2020-10-27 Democrats Push ‘Expand the Court’ Message on Twitter Following Justice Barrett’s Confirmation https://sputniknews.com/us/202010271080885487-democrats-push-expand-the-court-message-on-twitter-following-justice-barretts-confirmation/
2020-10-27 Kamala Harris Calls Barrett’s Confirmation ‘Illegitimate’ After Senate Vote https://sputniknews.com/us/202010271080885948-kamala-harris-calls-barretts-confirmation-illegitimate-after-senate-vote/
2020-10-26 Republicans Have Confirmed Amy Coney Barrett—and Officially Captured the Supreme Court After the Republicans broke the Democrats’ last, desperate filibuster on Sunday, McConnell said, “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”
McConnell’s statement is an amazing admission of guilt. In two sentences, he explained the entire Faustian bargain the Republican Party has made with Trump: Trump gets to wreck the country and ruin the Republican brand, potentially throwing the upcoming election to the Democrats, but McConnell and Co. get archconservative justices who will spend the next 30 to 40 years thwarting the liberal agenda and the will of a majority of the people. That deal works for McConnell because he believes he’s made elections unnecessary to the furtherance of the Republican political agenda. He means to use the courts to do that work.
McConnell’s strategy makes sense only if Democrats are too weak and fractured to do what is necessary to take back the Supreme Court should they win the current election. He is clearly betting they are. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/amy-coney-barrett-confirmed/
2020-10-26 The Electoral College Makes It Easier for the Courts To Steal Elections Donald Trump has said he wants a new Supreme Court justice confirmed quickly because he expects the court to decide the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. A new study finds that the Electoral College system significantly increases the possibility of that happening — and the data suggest that such a process is far more likely to help Republicans win the White House.
“It is much more likely under the Electoral College than under the national popular vote that the election outcome will be narrow enough to be reversible by judicial or administrative processes,” concludes a new study from University of Texas researchers. “The Electoral College today is about 40 times as likely as a National Popular Vote to generate scenarios in which a small number of ballots in a pivotal voting unit determines the Presidency.”https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/electoral-college-popular-vote-trump-election-supreme-court
2020-10-26 Amy Coney Barrett Helped Corporations Quash Discrimination Cases Donald Trump works to try to halt racial sensitivity training in America’s workplaces, he has pushed to appoint a Supreme Court justice who has periodically ruled against workers who claim that they have faced racial discrimination on the job.
During her Senate confirmation hearing, Barrett declined to say whether or not she believes systemic bigotry plagues America, though she did acknowledge “that racism exists in our country.” On the bench, however, Barrett has in some cases helped employers shut down lawsuits from people of color who argued that their civil rights had been violated. Those were just some of her rulings in which she consistently sided with corporate interests over workers. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/amy-coney-barrett-workplace-discrimination-cases
2020-10-25 How conservative groups will advance their agendas before a Supreme Court with Amy Coney Barrett Like other justices, if confirmed, Barrett will continually face pressure campaigns from groups trying to shape the direction of American law. The main way special interests participate in the courts is by filing amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs in cases that intersect with their interests. In these legal documents, groups take positions to persuade the justices to endorse their economic, political and social interests.
Although amicus briefs are filed in almost all appellate courts in the United States, they are especially prevalent in the U.S. Supreme Court. Almost every case before the court has at least one amicus brief, and there is an average of about 12 briefs per case. High-profile disputes, such as those involving abortion, affirmative action, health care and same-sex marriage, have neared or topped 100 amicus briefs.
Amicus briefs are not cheap – they can cost up to US$100,000 because of the fees related to attorneys’ time and expenses to research and prepare them. And the court’s rules can be manipulated to obscure who pays for these briefs. This has led to allegations that groups are purposely hiding the wealthy donors who fund these briefs to further the donors’ political agendas in the court. https://www.salon.com/2020/10/25/how-conservative-groups-will-advance-their-agendas-before-a-supreme-court-with-amy-coney-barrett_partner/
2020-10-25 Amy Coney Barrett Has Close Ties To the Fossil Fuel Industry Judge Amy Coney Barrett could decide the fate of a major pipeline case pushed by the fossil fuel lobbying organization where her father served as a top official. The case could limit states’ power to halt fossil fuel projects at a moment when scientists say climate change could render large swaths of the United States uninhabitable in our lifetime.
Barrett — who has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the validity of climate science — has been under intensifying pressure to commit to recusing herself from fossil fuel cases because of her father’s ties to the industry. As a lower-court judge, she had recused herself from cases involving Shell Oil, where her father worked as a top attorney. But she has since refused to commit to recusing from oil company cases, even though Shell currently has a major climate case before the high court.https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/amy-coney-barrett-fossil-fuels-recusal-supreme-court-shell
2020-10-24 THE DARK MONEY-FUNDED WOMEN’S GROUP RALLYING BEHIND AMY CONEY BARRETT The Independent Women’s Forum and its sister group have received millions from dark-money groups advancing conservative control of the courts. https://theintercept.com/2020/10/24/amy-coney-barrett-women-group-dark-money/
2020-10-24 Judge Ye The Woman By The Company She Keeps the company Amy Coney Barrett keeps is odious.
Consider: She was a trustee for a group of rabidly anti LGBT, homophobic schools, schools that torment pupils who question their identity. Schools so vile that they visit the so-called ‘sins’ of the parents onto the children, refusing admission to any child of a same sex or trans couple as if these children are somehow tainted.
