Anthony Scalia: Rock Star? Noooooooooooo!!!!!!

MoonHowler

The Washington Post  is running some pretty scary stuff this morning about out Supreme Court justices.  Rather than the cloistered, nearly unrecognizable justices like retired John Paul Stevens, these younger ones are acquiring an almost cult like following.  For example:

At the invitation of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Scalia will be addressing new conservative members of the House of Representatives. To them, Scalia is a nothing short of a rock star. He personifies not only conservative values but a new model for the Supreme Court: the celebrity justice.

Where Scalia has ventured with crowd-pleasing rhetoric, other justices are following. They rally their bases on the right or the left with speeches, candid interviews, commencement addresses and book tours. They appear to be abandoning the principle of strict neutrality in public life, long a touchstone of service on the highest court.

Whatever happened to court neutrality?  It sounds like cases are predetermined, before they are even heard.  Why would Justice Scalia appear before conservative members of the House of Representatives only?  When will they start accepting honoraria? 

The Bachmann event takes this posturing to a new level. Scalia will be directly advising new lawmakers who came to Congress on a mission to remake government in a more conservative image. Many of them made pledges to repeal health-care reform, restrict immigration and investigate the president – pledges based on constitutional interpretations that might end up before the court.

At best, Scalia’s appearance can be viewed as a pep talk. At worst, it smacks of a political alliance.

At best, this behavior is conflict of interest.  The three branches of government need to remain independent.  It certainly doesn’t seem very conservative to allow this kind of cross pollination.  Perhaps ‘conservative’ is just a label of convenience. 

…Scalia is the first real celebrity justice. When he appears at conservative events, supporters line up to greet a man who seems more oracle than orator. They are drawn not just to his originalist views but to the sense that he is a purist on a court of relativists. And his fans are often rewarded with a zinger from the justice that would set the hair of every liberal on fire.

 

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What Provoked Ginni?

MoonHowler

About 10 days ago, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas called Anita Hill and left a rather bizarre message on her answering machine.  She called at 7:30 am on a Saturday morning so it sounds like she wanted to leave a message and deliberately called when she didn’t think she would get Ms. Hill live.

Those of us who remember  Anita Hill’s  role in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings knew at the time that there was something going on that wasn’t quite what it should be.  Word around Washington travels fast and without mercy and the word on the street wasn’t good for old Clarence.  Washington, however, isn’t known for its right or wrong as much as it is for its can you prove it or not.  Thomas was confirmed by a 52 to 48 vote and the rest was history, or so we thought. 

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Leave it alone, Ginni Thomas–No more crank calls

MoonHowler

In 1991,  Anita Hill testified against Supreme Court Associate  Justice Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearing.  Hill had worked  for Thomas at the Department of Education and at EEOC.  Under oath, she testified that Thomas had made sexual remarks to her during the time they were both at DoEd and EEOC. Thomas was confirmed 52-48 but the hearings were extremely contentious and almost everyone had an opinion on Anita Hill.  The support and condemnation usually ran along party lines.  

 

According to the New York Times:

In a voice mail left at 7:31 a.m. on Oct. 9 — the Saturday of Columbus Day weekend — Virginia Thomas asked her husband’s former aide-turned-adversary to make amends. Ms. Hill played the recording, from her voice mail at Brandeis University, for The Times.

“Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas,” it said. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometimes and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.”

Ms. Thomas went on: “So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day.”

Ms. Hill, in an interview, said she kept the message for nearly a week trying to decide whether the caller really was Ms. Thomas or a prankster. Unsure, she said, she decided to turn it over to the Brandeis campus police with a request to convey it the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“I though it was certainly inappropriate,” Ms. Hill said. “It came in at 7:30 a.m. on my office phone from somebody I didn’t know, and she is asking for an apology. It was not invited. There was no background for it.”

In a statement conveyed through a publicist, Ms. Thomas confirmed leaving the message, which she portrayed as a peacemaking gesture. She did not explain its timing.

“I did place a call to Ms. Hill at her office extending an olive branch to her after all these years, in hopes that we could ultimately get passed what happened so long ago,” she said. “That offer still stands. I would be very happy to meet and talk with her if she would be willing to do the same. Certainly no offense was ever intended.”

The olive branch seems to come with a very accusatory tone attached to it.  Ms. Hill feels she told the truth which she was required to so and she owes no one an apology. 

