Bush41 nominated Souter and Sotomayor for their respective positions. How can the Rethugs argue with that? HuffPo has an article up on that angle as well.

SCOTUS backs Dems in Ohio voting case

This morning SCOTUS came down hard on the side of voters and Democrats by issuing a ruling which blocked an order requiring Ohio officials to step up efforts to identify invalid voter registrations.From Bloomberg:

The justices today said Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner doesn't have to comply with an order to provide county election boards with lists of new registrants whose information doesn't match up with government databases. A federal trial judge had ordered Brunner to supply the lists by today.

Brunner, a Democrat, said the judge's order could have affected as many as 200,000 Ohioans, potentially forcing them to cast provisional ballots instead of regular ballots. That group likely would have included a disproportionate number of Democrats because of that party's efforts to register new voters this year.

The case is Brunner v. Ohio Republican Party, 07A332.

Thank God and Buddha for those activist judges. Screw the Rethugs and their vote manipulation tactics.

Tags: Ohio Voter Registration, Stealing our votes, Bruner v Ohio Republican Party

SCOTUS rules in favor of gun owners in DC

As a gun owner and a progressive, I have mixed feelings about the ruling today. While I do think the NRA is full of shit on most issues or the non-issues they turn into issues, I believe there is a fundamental right to bear arms. That said however, I do not believe that people need arsenals or automatic weapons.

Evidently there was a dust-up during the reading of the ruling today between Scalia the turd who read the majority opinion and Justice Stevens who read the dissenting opinion. From the BLT link:

"Do not accept the summary you have just heard," Stevens said at one point. Earlier, Scalia told spectators they had to slog through 154 pages of opinions to really understand the Court's position. And Scalia said it was "particularly wrongheaded" for dissenters to rely on United States v. Miller, the 1939 case that marked the last time the high court ruled on the Second Amendment.

When Scalia was reading his own opinion Stevens occasionally shook his head in disbelief. And Stevens jousted back. With emphasis on the word "genuine," Stevens said that "a genuine judicial conservative" would not have inserted the Court into the "political thicket" of the gun rights debate as Scalia had done.

What I gather is that this ruling is pretty complicated. The NRA has already stated this ruling sets precedence and they will now challenge other types of gun restriction laws in other cities and states. To be sure, the DC gun law was the strictest law on the books anywhere in the U.S. But the NRA's goal is to overturn any and all gun laws, including those which ban automatic and semiautomatic rifles.

Thats where the NRA and I part ways. Semi and automatic rifles were created for one reason; to kill humans a quickly as possible. You won't see hunters using either of those types of weapons when they are game hunting and even my father thinks no one needs to own semi or automatic guns. Good ol Dad and I finally agree on something..stop the presses!

SCOTUS lowers Exxon's spill damages

Fuckers...It happened 19 years ago and the rat bastards haven't paid any of the damages, but they have taken it all the way through the courts. Now, SCOTUS has taken the case and lowered the $2.5 billion punitive damages award. Punitive damages are designed to punish a wrongdoer, while compensatory damages compensate a wronged party for the loss they suffered. From CNN:

The high court concluded that punitive damages should roughly match actual damages from the environmental disaster, which were about $507 million. Lower courts were asked to reassess the jury verdict, extending the years-long litigation in the case.

The 'liberals' on the court agreed with part of the ruling.Not only did the Valdez destroy thousands upon thousands of mammals, it also destroyed much of their habitat and the fishing that locals depended upon for their livelihood.

But its all about the bottom line for Exxon..not for owning up to anything..just spending millions in Lawyers Fees in order to lower the hit to their fucking bottom line.

SCOTUS rules FOR detainees at Gitmo

In a ruling that is sure to send shivers down the spine of every loyal Bushie, The Supremes ruled this morning that detainees at Guantanamo have the right to appeal to US civilian courts. From the MSNBC writeup:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

For once they got it right..the Constitution must survive even the attacks on it from within. Justice Kennedy, was the swing vote, I would bet my last devalued dollar on it. A key piece of the ruling after the jump.