Her religious group, “People of Praise”, is a patriarchal cult demanding submission and obedience from its members, particularly women. It controls its members’ day to day lives and dips into their bank accounts. And like oh, so many of these cults, these ‘Praise People’ stand accused of rampant trauma and sexual abuse by former members, some of whom had to change their names and retreat to safe houses because of threats from the group’s leaders.
Barrett is a devout Catholic of a decidedly reactive, obedient bent. Leaving the Catholic ‘faith’ aside, is it really necessary to list the crimes, the misery, the corruption the institution known as the Catholic Church has inflicted on the world for 2,000 years? The abuse? The cultural theft? The genocides, even in our lifetime? The financial deceptions? The disrespect of other religions, civilizations? The silence during the Holocaust? The complicity in Slavery? The Institutional Catholic Church is the very antithesis of a moral, ethical organization.
Barrett aligns herself with Constitutional originalists and textualists. Originalism is a frankly stupid interpretation of law based on the original founder’s intentions – as if people 250 years ago could imagine our world. And of course, the only people who know what was in the minds of those originals are, you guessed it, the people who declare themselves originalists.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg mocks this lack of creative thinking as ‘dead hand originalism’. Barrett worshiped at the feet of ‘Justice’ Scalia, the deadest of modern dead-hand jurists. Every opinion she has let slip indicates that freezing society in the late 18th century is exactly what she believes in. Just like Scalia.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/24/1989137/-Judge-Ye-The-Woman-By-The-Company-She-Keeps
2020-10-23 JUST DISCOVERED-Amy Coney Barrett Implies Brown v. Board Is Public Opinion Not Constitutionality Amy Coney Barrett said she believed Brown was Superprecedent. Ok. But in her own writings she attributes Superprecedent to public opinion, not what I would call constitutional cement. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/23/1988871/-JUST-DISCOVERED-Amy-Coney-Barrett-Implies-Brown-v-Board-Is-Public-Opinion-Not-Constitutionality
2020-10-23 Amy Coney Barrett Is the Least Experienced Supreme Court Nominee in 30 years The Federalist Society has turned many mediocre men into judges—and a few smart moms The permanent record of the 48-year-old former Notre Dame law school professor is in direct proportion with her resume, which is strikingly thin for someone nominated to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court. By almost any objective measure, Barrett is the most inexperienced person nominated to the Supreme Court since 1991, when President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, then just 43, to replace the legendary Thurgood Marshall. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/amy-coney-barrett-is-the-least-experienced-supreme-court-nominee-in-30-years/
2020-10-22 ‘It’s a Very Determined Power Play to Pack Our Court’ https://fair.org/home/its-a-very-determined-power-play-to-pack-our-court/
2020-10-22 ‘Shameful Power Grab’: Democrats Boycott and Progressives Protest as GOP Votes to Send Barrett Nomination to Senate Floor Senate Republicans ran roughshod over Judiciary Committee rules Thursday to advance the nomination of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick Amy Coney Barrett, the latest step in what progressive advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers condemned as a “shameful power grab” less than two weeks out from next month’s presidential election. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/22/shameful-power-grab-democrats-boycott-and-progressives-protest-gop-votes-send
2020-10-21 Amy Coney Barrett – A Threat to Religious Freedom & the Constitution https://progressiveissuesblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/21/amy-coney-barrett-a-threat-to-religious-freedom-the-constitution//
2020-10-21 Petition – No Confirmation Before the Inauguration Democrats in Congress must use every tool at their disposal to slow down this confirmation and honor Justice Ginsburg’s final request. http://act.democracyforamerica.com/sign/dfa-em-201021-scotus/?t=2&refcode=g-SCOTUS1021.d-20201021.m-25318.s-158224&akid=25318%2E4759753%2ELzpwhf
2020-10-20 Amy Coney Barrett, Constitutional Precedent, and the Problem of Originalism The foundation of the US legal system is strongly based on the concept of legal precedent. Judges when interpreting the law or the Constitution are supposed to respect past decisions when there are similar facts. Historically the justification for reversing constitution precedent was that the prior decision proved no longer to be workable or that the conditions under which it was decided had so changed that the factual basis for it had been undermined. Precedent could also be rejected if new facts pointed to the lack of viability of the old decision.
Scalia especially brought to the Court his theory of constitutional interpretation called Originalism. This theory said that in order to limit the discretion of judges in making policy or substituting their own opinions for that of elected officials, they should interpret the Constitution in terms of the intent of the Framers.
While elegant in theory, in practice Originalism is flawed in many ways. It assumes the Framers were of one mind when they drafted the Constitution. It naively believes that one can reconstruct the past accurately to ascertain historical intentions and apply them to a world they could not envision. It falsely assumes a theory of history no longer accepted by historians that one can simply recount the past by “telling it like it was.” It overlooks that many of the Framers were slaveholders and the original document embodied beliefs and assumptions most of us now reject. But the major problem is that Originalism does two damaging things: One it ignores rights. Two, it threatens constitutional precedent.
Amy Coney Barrett is an Originalist, a student of Scalia. No matter what assurances she gave to the Senate about remaining open-minded to precedents, either her past comments on the law, her legal opinions in cases, her ideology, or her interpretive method question her fidelity to precedent. Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett is a threat to many constitutional precedents, including Roe v. Wade (abortion rights), National Federation of Business v. Sebelius, (Obamacare), and Obergefell v. Hodges (marriage equality). https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/20/amy-coney-barrett-constitutional-precedent-and-the-problem-of-originalism/
2020-10-19 Barrett Poised to Become the Most Radical Right-Wing Member of Supreme Court During her Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Amy Coney Barrett refused to say that voter intimidation is illegal, that armed poll watchers are intimidating, that voter discrimination exists, whether the president could deny someone the right to vote based on race or that Congress has a constitutional duty to protect the right to vote.