What is Virginia Thomas thinking? Why dredge up the past after nearly 20 years.  To call someones office at that hour of the morning, on a weekend when the likelihood of the person being there is fairly remote,  is nothing short of harassment.  Mrs. Thomas is already under fire for being too much of an activist with her husband sitting on the Supreme Court.   Most spouses of Justices keep a very low profile politically, much like a General’s spouse must do. 

It now seems that Anita Hill is the one who should receive an apology.  I hope she gets it. 

An Interview with Newly Retired Justice John Paul Stevens

MoonHowler

There is a fascinating interview with newly retired Justice Stevens on the  NPR site.  Stevens is an active 90 year old who plays tennis several times a week and who spent 35 years on the Supreme Court.  Today was the official first day of retirement since the current Supreme Court recess was over.  Stevens was appointed by President Gerald Ford. 

The interview includes the scope of Steven’s life experiences, where he sits watching Babe Ruth hit a homer during the 1932 World Series against the Cubs  to his throwing out the first pitch of a Cubs game when he was 85 years old. 

From the NPR interview:

 

A Fundamental Dispute

Stevens and Scalia have gone at each other on many subjects, but their core disagreement is over Scalia’s espousal of originalism — the idea that the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to mean only what it meant at the time of enactment, no more and no less. Or, as Scalia puts it, “the Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead.”

Stevens disagrees. “To suggest that the law is static is quite wrong,” he says. Stevens argues that “the whole purpose was to form a more perfect union, not something that’s perfect when we started. We designed a system of government that would contemplate a change and progress.”

This clash of views is exemplified in a 1990 opinion Stevens wrote, which invalidated the Illinois patronage system as a violation of employees’ First Amendment rights to freedom of association.

Stevens notes that when he first encountered the question, he thought the claim had no merit. After all, as Justice Scalia would subsequently observe, patronage existed at the time the republic was founded. But Stevens, upon examining the question, reached a conclusion exactly opposite of what he originally thought. 

 

Prop 8 Declared Unconstitutional (and Jon Stewart at the end)

MoonHowler

“Moral disapproval is an improper basis for denying rights to gay men and lesbians and that the evidence shows consclusively Prop 8 enacts without reason a private moral view that same sex couples are inferior.”

Vaughn Walker, Chief Judge,

 U.S. District Court

Northern District of CA

As with a stroke of a pen….the opposition to gay marriage in California was kaput. 

Judge Walkerwas appointed to the Court by Ronald Reagan.  His confirmation was difficult because he was seen as being too conservative.  This case has had some very strange twists and turns.   The Prop 8 winning attorneys are 2 old enemies who suited up and joined forces:  David Boies and Ted Olson.  Boies was the Gore lawyer and Olson was the Bush lawyer back in 2000.  Politics does make very strange bedfellows indeed! 

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Jon Stewart: Release the Kagan

MoonHowler

I tried watching the Senate confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan. I dind’t catch it all. Not even close. I heard some pretty outrageous comments from both Democrats and Republicans and I sure heard some rudeness out of both sides also.

Perhaps the most amazing part of the entire 3 days was getting a bird’s eye view of how really uncomfortable some of these good old boys are with any ethnicity different from them. Jon Stewart noticed the same thing:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Release the Kagan
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Is Stewart being overly sensitive, especially to her ethnicity?

The Bush/Obama Conundrum: Blame Obama!

MoonHowler

 

Jon Stewart examines what is known about Elena Kagan. He then moves on to look at the conundrum that Republicans have found themselves creating. It seems that what Bush did while in office now belongs to Obama which takes them back to the point of having to admit there was some bad policy. Like all conundrums, it is hard to spit out, so you will just have to let Jon Stewart say it best.

We are moving from let’s blame Bush to let’s blame Obama.  Seamlessly. 

 

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Release the Kagan
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Activist Judges

MoonHowler

Doesn’t that mean a judge who does something you don’t approve of? Really now, be honest. The buzz words ‘interpret the Constitution’ is another one of those tricky little expressions. If all a justice had to do was to sit down and read the Constitution, then there would be no need for the Supreme Court. All interpretations and opinions not only come from reading the Constitution but also from studying other cases and what has been said about them.

Now the attack is on Justice Thurgood Marshall. People didn’t like his decisions. Therefore, he became an ‘activist judge.’ When I was a kid, all over the south there were signs that said ‘Impeach Earl Warren.’ He was probably an activist judge.

Right now, I am trying to sort out why Thurgood Marshall was an activist judge and Anthony Scalia isn’t. I think it has something to do with who likes his decisions. Just a hunch.