To Continue reading, click here.

80 arrested for protesting Gitmo at SCOTUS today

From TruthOut via the NYT:

Eighty Arrested at Protests Calling for Closure of Gitmo The Associated Press
Friday 11 January 2008
Washington - Eighty people were arrested at the Supreme Court Friday in a protest calling for the shutdown of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Demonstrators wearing orange jump suits intended to simulate prison garb were arrested inside and outside the building in the early afternoon. "Shut it down," protesters chanted as others kneeled on the plaza in front of the court.

They were charged with violating an ordinance that prohibits demonstrations of any kind on court grounds. Those arrested inside the building also were charged under a provision that makes it a crime to give "a harangue or oration" in the Supreme Court building. The maximum penalty is 60 days in jail, a fine or both.

The court is considering whether prisoners still detained at Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their confinement in U.S. courts.

Officials briefly closed the court building during the protest. It reopened around 2 p.m. EST.

The NYT writeup adds an international flavor to the worldwide protests today to close Gitmo:

Protests were also held some other world capitals.

In Manila, Philippines, about 30 activists picketed the U.S. Embassy to demand the camp's closure. ''We are appealing to President Bush and the U.S. government to close Guantanamo Bay now,'' said Aurora Parong, director of Amnesty International in the Philippines.

Small demonstrations by Amnesty supporters, also in orange jumpsuits, were held in Rome; Prague, Czech Republic; Brussels, Belgium; and Budapest, Hungary.

I don't care how small they were..people all over the globe know what bullshittery Gitmo is.

Take that you anti-choice buffoons!

From FindLaw:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court turned down efforts by Michigan and an anti-abortion group Monday to revive the state's law banning the procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion.

The justices did not comment on their decision to let stand a ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. The appeals court said the law is unconstitutional because it could also prohibit other abortion procedures.

The U.S. high court in April upheld a federal law banning the abortion method.

The cases are Cox v. Northland Family Planning, 07-313, and Standing Together to Oppose Partial-Birth Abortion v. Northland Family Planning, 07-291.

IHT has a better writeup on the subject.

Tags: Womans right to choose, SCOTUS

SCOTUS will hear Gitmo detainee cases

From MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court, reversing course, agreed Friday to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees may go to federal court to challenge their indefinite confinement.

The action, announced without comment along with other end-of-term orders, is a setback for the Bush administration. It had argued that a new law strips courts of their jurisdiction to hear detainee cases.

In April, the court turned down an identical request, although several justices indicated they could be persuaded otherwise.

The move is highly unusual.

The court did not indicate what changed the justices’ minds about considering the issue. But last week, lawyers for the detainees filed a statement from a military lawyer in which he described the inadequacy of the process the administration has put forward as an alternative to a full-blown review by civilian courts.

The White House continued to back its legal stance.

“We did not think that court review at this time was necessary, but we are confident in our legal position,” said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Thursday.

The White House continued to back its legal stance.

“We did not think that court review at this time was necessary, but we are confident in our legal position,” said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

‘A stunning victory’
“This is a stunning victory for the detainees,” said Eric M. Freedman, professor of constitutional law at Hofstra Law School, who has been advising the detainees. “It goes well beyond what we asked for, and clearly indicates the unease up there” at the Supreme Court.

In February, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a key provision of a law the Bush administration pushed through Congress last year stripping federal courts of their ability to hear the detainees’ challenges to their confinement.

On April 2, the Supreme denied the detainees’ request to review the February appeals court ruling.

The detainees then petitioned the court to reconsider its denial.

Dismissing the petitions would be “a profound deprivation” of the prisoners’ right to speedy court review, lawyers for the detainees said.

The administration asked that the detainees’ Supreme Court petitions be thrown out.

Many of the 375 detainees have been held at Guantanamo for five years.

In recent months, the main arena in the legal battle over the detainees has been the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

‘The highest level of deference’
The appeals court is considering how to handle the detainees’ challenges to military tribunals that found them to be enemy combatants, which left them without any of the legal rights accorded prisoners of war.

