SCOTUS Watch

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Skinypupy
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Skinypupy »

Reading their legal reasoning (which amounts to “I think gay marriage is icky and should therefore be illegal”) makes me want to punch things.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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The thing that is important to you is something I dislike, therefore we need a federal level ban.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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Blackhawk wrote:Your basic human dignity and autonomy is something I dislike, therefore we need a federal level ban.
FTFY

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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by gbasden »

Combustible Lemur wrote: Sun Sep 19, 2021 1:13 pm
Blackhawk wrote:Your basic human dignity and autonomy is something I dislike, therefore we need a federal level ban.
FTFY

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Shocking how the "party of personal freedom" can't stand it when the personal freedom involves something they find icky.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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Or how they rant and rave about 'libs' who want to 'cancel' things just because they're somehow offensive, only to turn around and try to ban anything they find offensive.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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Blackhawk wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 4:32 pm Or how they rant and rave about 'libs' who want to 'cancel' things just because they're somehow offensive, only to turn around and try to ban anything they find offensive.
Because it's always projecting. Always.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Smoove_B »

malchior wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:24 pm What's the thought here? Intellectual dishonesty or bubble of delusion?
Hasn't even been two weeks


But I thought the Supreme Court isn’t political.
Justice Clarence Thomas will appear with conservative legal luminaries at a Heritage event on October 21. He will give a key note address with Mitch McConnell. Recall, Amy Coney Barrett appeared with McConnell earlier this month.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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They feel they no longer have to hide. Its like the light is off and the cockroaches come out.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

Yup - another example of one of them thumbing their nose at us.

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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Drazzil »

YellowKing wrote: Mon Sep 06, 2021 10:29 pm The one thing that somewhat gives me hope (at least over the long-term) is that conservatives are, on paper, in a bad spot.

Their social policies are extremely unpopular, and most of them (aside from gun control) are all about putting a genie back in the bottle. That's always a hard position to fight from. And the demographics aren't on their side. I mean there's a reason why they have to gerrymander, restrict voting rights, and pour gasoline on political divisiveness. If they could win elections on their platform alone, there would be no need to go to such extremes.

I feel like we're living through the cornered honey badger phase of the Republican party, and we're going to have to deal with scratches, bites, and flung feces for awhile until the slow, grinding gears of progress chew them up. But I feel like long-term, we will move in the right direction. Because I don't think the conservative fascist state is sustainable.

To those of us who are news junkies and follow this stuff religiously, what the right's doing is horrendous. For most people on the street, until it impacts them personally it's just peripheral noise. That's why I think the Texas abortion law may have crossed a line the GOP will regret. They went from underdog on abortion (which fuels their base) to victory and actually impacting millions of women. You think those millions of women are going to roll over and just say "Oh well?" Not a chance. When the GOP starts actually fucking with the status quo, instead of just threatening it, they are likely in for a world of hurt.

I know there's this overwhelming sense of complacency, that the left isn't fighting hard enough, etc. But again, I don't think we've hit the point where people are truly personally impacted. If we reach that point, and people roll over, *then* I'll panic. But so far I haven't seen evidence that it's the case. Trump lost. Dems won the Senate. It was messy, it was close, but it still happened. And that was under circumstances in which, by and large, most people weren't personally impacted all that much by Trump's reign as bad as it was.
People rolled over when the supreme court handed Bush the presidency in 2000. We rolled over for Citizens United, which removed the last safeguards against money in politics, rolled over when the supreme court made it well nigh impossible to organize unions in the United States. We're in the process of rolling over in Texas. What makes you think things will be any different in the future?

It seems like the national mood is roll over. People only react when they themselves are thrown into the boiling pot immediately. Republicans and the SC are good at making slow and medium term incremental changes in which it takes months, years and decades to fully unwind. Divide and conquer. First they come for the carrots, then the tomatoes, then the celery and other ingredients and by the time the chicken realizes its in the pot it's too late. No matter if most don't want to be chicken soup, would never stand for it if everything was added at once, One change at a time, piecemeal, the fascists get it.