Elena Kagan worked for Thurgood Marshall. Perhaps she knew him better than the average bear. If his family is any indication, I can certainly understand why. Lovely people. I had the pleasure of knowing them through my employment about 15 years ago. They live locally, or at least they used to. Too bad Ms. Kagan had to hear her old boss trashed by that bunch of loser senators.

AG Cuccinelli Refuses to Join 48 States in Amicus Against Westboro Baptist Church

MoonHowler

 

AG Ken Cuccinelli loves to file law suits and briefs.  He has several lawsuits against our country.  Please someone tell me why he didn’t jump on the band wagon against the funeral protesters, Westboro Baptist Church,  48 states filed an amicus brief.  2 states did not:  Virginia and Maine.  WHAT?  If there was ever a reason to file an amicus brief, WBC is it!

According to Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have submitted a brief to the Supreme Court in support of a father who sued anti-gay protesters over their demonstration at the 2006 funeral of his son, a Marine killed in Iraq.

Only Virginia and Maine declined to sign the brief by the Kansas attorney general.

Albert Snyder sued over protests by the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church at his son’s funeral in Maryland. The church pickets funerals because they believe war deaths are punishment for U.S. tolerance of homosexuality.

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether the protesters’ message is protected by the First Amendment.

In the brief filed Tuesday, the states argued they have a compelling interest in protecting the sanctity of funerals.

Mr. Snyder now owes WBC over $16,ooo because of a counter lawsuit.  Americans are outraged that the father of a fallen hero would ever have to pay this horrible group a penny.  Where is Virginia?  Once again, Ken Cuccinelli shames us all.  However, he now as one ally, according the the Richmond Times Dispatch–the ACLU.

Cuccinelli’s office announced that it is not joining 48 other states in filing a supporting legal brief on behalf of Albert Snyder, the father of a soldier killed in Iraq whose funeral in Maryland was picketed by Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, a hate group.

Among other things, the church pickets funerals of American soldiers, claiming God has killed them for defending a nation of “sodomite hypocrites.”

Snyder is suing Westboro and its pastor, the Rev. Fred W. Phelps, for what he alleges was a disruption of the funeral for his son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006. Church members have become nationally known for heckling at military funerals and hoisting signs that berate mourners with slogans such as “You’re in hell” and “God hates you.”

After Snyder won a $5 million verdict in district court, an appeals court reversed the decision, saying the Westboro protestors were exercising their First Amendment right to free speech. The case is now moving to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yesterday was the deadline for filing a “friend of the court” brief in support of Snyder’s case. Every state but Maine and Virginia lined up behind Snyder.

“The attorney general’s office deplores the absolutely vile and despicable acts of Fred Phelps and his followers,” spokesman Brian Gottstein said in a statement. “We also greatly sympathize with the Snyder family and all families who have experienced the hatefulness of these people.”

The statement said Cuccinelli’s office chose not to file a brief “because the case could set a precedent that could severely curtail certain valid exercises of free speech.”

Gottstein said Virginia has a law that balances free-speech rights but also protects people like the Snyder family by making it a crime to “willfully disrupt a funeral or memorial service to the point of preventing or interfering with the orderly conduct of the event.”

Albert Snyder said Cuccinelli will pay a price politically for not joining other attorneys general.

But the attorney general found an ally on the First Amendment issue from a frequent critic — the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We completely agree with the attorney general,” said ACLU Executive Director Kent Willis, who called the issue a “fundamental gut check” of the First Amendment.

“This kind of deplorable free speech must be protected in order to make sure all speech is protected.”

The speech of WBC far exceeds any speech deemed tolerable by a civilized society. Their speech should be treated like yelling fire in a crowded theater or using the F word during prime time TV. The behavior of Westboro Baptist Church (sic) is totally unacceptable to conservatives, liberals, and moderates. What is Cuccinelli thinking? He should pay the political price, as father Albert Snyder states. Who ever thought the Cooch would be cozied up with the ACLU? I suppose politics makes real strange bedfellows in this case. Or…perhaps the Cooch agrees with WBC.

Supreme Court Bars Life in Prison for Youth Who Have Not Killed

MoonHowler

NYTimes Alert:

Justices Bar Life Terms for Youths Who Haven’t Killed

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court said that sentences of
life without possibility of parole for crimes other than
homicide that were committed when the offender was under the
age of 18 are unconstitutional. The decision, in a Florida
case involving an armed burglary conviction, said such
sentences violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and
unusual punishment

Some criminals in their teens are just as vicious as adults. Why should they get a pass because of age?