The White House is considering closing Guantanamo and transferring some of the most dangerous suspects to a prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and a Navy brig in South Carolina.

The detainees’ attorneys want the appeals court to allow a broad inquiry questioning the accuracy and completeness of the evidence the tribunals gathered about the detainees, most of it classified.

The Justice Department has been seeking a limited review, saying that the findings of the military tribunals are “entitled to the highest level of deference.”

The White House has been weighing closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, which has brought global criticism of the Bush administration and condemnation from Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The cases are Boumediene v. Bush, 06-1195, and Al Odah v. U.S., 06-1196.

WaPo also has a writeup here. The last time this subject came up SCOTUS only had 3 of the necessary 4 Justices that wanted to review the case. True to form, Kennedy was on the fence. It is unclear if he flipflopped again. The question this time is why a Military Tribunal over our regular court system....EXACTLY..THANK YOU FOR SEEING THE ridiculousness of this situation created by the Asshat-in-Chief. This case won't come before them until after October sadly..but its something to give us hope.



Tags: Gitmo, Torture, Habeus Corpus, SCOTUS

SCOTUS rules on two cases, 5-4 vote again.

From msnbc:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected public school assignment plans that take account of students’ race.

The decision in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it leaves public school systems with a limited arsenal to maintain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court’s judgment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by the court’s other three liberals.

Death row decision
In a separate decision, the court also blocked the execution of a Texas killer whose lawyers argued that he should not be put to death because he is mentally ill.

Scott Louis Panetti shot his in-laws to death 15 years ago in front of his wife and young daughter.

Panetti knows what he did, but believes that he is on death row because he preaches the word of God, his lawyers say.

Panetti’s lawyers wanted the court to determine that people who cannot understand the connection between their crime and punishment because of mental illness may not be executed.

Tags: SCOTUS,

Conservative Activism grips our Supreme Court

From TomPaine.com:
by Bill Scher

Way too many folks rolled over when John Roberts and Sam Alito were nominated for the Supreme Court. And now we're seeing the consequences.

In my recent book, I characterized the conservative judicial activist agenda as "elitist government, no longer representative of and responsive to the people, handcuffed from insisting upon responsible corporate behavior, but free to subject all Americans to one group's version of morality."

And today, we're seeing that vision in all its glory.

The conservative activists on the Supreme Court decreed in a series of 5-4 decisions:

* Individuals, who believe their tax dollars are being unconstitutionally misused by the White House to promote religious beliefs, aren't allowed to enter a courthouse to make their case.

* The Environmental Protection Agency can avoid its responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act, even though it's a law reflecting the public will as passed by the democratically-elected Congress.

* Corporations can once again use their checkbooks to flood the public airwaves with political ads during election season, again overruling Congress.

It's critical to recognize these decisions -- along with earlier decisions to end privacy between a woman and her doctor, and to make it harder to challenge pay discrimination -- are part of a pattern.

Because the battle for the Supreme Court is not over. As Justice Anthony Kennedy remains a swing vote, conservative activists do not have complete control. Yet.

Roberts and Alito were able to get on the Court because their dishonest PR operations went largely unchallenged. Roberts was christened "brilliant" and lauded as a lover of grammar. Alito was heralded as an "open-minded" judge who loves baseball and his mom.

All that was meaningless fluff intended to mask their conservative agenda.

We must remember how these nominees were misrepresented so they could get confirmed.

We must catalog the damage they did after being confirmed.

We must crystallize what the conservative activists are trying to achieve, and how it undermines what our founders wanted our judiciary to do.

If we do all that, the next time a conservative activist is being sold to the public, we can insist on proof that the nominee will uphold constitutional principles of representative government, not undermine those principles with elitist government.

And if we don't get any proof, we can reject that nominee on the merits -- that we cannot risk granting another lifetime appointment to someone who will not protect our constitution and our democracy.

More analysis from Tapped, The Carpetbagger Report, TalkLeft, and D-Day.

Tags: Politics, SCOTUS, Activist Judges