American's have this stunning culture of selfishness. By the time they realize they are soup, it's all over. No class solidarity.
Last edited by Drazzil on Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Drazzil »

Unagi wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 11:26 pm
Drazzil wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 11:10 pmThe only way I can see Biden doing anything for this country is that if he starts acting extrajudicially.
Let's just carve this one simple point of yours our for a moment. If you expect one person to work extrajudicially, how can you be so upset about the "enemy" that you basically accuse of acting extrajudicially?
Because the Republicans set the tone. Jerrymandered their way into being relevant, despite their policies not being popular, because Republicans made working within the system untenable?

I don't see any way past this. Does anyone else?


Nevermind. I don't know the solution, and I'm not convincing anyone else anyway.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Smoove_B »

I 100% agree.

The thing I want to know regarding Brett Kavanaugh’s COVID-19 diagnosis is: Who paid off his $92,000 country club fees plus his $200,000 credit card debt plus his $1.2 million mortgage, and purchased themselves a SCOTUS seat?
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

There was just a piece on this at Mother Jones, It looks like it was his extremely wealthy...parents. People overlooked that he grew up wealthy. His father sold a business for 7 figure at one point. It's not what people thought but not a big shock itself. He grew up extremely privileged after all.
The idea that Brett Kavanaugh has taken bribes to sustain his country club lifestyle is one of the hardiest conspiracy theories on the political left. And like most conspiracy theories, this one suffers from some internal logic problems. Yet lots of otherwise smart people who see conspiracy theories as solely a scourge of the right seem to believe it, in part because, as with so many such myths, the Kavanaugh conspiracy theory originated with a few facts. I laid them out back in September 2018 during his confirmation hearings:

“Before President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, he had a lot of debt. In May 2017, he reported owing between $60,004 and $200,000 on three credit cards and a loan against his retirement account. By the time Trump nominated him to the high court in July 2018, those debts had vanished. Overall, his reported income and assets didn’t seem sufficient to pay off all that debt while maintaining his upper-class lifestyle: an expensive house in an exclusive suburban neighborhood, two kids in a $10,500-a-year private school, and a membership in a posh country club reported to charge $92,000 in initiation fees….No other recent Supreme Court nominee has come before the Senate with so many unanswered questions regarding finances.”

The vanishing debts, and their size, raised enough suspicion that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) even asked Kavanaugh in written follow-up questions whether he might have a gambling problem. (He said no.) Further concerns involved the purchase of his tony Chevy Chase, Md., house in 2006 for $1.225 million. How did Kavanaugh come up with a $245,000 down payment at a time when his financial disclosure forms indicated that he had a mere $10,000 in the bank outside of his federal retirement account?

As it turned out, there were rather simple answers to most of those questions. Kavanaugh explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee that much of his credit card debt stemmed from either work on his fixer-upper mansion or buying Nats season and playoff tickets for himself and a handful of dudes who’d been going to the games together for years. They had paid him back in full, the White House said at the time. As for the rest, while he was maddeningly obtuse in admitting it, Kavanaugh seems to have gotten lots of money from his parents.

As I explained back in 2018, gifts from family don’t have to be reported on federal judicial disclosure forms, and Kavanaugh’s family had deep pockets. He’s the only child of a “swamp creature,” Ed Kavanaugh, a longtime lobbyist for the cosmetics industry who spent his career schmoozing with Beltway insiders to fend off health and safety regulations and dueling with activists who wanted to ban cosmetic testing on animals. When the elder Kavanaugh retired in 2005, his compensation package that year from the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association totaled $13 million, according to the nonprofit group’s IRS filing.