She refused to affirm that Medicare is constitutional; that married couples should not lose their right to contraceptives; that a Black worker repeatedly called the N-word was subjected to a hostile work environment; that it’s wrong to separate children from their parents at the border; or that marriage equality, the right to consensual gay sex and LGBTQ workers’ rights should be protected. Barrett would not say that human beings are responsible for climate change or that the Constitution requires a peaceful transfer of power.
Barrett’s answers — and refusals to answer — confirm that she will be the most radical right-wing member of the Court. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/19/barrett-poised-to-become-the-most-radical-right-wing-member-of-supreme-court/
2020-10-18 Greta Thunberg vs Amy Coney Barrett Environmental activist Greta Thunberg had strong words for the abstract stance the Unites States Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett took during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. In answer to the question: What about climate change? Barrett responded: “I have read things about climate change,” then warily emphasizing that she is not a scientist: “I would not say I have firm views on it.”
On Thursday Greta Thunberg wrote on Twitter “To be fair, I don’t have any ‘views’ on climate change either, just like I don’t have any ‘views’ on gravity, the fact that the earth is round, on photosynthesis nor evolution. But understanding and knowing their existence really makes life in the 21st century so much easier.”
The words of Amy Coney Barrett raise a serious question. Why was she so nebulous? Here is a scientific fact: World-wide population growth is now exceeding the carrying capacity of the Planet. At the current rate of increase it will lead to ecological collapse. https://countercurrents.org/2020/10/greta-thunberg-vs-amy-coney-barrett/
2020-10-18 What Doth it Profit Amy Coney Barrett to Gain the Supreme Court? At Amy Coney Barrett’s (ACB) Supreme Court confirmation hearing on October 14, 2020, California US Senator Kamala Harris asked the nominee if she believed that COVID 19 is infectious. The nominee affirmed that she did accept that it is infectious, and that “we take judicial notice [of that as] an obvious fact.” However, many Americans, as shown by videos and photos of the president’s very recent rallies showing attendees seated very closely together and very few wearing masks, possibly do not share ACB’s view that the infectiousness of COVID 19 is “an obvious fact.”
At another time the American tobacco industry waged a long propaganda war to cast doubt on the science proving that smoking is carcinogenic. That corporate war against the truth was eventually lost. Now, humans in charge of the fossil fuel industry have the same disregard for human life as the humans in charge of the tobacco industry–but with an uncanny, expanded disregard extending to the lives of their own descendants and the life of humanity itself. And these humans have the newest nominee to the Supreme Court firmly in hand.
It was not Kamala Harris attempting to make fallacious analogies, but ACB afraid to answer a simple question about whether she believes climate change is real, and forced by this fear to dissemble. In fact, the infectiousness of COVID 19, the cancer-causing dangers of smoking, and climate change belong together in an epistemological category: All three have been demonstrated scientifically and all three have been accepted by consensus of the relevant scientific community. https://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/65738-what-doth-it-profit-amy-coney-barrett-to-gain-the-supreme-court
2020-10-17 Senators failed to ask Amy Coney Barrett some important questions Every member of Congress, in both parties plus independents, should not ask another question until they have sat through a class, including role-play exercises, on how to frame questions. After three days of Kabuki theater, a television mini-series produced by the Senate Judiciary Committee, did you learn anything Judge Amy Coney Barrett that she didn’t want you to know? Really, it’s not hard to frame questions that produce informative answers, including when the response is a dodge. https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/senators-failed-to-ask-amy-coney-barrett-some-important-questions/
2020-10-17 Catholic nun lowers the boom on Amy Coney Barrett for wanting to take women ‘back to 1789’ “She is a strong Catholic. That’s lovely. I’m a lawyer and I’m worried about her decisions,” said Campbell. “The fact is, Judge Barrett has lived in an ivory tower bubble most of her career. She doesn’t know the reality of struggling people. And her approach to the Constitution is to say, we have to go back to 1789 and how they thought then, without acknowledging the changes that have occurred, the growth in civil rights, the growth in the fact that women have the vote, the growth in the fact that we as a nation have discovered a deeper sense of the common good. And so I worry about what’s going to happen to voting rights. I worry about what’s going to happen to the Affordable Care Act. I worry about how she sees the critical social issues of our time.” https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/catholic-nun-lowers-the-boom-on-amy-coney-barrett-for-wanting-to-take-women-back-to-1789/
2020-10-16 Watchdog group accuses Amy Coney Barrett of ‘unconscionable cruelty’ in teen rape case “After a 19-year old pregnant prison inmate was repeatedly raped by a prison guard, Amy Coney Barrett ruled that the county responsible for the prison could not be held liable because the sexual assaults fell outside of the guard’s official duties. Her judgment demonstrates a level of unconscionable cruelty that has no place on the high court,” Kyle Herrig, president of the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US, told Salon. “The only thing more concerning than the rush to confirm by Senate Republicans is what we are learning about Amy Coney Barrett’s extremist record. It is hardly surprising that she has dodged question after question during her testimony.” https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/watchdog-group-accuses-amy-coney-barrett-of-unconscionable-cruelty-in-teen-rape-case/
2020-10-16 Packing the Court As a political battle over the Supreme Court’s direction rages in Washington with President Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, history shows that political contests over the ideological slant of the Court are nothing new.