Justice Kennedy was the swing vote.

According to Sciencemag.org:

Juveniles who have not committed murder should not be locked up for life, according to a U.S. Supreme Court decision today. In the case of Graham v. Florida, the court says it considered brain and behavioral science in deciding that life sentences for most young criminals amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The decision extends a 2005 decision (Roper v. Simmons) banning the death penalty for juveniles. Amicus briefs submitted to the court by the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, and others questioned whether youths should be held to the same standards of culpability as adults given research suggesting that their brains are not yet fully mature.

In its decision, the court says it took this data into consideration:

No recent data provide reason to reconsider the Courts observations in Roper about the nature of juveniles. As petitioners amici point out, developments in psychology and brain science continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds. For example, parts of the brain involved in behavior control continue to mature through late adolescence. … Juveniles are more capable of change than are adults, and their actions are less likely to be evidence of irretrievably depraved character than are the actions of adults.

.

Lower Than a Snake’s Belly

MoonHowler

Remember the WWI memorial the vets built in honor of their fallen buddies from WWI that was erected out the the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert?  Some rat bastard has stolen it.  The cross that was actually a memorial has been embroiled in a Supreme Court Case in one form or another for a decade. 

Antibvbl.net covered the story of the Desert Cross  back in October, 2009.  Since then the land on which the cross was erected has been donated as private lands.  Huffington Post reports:

By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS) The war memorial cross at the center of a recent Supreme Court ruling has been stolen, a spokeswoman for the Mojave National Preserve said Tuesday (May 11).

A wooden box had covered the controversial cross, which has been the subject of court cases for almost a decade. A preserve staffer noticed the box was missing on Saturday; by the time a maintenance crew showed up Monday to replace it, the cross also had disappeared, spokeswoman Linda Slater said.

On April 28, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the cross to stay up and directed a district court to further consider a congressionally approved transfer of the cross to private land.

“This is an outrage, akin to desecrating people’s graves,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of Liberty Institute, which represents the caretakers of the World War I memorial and several veterans groups.

“It’s a disgraceful attack on the selfless sacrifice of our veterans. We will not rest until this memorial is reinstalled.”

According to CNN:

The 6-foot-tall metal structure was removed Sunday night from Sunrise Rock in a lonely stretch of the Mojave National Preserve, said government officials and veterans groups that have been fighting for years to keep the cross on national park land.

The National Park Service said it is investigating the incident; no arrests had been made as of Tuesday morning.

The high court on April 28 ruled the cross did not violate the constitutional separation of church and state. The American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought the original lawsuit to have the cross removed, promised to continue the court fight.

I consider myself a fairly strong establishment clause person. I very much believe in seperation of church and state…probably as much as some of the 2nd amendment people believe in their cause. However, at what point do people just go rabidly nuts on a subject?

This cross was erected back in the 1930’s by veterans of WWI to honor their buddies who didn’t make it home. Call it a grassroots memorial, if you will. It was out in the middle of no where in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It was honoring the dead. It wasn’t pushing religion even.

Whoever took the cross is a thief– a common thief. The individual(s) is lower than a snake’s belly. This person or persons doesn’t represent a cause. The memorial ought to be left alone. There is one remain WWI vet left in America. Those brave men who fought that horrible war now belong to time and the ages. Can’t people put aside their causes just this once? The cross that represents the memorial needs to be returned immediately.

The VFW has offered a reward for information that leads to the return of the memorial.

President Obama to Nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan for Supreme Court Vacancy

MoonHowler

 

According to the New York Times and MSNBC, President Barack Obama will nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan will be nominated for the Supreme Court vacancy.  If confirmed, she will replace Justice John Paul Stevens. 

According to Wikipedia,com:

Elena Kagan (pronounced /ˈkeɪɡən/),[2] born April 28, 1960[1]) is Solicitor General of the United States. She is the first woman to hold that office, having been nominated by President Barack Obama on January 26, 2009, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 19, 2009. Kagan was formerly dean of Harvard Law School and Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law at Harvard University. She was previously a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. She served as Associate White House Counsel under President Bill Clinton. It has been reported by MSNBC and the New York Times that Kagan will be nominated to be the next U.S. Supreme Court justice, replacing John Paul Stevens, by President Obama on May 10, 2010.[3][4] If nominated and confirmed, she would become the fourth female Supreme Court justice in United States history and third on the court’s current bench. She would also be the eighth Jewish justice and the third on the current bench.