Kavanaugh’s parents ensured he had a privileged upbringing—high school at Georgetown Prep in suburban Washington and an Ivy League education that seems to have left him without a whiff of student loan debt. Their largesse seems to have followed him into adulthood. As Kavanaugh explained in his written answers to Whitehouse: “We have not received financial gifts other than from our family, which are excluded from disclosure in judicial financial disclosure reports.” Rather than reveal any useful details that might have put an end to all the armchair speculation, he deployed opaque lawyerly language and wrote, “t bears repeating that financial disclosure reports are not meant to provide one’s overall net worth or overall financial situation. They are meant to identify conflicts of interest. Therefore, they are not good tools for assessing one’s net worth or financial situation.”
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by TheMix »

Wouldn't that just mean that his parents purchased a SCOTUS seat? Of course, one could argue that SCOTUS seat living parents, and possibly other immediate family, have always had influence. Though it would seem in this case that his parents are likely to have more influence than normal.

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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Isgrimnur »

As I explained back in 2018, gifts from family don’t have to be reported on federal judicial disclosure forms, and Kavanaugh’s family had deep pockets.

But if you're one of the little people trying to get a mortgage...
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

I'll continue to maintain that if people truly understood what was going on the streets would be running blue with blood.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Smoove_B »

I hadn't seen that so thanks. But yeah, as Mix pointed out, it doesn't exactly make me feel better. I mean, it's lower on the list of things that are blatantly horrific, but I'm not sure my parents giving me $5,000 to help with a car down-payment (which, to be clear they never have) is the same as as future Supreme Court Justice's D.C. insider parents paying off a million+ dollars of his debt.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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Biden's SCOTUS Commission endorses minor yet still impossible to implement tweaks to address the legitimacy issue at SCOTUS. The elite minds of this country are exist in a state of vapor lock. I think we've simply lost the capability for institutional creativity.
The Supreme Court is struggling with a “legitimacy crisis.” According to the polls, Americans have lost confidence in the branch that requires public confidence to exercise power. Several of the justices see the legitimacy of the court as an existential matter that demands blame-shifting. According to Justice Samuel Alito, the media and liberal law professors are responsible. According to Justice Clarence Thomas, the press are wholly to blame. According to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the partisan press is culpable. And according to Justice Stephen Breyer, partisan politics itself is to blame. It should surprise nobody, then, that according to the draft report issued by 36-ish members (at least one has resigned) of President Joe Biden’s blue-ribbon commission to evaluate the court, absolutely nobody is to blame.

On Thursday, the commission released 200 pages of “Discussion Materials” that represent a tranche of legal research, committee impressions, and policy placeholders. After six months of gathering facts and evidence, taking testimony, and mulling reform ideas, the commission declares that it is neither offering recommendations about fixing the courts nor proposing a specific path forward. One problem: In so doing the commission is actually proposing a specific path forward—the one we are already on. The commission seems to frame the status quo as the reasonable choice and all alternatives as dangerous deviations.

...

To recap: during the six months that this commission has been preparing its draft report, the current Supreme Court made it harder for minorities to challenge racist voter suppression laws, harder for unions to organize, and harder to learn who is contributing funds to political groups. It has changed the law of religious liberty through the shadow docket . It has also, in case you missed it, allowed approximately 10 percent of American women of childbearing age to lose their constitutional right to abortion in September.

If you survey all this legal wreckage and ask what can be done about it, the commission’s interim report has an answer: nothing. It will take more testimony and write more drafts, but even the modest ideas that were on the table when it set about its work—like imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices—appear, on closer examination, to now be disfavored. The committee’s material is so deeply shot through with its anxiety about further politicizing the court that it opts to leave the court as is. Better to save the institution that may someday be called on to save democracy, than to suggest it is in fact working to subvert democracy already. In order to support this conclusion, the authors opt to tell what can only be described as a fairy tale that ascribes fault to both sides (but maybe a little bit more to Democrats? Let’s be honest? So whiny) in the capture of the Supreme Court over the last five decades.

The report starts from the proposition that politicization and polarization around the court is something that just happened; the blame drifts down upon both parties like an early autumn snow. The section titled “Setting the Stage” thus likens Mitch McConnell’s implied blockade of Biden’s SCOTUS nominees should Republicans take control of the Senate in 2022 with Chuck Schumer’s 2007 demand that a “moderate” be confirmed if Democrats control the Senate. Spot the difference? The commission doesn’t. If Democrats are upset that Brett Kavanaugh was untruthful at his hearings and may have sexually assaulted a woman—well, that anger is counterbalanced by how upset his supporters were about how Democrats handled the hearings. Spot the difference? Once again, the commission doesn’t.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Carpet_pissr »

“ the branch that requires public confidence to exercise power.”