In the 1860s, President Abraham Lincoln worked with fellow Republicans to shape the Court to carry out his party’s anti-slavery and pro-Union agenda. It was an age in which the court was unabashedly a “partisan creature,” in historian Rachel Shelden’s words.
When Lincoln became president in 1861, seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union, yet half of the Supreme Court justices were Southerners, including Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland. One other Southern member had died in 1860, without replacement. All were Democratic appointees. Some Republicans declared it “the duty of the Republican Party to reorganize the Federal Court and reverse that decision, which … disgraces the judicial department of the Federal Government.”
Nine months into his term, Lincoln declared that “the country generally has outgrown our present judicial system,” which since 1837 had comprised nine federal court jurisdictions, or “circuits.” Supreme Court justices rode the circuit, presiding over those federal courts. Republicans passed the Judiciary Act of 1862, overhauling the federal court system by collapsing federal circuits in the South from five to three while expanding circuits in the North from four to six. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/16/packing-the-court/
2020-10-16 No need to pack the Supreme Court, just unpack it By reviewing false statements made by Donald Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearing, the circumstances behind former Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy’s sudden retirement and its relationship to Kennedy’s son’s executive position at major Trump lender Deutsche Bank, Justice Clarence Thomas’s and wife, Ginni Thomas’s, unethical side political activities, a page can be borrowed from the scandal that drove Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas from the bench in 1969. By restoring the ethical standards applied against Fortas, a Texas crony of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the current Supreme Court can be “unpacked” of its unsavory members. If Barrett is found to have lied during her own hearing, she can be added to the unpacking list. By restoring ethical standards to the members of the court and driving off the bench the bad applies, a President Joe Biden could and should find himself appointing at least three replacements to the Supreme Court.http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/31064
2020-10-16 Paul Krugman reveals the biggest danger Amy Coney Barrett poses to ‘the future of civilization’ even if Democrats are in total control of the elected branches, Republicans will still be in a position to inflict considerable suffering with a far-right supermajority on the Supreme Court. Even if Democrats take both the Senate and the White House, they’re now almost certain to face a 6-3 Supreme Court — that is, a Court dominated by appointees of an increasingly extremist party that has only won the popular vote for president once in the past three decades.”
Democrats have, rightly and understandably, hammered on the possibility that such a (Supreme) Court would use transparently spurious arguments to overturn the Affordable Care Act, causing tens of millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage,” Krugman notes. “Roe v. Wade is also in obvious danger. But I’d argue that the biggest threat this Court will pose is to environmental policy.”
Krugman notes that billionaire Charles Koch “is reportedly investing millions trying to get Barrett confirmed.” “That’s not because he’s passionately opposed to abortion rights or probably, even because he wants the ACA overturned,” Krugman observes. “What he’s looking for, surely, is a (Supreme) Court that will block government regulation of business — and above all, a Court that will hamstring a Biden administration’s efforts to take action against climate change.”https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/paul-krugman-even-if-trump-loses-and-democrats-recapture-the-senate-the-gop-can-inflict-considerable-damage-via-the-supreme-court/
2020-10-15 Up in Arms Over Failed Barrett Hearings, Watchdog Calls for Feinstein’s Removal as Ranking Member on Senate Judiciary Angered by her soft approach during this week’s confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett—on top of her failure to embrace progressive reforms to the nation’s highest court—the head of a progressive judicial watchdog group on Thursday called for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s removal as the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In his statement on Thursday, Fallon argued that Feinstein “has undercut Democrats’ position at every step of this process, from undermining calls for filibuster and Court reform straight through to thanking Republicans for the most egregious partisan power grab in the modern history of the Supreme Court.” —Brian Fallon, Demand Justice
“It’s time for Sen. Feinstein to step down from her leadership position on the Senate Judiciary Committee,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, in a statement. “If she won’t, her colleagues need to intervene.” —Brian Fallon, Demand Justice “It’s time for Sen. Feinstein to step down from her leadership position on the Senate Judiciary Committee,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, in a statement. “If she won’t, her colleagues need to intervene.”
As Elie Mystal wrote for The Nation on Thursday, the only solution to the Barrett “debacle” is expanding the court once Democrats win back the Senate. “The argument for court expansion is often presented as retribution for Republicans messing with the court, first by blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland, now by rushing the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor,” noted Mystal. “But there is a higher purpose for court expansion, one that goes beyond avenging Ginsburg and Garland. Expanding the court now—through raw political power, if necessary—is the best way to reform and depoliticize the court for future generations. Expanding the court is the way to save it. It’s a lot like breaking a bone to reset the leg.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/15/arms-over-failed-barrett-hearings-watchdog-calls-feinsteins-removal-ranking-member
2020-10-15 Why Are Democrats Silent on Climate During the Amy Coney Barrett Hearings? In an exclusive report on Tuesday night, The Daily Poster broke the news that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has direct ties to Shell Oil and could be on the court as it hears the oil giant’s new appeal to try to permanently crush climate litigation. If Barrett is confirmed and she refuses to recuse herself, she could help decide that landmark case, which could determine the future of all climate policy for the next few decades.
Now, only hours after the story broke, Barrett used her confirmation hearing to effectively deny climate change — and Democrats went silent. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/amy-coney-barrett-shell-supreme-court
2020-10-15 There’s a fraud at the heart of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation process But as Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination proceeds this week, there was something clearly much darker going on than the odd political dance that has traditionally developed around such events. There’s a fraud being carried out. The existence of the fraud, however, is evident. There’s a clear disconnect between how Barrett claims to view her nomination and how President Donald Trump views her nomination.