The Pill Turns 50

MoonHowler


What better tribute to mothers than a birthday party for The Pill. The Pill has probably been one of the top 5 inventions of the last century that has altered our society the most.

In Sunday’s Washington Post, columnist Elaine Tyler May celebrates The Pill:

Forget the single girl and the sexual revolution. The pill was not anti-mother; it was for mothers. And it changed motherhood more than it changed anything else. Its great accomplishment was not in preventing motherhood, but in making it better by allowing women to have children on their own terms.

A glance at history tells us that  up through the late 19th  century, nearly all women seemed to have endless children. My own grandfather was one of 9. These weren’t country people. Sure, they had rural roots but they weren’t having children to work the farm. They had children because they didn’t know how to not have children. Endless childbirth robbed women of their health and often their lives.  My own great grandmother was a victim. It’s impossible to take a cursory walk through a 19th century cemetery without noticing the number of untimely deaths of women in their child-bearing years. 

Women did a little better as they moved through the 20th century toward 1960, when the FDA approved the use of THE Pill for contraceptive purposes. Barrier methods of contraception as well as some chemical products improved a woman’s chanced of preventing unwanted pregnancy. However, it wasn’t until 1960 that The Pill really altered the way American couples married and had families.

The Pill wasn’t without great controversy. Even FDA approval was not easy to come by. There were moral and religious objections, social objections, and a fear that sexual behavior would somehow alter our sexual mores forever. Perhaps it did. However, there is something very liberating about being able to control one’s own reproduction.  It is almost frightening to realize the Griswald vs. Connecticut wasn’t decided until 1965, making contraception of any kind a right of privacy.  Griswold guaranteed that states could not prevent the use of contraception.  Griswold isn’t 50 yet. 

 

The Griswold Case 

The pill: Making motherhood better for 50 years

From the Washington Post:

Fighting Westboro with Class

MoonHowler

Fighting Hate West Virginia Style. Westboro descending on Charleston, WV to inform the good people in the state capital that the Montcoal mining disaster happened because God hates …who even knows…oh ….they got a threatening note from West Virginia. 

Charlestown fought back with class and style:

Westboro fanned out. (picket schedule)

They also went to VT to disrupt.

Westboro had mentioned deceased Morgan Harrington on their website. The VT student was murdered last fall after disappearing from a Metallica concert at UVA. Students organized and simply outnumbered qnd out performed Westboro in only the way United VT can do! Morgan’s parents were on hand to express their displeasure at having their daughter’s name dragged through the mud after her horrible fate.

According to WIBW:

BLACKSBURG, Va., (WIBW)_ Members of Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church turned up at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia on Friday morning.

They were there for a protest following the mine disaster which claimed the lives of at least 25 miners. Rescue teams continue to search for four more miners whose fate is still unknown.

The church claims the explosion was a result of a threatening memo that the church said was sent from West Virginia, the New York Times reported.

According to the Charleston Gazette, more than 300 counter-protesters were on hand for a counter demonstration against the six church members who showed up.

Nearby, larger numbers of church members fanned out across three locations in Blacksburg, Virginia nearly two years after the shootings at Virginia Tech that killed 32 people.

They too were met by counter protesters, including the father of Morgan Harrington, a Virginia Tech student who disappeared last October. Harrington said he couldn’t believe the Westboro Church was including Morgan’s memory in their protests.

What, if anything can be done to stop these vile people?  They are using the very laws that make us tolerant Americans against us.  Hopefully the Supreme Court case will castrate their efforts.  I would contribute to any plan to legally put these disgusting wretches in their places.  I think jail time sounds real good.

And when you thought they couldn’t go any lower, check out the parting shot.  This sign was from the Sago mine disaster in 2006.  However, they arrived at Montcoal, WV today with similar tactics.  The poor people of Montcoal are trying to mourn their dead and recover their lost.  They just don’t need this crap.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to Retire at the End of the Session

MoonHowler

Justice John Paul Stevens has announced he will retire at the end of the session this summer.  Justice Stevens is the oldest of the justices  and will be  90 active years old on April 20th, according to the NY Times, he still plays tennis.  He was appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1975.   He has served through the terms of 7 presidents. 

Justice Stevens is seen as one of the liberals on the Supreme Court.  He would classify himself as a conservative. 

He sent his letter of resignation to President Obama today.  His retirement does not come as a surprise.  It was hinted at in the NY Times several weeks go because he only hired one new law clerk.  Most justices have 4. 

Justice Stevens seems like an institution on our Supreme Court.