? Is that really true? Congress’ approval rating has been in the toilet for as long as I remember and they still exercise power.

PLENTY of examples of govt institutions wielding power that don’t have public confidence. Maybe even most these days.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

Carpet_pissr wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:46 pm“ the branch that requires public confidence to exercise power.”

? Is that really true? Congress’ approval rating has been in the toilet for as long as I remember and they still exercise power.

PLENTY of examples of govt institutions wielding power that don’t have public confidence. Maybe even most these days.
It isn't the law - it is more political science theory. One we are seeing playing out right now. As legitimacy for institutions fade you have increased chance of popular unrest. We are definitely seeing it from the right and may very well start seeing it for the left as the court churns out biased/political decisions.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Let me re-phrase: That sentence, even the idea, is straight up wrong.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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https://gizmodo.com/the-supreme-court-m ... 1847966561

Supreme court apparently to hear a court case around the ability of the EPA to regulate climate gasses.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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:pop:
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

Having read the comments about the orals today in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol v. Bruen it seems like May Issue is going down. It will be probably 6-3. #StatesRights #Originalism

Beyond that Heller is going to be used to basically legalize weapons nearly everywhere. Open carry is probably the new frontier.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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May Issue is bullshit and prone to corruption.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Paingod »

malchior wrote: Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:32 pm There was just a piece on this at Mother Jones, It looks like it was his extremely wealthy...parents. People overlooked that he grew up wealthy. His father sold a business for 7 figure at one point. It's not what people thought but not a big shock itself. He grew up extremely privileged after all.
I honestly always assumed. The way he holds himself and acts along with his known history screams "I never really had to try, I just had to show up"
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Smoove_B »

:shock:


Simply incredible to hear Thomas and Kavanaugh questioning the sincerity of a death row inmate’s religious beliefs, accusing him of “moving the goalposts,” after unquestioningly accepting the sincerity of religious beliefs against same-sex marriage, trans people, contraception …
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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I don't get the shock. I don't get the surprise. When Supremes pull this, when McConnell blocks that, when Manchin interferes with something, when the Rs toe the party line while the Ds bicker, when a Republican governor blows off COVID, when justice isn't done. People also used to get all surprised when Trump acted unpresidential.

Why?

This has been every day for the past half a decade. How can people still be surprised by it? Do they just pretend to be shocked so that they can feel like this isn't 'the norm' and pretend we'll be going back to 'the norm' after this singular event?

This is the norm. Stop acting surprised and start acting pissed. Want something different? That requires fighting for it*, and that requires anger and determination, not surprise. Change requires action, and surprise is only reaction.

*Fighting for it is currently metaphorical, and not to be taken as Drazzilism.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Smoove_B »

I'm not surprised they're doing it. I'm surprised we are at the point where they're openly communicating it and nothing matters. It's quite clear they're political but it feels like the argument that they're not isn't even being attempted anymore.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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Smoove_B wrote: Tue Nov 09, 2021 2:42 pm I'm not surprised they're doing it. I'm surprised we are at the point where they're openly communicating it and nothing matters. It's quite clear they're political but it feels like the argument that they're not isn't even being attempted anymore.
I was referring to the tweet author, but still - we hit 'not bothering to hide it' about four and a half years ago.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Drazzil »

Smoove_B wrote: Tue Nov 09, 2021 2:42 pm I'm not surprised they're doing it. I'm surprised we are at the point where they're openly communicating it and nothing matters. It's quite clear they're political but it feels like the argument that they're not isn't even being attempted anymore.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

The beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade and Casey may be today. Scotusblog categorized and created abstracts of all the amicus briefs. As an aside, this is a momentous case but there are other cases with heavy politicization attached. It is sure to be an interesting and controversial year to say the least even if a potentially heavy politicized Supreme Court wasn't overtly pivoting towards potentially ending some widely accepted women's rights.