It’s clear, then, that Trump picked Barrett as his nominee with very specific reasons in mind — indeed, he picked her, at least in part, to fulfill promises to his right-wing voters. And given right-wing media’s enthusiasm for Barrett, it seems they believe he is fulfilling his promise. But according to Barrett, Trump hasn’t fulfilled his promise. Under repeated questioning from senators, she denied that she would come to the court with any specific agenda. “I have no mission and no agenda,” she said. “Judges don’t have campaign promises.” https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/theres-a-fraud-at-the-heart-of-acbs-confirmation-process/
2020-10-15 Amy Coney Barrett’s extreme religious views should be vetted It’s about their faith, full stop. Millions in this country—white evangelical Protestants and conservative white Catholics chief among them—root their genuinely held religious beliefs in opposition to modernity, which is to say, in politics. There is, therefore, no appreciable difference between them. The more our society moves in the direction of greater freedom, equity and justice for all people, the more these revanchists believe their faith is under siege; and the more they feel their faith is under siege, the more prepared they are to go to war over “religious freedom.”
Overturning Roe, or at least gutting it in order to permit the states to outlaw abortion, has been the goal for decades. The Republicans are so close to the prize, they’re willing to sacrifice the presidency, the Senate and the court’s credibility. The more our society moves in the direction of greater freedom, equity and justice for all people—the more American women enjoy a monopoly over their own bodies—the more the revanchists demand an minoritarian veto.
Not just any religion. A very specific strain of authoritarian and white Christianity. This strain believes that one person has a right to use another person, without her consent, in order to stay alive. There’s a reason Republicans want to make Barrett’s religion off limits. They don’t want a majority to see outlawing abortion as the establishment of a state religion. https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/amy-coney-barretts-extreme-religious-views-should-be-vetted/
2020-10-15 Amy Coney Barrett Is Not Pro-Life Trump’s Supreme Court nominee has no regard for Americans protected by the Affordable Care Act. Beyond overturning the Affordable Care Act—an unpopular cause Republicans know is a loser with voters, so they are now seeking to force it through the courts—Barrett also represents the Trump Administration’s complete contempt for the lives and health of the American people during the pandemic. https://progressive.org/dispatches/amy-coney-barrett-not-pro-life-conniff-201015/
2020-10-15 ‘This Is Unprecedented’: Lindsey Graham Openly Violates Committee Rules to Schedule Vote on Barrett Nomination Republican Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham on Thursday brazenly flouted the rules of his own panel by scheduling a vote on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett for next week without the required number of Democratic members present, a move Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer condemned as further evidence of “the illegitimacy of this sham process.”
Under committee rules, at least two members of the minority party must be present for a vote to take place. But on Thursday morning, with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) the only Democrat in attendance, Graham moved forward with a motion setting Barrett’s Judiciary Committee vote for 1:00 pm ET on October 22.https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/15/unprecedented-lindsey-graham-openly-violates-committee-rules-schedule-vote-barrett
2020-10-14 Workers Can Expect Sympathy from Amy Coney Barrett – As Long As They Don’t Bring a Class Action to Defend Their Rights A closer read of Barrett’s opinions suggest that her stance toward employment cases depends on whether workers are suing on their own or as part of a class action. With Barrett added to the bench, I would therefore expect the Supreme Court to continue to take a pro-business stance when it comes to class actions.
Still, I would expect Barrett to be somewhat of a wild card when it comes to the rights of individual workers. Just like the rest of 2020, Barrett could prove to be more unpredictable than we assume. https://portside.org/2020-10-14/workers-can-expect-sympathy-amy-coney-barrett-long-they-dont-bring-class-action-defend
2020-10-14 Amy Coney Barrett reveals her dark traits: Opaque, disingenuous, and frightening Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett spent much of her hearing day refusing to answer any difficult question with any specificity, even when her past writings and speeches spoke loud and clear.
As Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said, she’s “so far perfected the art of non-answers.” This rampant, blank-slate disingenuousness from Barrett proved to be as irritating throughout the day as Brett Kavanaugh’s fake outrage and crocodile tears in his hearing, and just as unbelievable.
She came to that hearing prepared to do nothing but obfuscate and refuse to answer questions, without even bothering to prepare because she knows the fix is in and Republicans are going to jam her onto the bench no matter what.
Laura Clawson covered the most important, most illuminating part of the day, which not surprisingly didn’t include Barrett at all. It was Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s tutorial on how she happened to be sitting in that seat. https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/amy-coney-barret-reveals-her-true-self/
2020-10-13 Judge Barrett’s Record: Siding With Businesses Over Workers A number of her decisions deprive employees and other vulnerable populations of their civil rights. Supreme Court confirmation hearings have become a high-level version of dodgeball, where nominees work tirelessly to evince no opinion on any legal matter whatsoever, using the excuse that the topic might come up before the Court in the future, and the nominee wouldn’t want to prejudge any decision.
In this case, both Barrett’s record and the entire process can be prejudged. Though she only has three years on the federal bench, Barrett has nearly two decades’ worth of law review writing from her time as a professor at Notre Dame. Everyone knows she has been installed to deliver victories on long-sought, ideologically conservative priorities, from eliminating the right to choose an abortion to the overturning of a century of labor law jurisprudence. And everyone knows conservative senators will vote in lockstep to get Barrett on the Court to commence this work. The only drama lies in whether enough of them are actually available to complete the task before the general election.
Even Barrett’s short stint as a judge has yielded a number of revealing opinions that all point to a general bias. As the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law puts it in a report released today on the Barrett record, “she is predisposed to side with law enforcement at the expense of defendants’ constitutional rights, and with employers and business interests in disputes with employees and consumers.”
These views have run counter to the civil rights of vulnerable and oppressed people time and again, in ways that suggest that Barrett would be unyieldingly extreme on the Court when it comes to protections for workers, police suspects, and people of color.
Barrett could be willing to accept discriminatory actions in a host of other settings, even in the face of rulings like Brown v. Board of Education. https://prospect.org/justice/judge-barretts-record-siding-with-businesses-over-workers/
2020-10-13 Whitehouse strips the veil off the dark money running the ‘puppet theater’ of the Barrett hearings So instead of inviting Barrett to be dishonest, Whitehouse explained the forces that put her in that Senate hearing room with the specific agenda—killing the Affordable Care Act, ending marriage equality, overturning Roe v. Wade—she is on the record as having (but is currently pretending not to have).
Whitehouse described the Senate hearing room as being like a puppet theater, with “forces outside of this room who are pulling strings and pushing sticks and causing the puppet theater to react.” Highlighting the hypocrisy from Senate Republicans who claimed in 2016 that they would oppose filling a Supreme Court seat in 2020 only to push to do exactly that after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Whitehouse said “When you find hypocrisy in the daylight, look for power in the shadows.” He then spent his time shining a light on the power in the shadows—the right-wing dark money behind the Republican takeover of the courts and the use of the courts to move U.S. policy ever to the right. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/13/1986186/-Right-wing-donors-spent-250-million-packing-the-courts-Sen-Whitehouse-explains-what-they-got
2020-10-13 Biden Needs to Give a Major Speech on Court Expansion Joe Biden has been getting pummeled by Republicans, both for the demands of many Democrats to expand the Supreme Court, and for ducking the question of whether he supports the idea. He can blunt these attacks by facing the issue head-on.
Expanding the Court is a legitimate idea because Republicans have been engaging in court-packing for decades. For starters, they have imposed extreme ideological litmus tests on their own court appointees, and shamelessly delayed or blocked Democratic appointments. They were vicious in blocking Obama’s appointees to every level of the federal judiciary, abusing everything from the norm of senatorial courtesy to the filibuster. They also engaged in bargaining with the Obama White House signaling that centrist nominees would have an easier time.
The fact is that the Supreme Court has been different sizes at different periods of American history. If the Republicans think the size of a court is sacrosanct, why did they try the gambit of proposing legislation to shrink the size of the country’s second most important appellate court, the D.C. Circuit, from 11 to 8 in 2013, other than to lock in a conservative majority? We also need to enlarge federal district and appeals courts, which have not been increased since Jimmy Carter’s presidency, despite population growth of some 40 percent.
Biden needs to explain all this to the voters. He will win points for his candor, and will at least partly defuse the issue. The term “court-packing” has been repeatedly used by the media in a way that echoes and reinforces Republican talking points. By treating the issue substantively and seriously, Biden can push the media to do likewise. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have followed Biden’s lead, and have refused to say where they stand. They all look evasive, and their stance plays into Republican hands by diverting attention from the outrageous midnight appointment of Judge Barrett. It also serves the Republican strategy of using the issue of Court control to rally Trump’s base.
Today’s Republicans have so politicized the Court that its very legitimacy is in question. Biden needs to say that he has not ruled out expanding the Court, and that he will begin a process of consultation with scholars and jurists to consider several alternatives, including fixed terms for justices, mandatory retirement ages, and a larger Court. https://prospect.org/politics/biden-speech-supreme-court-expansion-court-packing/
2020-10-13 Supreme Court Expansion Isn’t Even a Tough Call Republicans have not suffered from such equivocation — instead, they have for years tried to pack the courts, both through contraction and expansion. In Washington, they have pushed to shrink the courts, and they have blocked Democratic presidents from filling judicial appointments — moves designed to increase the power of GOP-appointed judges already on the bench. In states, Republicans have pushed to expand the courts to increase their number of appointees.
At the Supreme Court level, Republicans stole a majority when they denied a hearing for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court choice for 293 days before Trump took office, and placed Neil Gorsuch on the courts. They minted a more conservative majority with Brett Kavanaugh. Amy Coney Barrett and a six-to-three balance on the court, arriving via a grim bit of luck, would just be the icing on a decades-long, ultraconservative majority that threatens Americans’ reproductive rights, voting rights, labor rights, health care rights, and civil rights.
If Democrats have any interest in protecting Americans’ fundamental rights, they only have a few options. The easiest way to talk about whether to expand the court is to cast it as an issue of values and policies that people actually care about. If — as they insist — Democrats are firmly committed to protecting reproductive, voting, labor, health care, and civil rights, it shouldn’t be difficult for any Senate candidate to say they will consider all options available to protect them, including expanding the court.
By contrast, Republicans only want to talk abstractly about process and court size and not about policy — because their judicial nominees’ opposition to abortion rights, health care protections, and union rights are wildly unpopular. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/supreme-court-expansion-court-packing
2020-10-13 Amy Coney Barrett’s position on Obamacare is quite literally unbelievable Amy Coney Barrett might just be only person in public life on Oct. 13, 2020 who does not know how many people have been infected with the coronavirus in the U.S. (more than 7 million) or how many people have received health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (more than 20 million) and from Medicaid expansion from that law (around 15 million and growing, because of COVID-19 job loss). She would have the Senate—and the American people—believe that she has been so much locked in her ivory tower where she can’t possibly have prejudged any issue that might come before her that she has no clue what’s happening in the biggest crisis facing the nation since WWII.