SCOTUS blog
More than 140 amicus briefs were filed in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the potentially momentous abortion case concerning a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The briefs come from professors, politicians, states, and interest groups from across the ideological spectrum. We reviewed them all, identified some of the most noteworthy and novel arguments, and summarized them in the guide below.

The case will be argued on Wednesday. For background on the case and a summary of the parties’ arguments, check out Amy Howe’s preview for SCOTUSblog.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

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Blackhawk wrote: Tue Nov 09, 2021 2:38 pm I don't get the shock. I don't get the surprise. When Supremes pull this, when McConnell blocks that, when Manchin interferes with something, when the Rs toe the party line while the Ds bicker, when a Republican governor blows off COVID, when justice isn't done. People also used to get all surprised when Trump acted unpresidential.

Why?
Can’t answer the ‘why’ but I’m right there with ya, have been for a while. It’s faux shock IMO. I don’t have another explanation, except maybe it’s just a way for some to deal with harsh realities they don’t like facing.

I’ve been harping about it for years, usually in the form of media writ large asking absurdly obvious leading questions to experts like : ‘HOW UNUSUAL IS THIS?’ and then letting said expert ramble on about JUST HOW UNUSUAL THIS IS (read ‘shocking’). Then abruptly end with nothing else, because that’s the only answer they were going for.

Media: IS THIS SHOCKING?
Expert: yes
Media: JUST HOW SHOCKING IS THIS?
Expert: very
Media: WELL, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, PEOPLE! THIS IS very SHOCKING AND UNUSUAL! YOU SHOULD ALL BE SHOCKED AT THIS POINT. BACK TO YOU, FRED.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Blackhawk »

If people don't pretend to be shocked, they can't pretend that it isn't normal. And if they can't pretend that it isn't normal, they can't deny to themselves how much of a mess we're really in.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Smoove_B »


Kavanaugh is using these arguments to claim that "returning abortion to the states" is the new middle ground. I think this is pretty clearly over. There are obviously five votes to overturn Roe v. Wade.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by Smoove_B »


This question from Amy Coney Barrett is basically game over for Roe. She says: Now that all 50 states have "safe haven" laws that let women relinquish parental rights after birth, the burdens of parenthood discussed in Roe and Casey are irrelevant, and the decisions are obsolete.
Also, JFC
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by El Guapo »

The only question for me is whether they formally declare that Roe v. Wade is overturned. Functionally it was 95% overturned a long time ago. I'm sure that the Mississippi law will be allowed to stand, but the question is whether the decision is written such that they can point to Roe's desiccated corpse and pretend that there is some hypothetical situation out there in which the court would overturn an abortion restriction.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by malchior »

Blackhawk wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 12:07 pm If people don't pretend to be shocked, they can't pretend that it isn't normal. And if they can't pretend that it isn't normal, they can't deny to themselves how much of a mess we're really in.
This is the essence of it. And it makes sense facing the mess is also the realization that most of us are just observers. We can fight for small change. As an example without Arbery's mother applying constant pressure her son's murderers would have gotten away with it. Put aside that they may yet get away with it. However large systemic change? It isn't happening. Look at last year. People took to the streets in huge numbers to protest police violence. A year plus later? Very little has meaningfully changed. Police reform went down over a lack of 'bipartisanship' etc.

And on topic SCOTUS is acting exactly the way we expected yet people will still deny what we can plainly see. Even if they don't overturn Roe and instead substitute something just shy of that line we'll hear a chorus telling us we all overreacted. As if the line between normal and shocking hasn't been moved miles by the inch over even the last few years.
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Re: SCOTUS Watch

Post by El Guapo »

malchior wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 12:21 pm As an example without Arbery's mother applying constant pressure her son's murderers would have gotten away with it. Put aside that they may yet get away with it.
Semi-aside, but is there some appeal that has a viable chance? How may they get away with it?
Black Lives Matter.
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