She sat there, with her blank notepad, demonstrating that she had absolutely no reason to even bother to prepare for these hearings because she knew no matter what, Sen. Mitch McConnell had the votes to put her on the highest court of the land. https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/amy-coney-barretts-position-on-obamacare-literally-you-cant-believe-a-thing-she-says/
2020-10-12 Supersize the Supreme Court to Save It A new way of thinking about depoliticizing the judiciary Instead of partisan court-packing by adding just enough seats to change the ideological balance of the Court, Congress should effect a wholesale makeover of the Court by adding two dozen more seats. This change would dramatically improve both the political climate of nominations and the way the Court operates, all while staying within the confines of the Constitution.
The problem with the current system is that it is winner-take-all. If one party gets a majority of the seats on the Court, it controls it, not just until the next election, but potentially for a generation. In a polarized political environment, this sort of winner-take-all system is a recipe for brutal confirmation fights that undermine the Court’s appearance of impartiality and legitimacy. https://prospect.org/justice/supersize-the-supreme-court-to-save-it/
2020-10-12 What else is Amy Coney Barrett hiding? Following Barrett’s belated disclosures—which did not include the content of the talks—all ten Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter (pdf) demanding to know what else the corporate-friendly judge is withholding as Republicans rush ahead with her confirmation process despite a coronavirus outbreak on Capitol Hill and widespread opposition to the nominee among legal experts and civil rights groups.
“It is troubling that Judge Barrett supplemented her [Senate Judiciary Questionnaire] to include these talks only after they were identified by the press,” the lawmakers wrote. “These new omissions raise more questions about the reliability of Judge Barrett’s SJQ and her candor before the Committee. These new omissions also raise serious concerns about Judge Barrett’s rushed confirmation process and the hasty process of collecting materials responsive to the SJQ.” https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/what-else-is-any-coney-barrett-hiding/
2020-10-08 How Trump and Amy Coney Barrett could wreak damage for generations of American workers As a union griever, Jason Haynes fought constant battles against employers ever ready to cheat workers out of overtime pay and other hard-earned benefits. He’s also seen firsthand how greedy corporations and their Republican cronies relentlessly erode labor protections at the state and national levels, making it increasingly difficult not only for Americans to organize but for union members to exercise long-held rights.
Now, Haynes fears the addition of anti-worker Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the right-wing-dominated Supreme Court will help the rich tighten their stranglehold on working people. Donald Trump nominated Barrett to weaponize the nation’s most important court against ordinary Americans
And because she refuses to adhere to precedent, Barrett could provide a crucial vote on cases potentially overturning organizing rights, rolling back labor protections and dealing other setbacks to workers. https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/how-trump-and-amy-coney-barrett-could-wreak-damage-for-generations-of-american-workers/
2020-10-08 Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett: Another step toward Christian fascism The Christian right is content to have the focus on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett revolve around her opposition to abortion and membership in People of Praise, a far-right Catholic cult that practices “speaking in tongues.” What it does not want examined is her abject subservience to corporate power, her hostility to workers, civil liberties, unions and environmental regulations. And since the Democratic Party is beholden to the same donor class as the Republican Party, and since the media long ago substituted the culture wars for politics, the most ominous threat Barrett’s appointment to the court represents is going unmentioned.
All fascist and totalitarian movements paper over their squalid belief systems with the veneer of morality. They mouth pieties about restoring law and order, right and wrong, the sanctity of life, civic and family virtues, patriotism and tradition to mask their dismantling of the open society and silencing and persecution of those who oppose them. This is the real game being played by Christian fascists, who since the early 1970s have been building institutions with tens of millions in corporate donations to take power. Donald Trump, who has no ideology, has allowed the Christian right to fill his ideological void. He is the useful idiot. https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trumps-nomination-of-amy-coney-barrett-another-step-toward-christian-fascism/ https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/05/chris-hedges-trumps-barrett-nomination-another-step-toward-christian-totalitarianism/
2020-10-05 Senate Dems Have a Big Supreme Court Opportunity Today. Will They Use It? It should go without saying that in this superheated political environment, when McConnell wants something, the Democratic reflex should be to try to deny him that thing, because we know his primary goal is advancing the GOP’s extremist agenda. This is not a person with a conscience who does anything out of any respect for humanity, decency, or the common good. Every seemingly innocuous maneuver he makes should be viewed as a nefarious maneuver for power.
In this particular case, if Democrats deny McConnell unanimous consent, vulnerable GOP senators in key battleground states may have to leave the campaign trail, because Republicans would potentially need every vote they have while three of the party’s senators are out with COVID. If Democrats gather enough of their caucus to the senate floor, they may be able to vote down an adjournment resolution on a roll call vote.
At that point, Democrats could deny adjournment and use their leverage to demand that any adjournment resolution include provisions putting off the Supreme Court hearings until after the election.https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/senate-democrats-schumer-mcconnell-supreme-court
2020-10-04 Al Franken buries Amy Coney Barrett in brutal MSNBC interview “I was there in [2016] when the president nominated Merrick Garland. All of them said the same thing. The president can’t nominate someone this close to an election,” said Franken, who previously served on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Coney Barrett went on CBS TV after Scalia died and made the exact same case, saying that the president can’t nominate someone during an election year.
“You go back and see her words. She’s a total hypocrite,” added Franken. “Not only are the Republican members of the Senate hypocrites, they wouldn’t meet with Merrick Garland. I questioned her, as you may remember, she had taken money from the [Alliance Defending Freedom], a hate group, Southern Poverty Law Center had labeled them as a hate group. They are for the sterilization of transgender people. She took money from them.
She’s an extreme choice and believes … that life starts at conception and that it would be a crime to destroy an egg that was fertilized in in vitro fertilization, a frozen egg.” https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/al-franken-buries-amy-coney-barrett-in-brutal-msnbc-interview/
2020-10-04 To keep Barrett off the Supreme Court, Schumer must fight like a defense attorney with a client on death row The person with the power to organize top Democrats to confront this confirmation is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. He has the opportunity to be the hero who saves all that Democrats hold dear. As he strives to do so he should seek guidance from a counterintuitive source, one frequently standing just a few feet away: He should do whatever Mitch McConnell would do. We all know that if the roles were reversed, McConnell would do all in his power to whip the Republican Conference into line and slow things down.
One of us was trained as a death penalty lawyer, and learned from the best in the country, heroes who file motion after motion to keep their clients alive. Great death penalty lawyers do not roll over when the odds are high. They don’t rely on in-house counsel; they call people in other states pushing for new and creative ideas to keep their clients alive. Delay can mean life: There are thousands of people alive today because determined death penalty lawyers kept their clients alive until there was a moratorium, or the death penalty was ended in their state.
Today, the delay of Barrett’s confirmation would give us more reason to hope for the life of our democracy. https://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/2341-to-keep-barrett-off-the-supreme-court-schumer-must-fight-like-a-defense-attorney-with-a-client-on-death-row
2020-10-03 I Note the Absence of a Quorum Three Republican Senators in quarantine due to COVID-19 gives Democrats some new options. The scenario would work like this. Under Senate rules a quorum is presumed to be present. A Democrat would have to get the floor, which they can do simply by objecting to whatever unanimous consent the Republicans want to move forward on a matter. That Democrat would simply note the absence of a quorum, and then leave the chamber and actually hide (you’ll see why later).
At that point, Republicans would be stuck: even if they could assemble all of their available members, it would only add up to 50, not enough for a quorum. If Democrats boycott the quorum call, Republicans cannot do anything on the floor for the time being. They probably could still hold committee hearings, such as the Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing of Judge Amy Coney Barrett. But they would be stymied from doing anything on the floor, as long as they’re down three members.
There are provisions in the Constitution for the Majority Leader to instruct the Senate sergeant at arms to arrest absentee Senators and physically drag them to the Capitol. This actually happened in 1988, when Republicans were trying to block a vote on campaign finance reform. The sergeant at arms “led a posse of six Capitol police officers” in the middle of the night. They found Sen. Bob Packwood in his office, and forced open a door he had wedged a heavy chair alongside to block entry. He was carried feet-first onto the Senate floor. Obviously preparations would have to be made to scatter all Democratic Senators, including the one who makes the quorum call, to the four winds.
Committee rules require physical presence of a quorum to report the Barrett nomination to the full Senate. If Democrats boycott that proceeding, Republicans would only have 10 of its 22 members available. (This doesn’t necessarily stop Mitch McConnell from bringing up the Barrett nomination without a committee vote, however.) https://prospect.org/coronavirus/i-note-the-absence-quorum-republican-quarantine-amy-coney-barrett/
2020-10-00 Amy Coney Barrett – A Threat to Religious Freedom & the Constitution The separation of church and state means that our judges can’t favor or disfavor religion or use the law to impose their personal religious beliefs on us. It guarantees that everyone is able to practice their religion or no religion at all, as long as they don’t harm others. Barrett does not respect this “do no harm” principle – she has shown that she would allow religious freedom to be misused to harm women, LGBTQ people, religious minorities, the nonreligious and others. Learn more in our blog. https://www.au.org/threattorf
2020-09-30 Here’s proof that Amy Coney Barrett is unqualified for the Supreme Court The reality is, any federal court nominee—at any level—worthy of the seat would decline the invitation from Trump right now, for any number of reasons. The number one, though, is Trump standing on a debate stage and reiterating that he has no intention of allowing for a peaceful transition of government should he lose in November. Trump has made it blindingly clear that he’ll do anything to “win,” and Barrett is key. He repeated it Tuesday night. Wallace asked specifically, “are you counting on the Supreme Court, including a Justice Barrett, to settle any dispute?” Trump answered “Yeah. I think I’m counting on them to look at the ballots, definitely. […] But for the ballots, I think so.”
Barrett is the second of Trump’s nominees to have legal experience stealing the White House. Both she and Brett Kavanaugh were on George W. Bush’s legal team in Florida. When Trump says he’s “counting on them to look at the ballots” think “hanging chads” in Broward County in 2000. That’s bad enough. What followed was even worse, because when Wallace asked “Will you urge your supporters to stay calm during this extended period, not to engage in any civil unrest? […] And will you pledge tonight that you will not declare victory until the election has been independently certified?” Trump refused. “I’m urging my supporters to go in to the polls and watch very carefully,” he said. “Because that’s what has to happen. I am urging them to do it.”https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/heres-proof-that-amy-coney-barrett-is-unqualified-for-the-supreme-court/
2020-09-29 We Still Don’t Know Who Is Paying for Trump’s Supreme Court Seats Having already spent tens of millions of dollars to install two of President Donald Trump’s justices on the Supreme Court, a conservative dark money group now says it plans to spend millions more to confirm Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who has issued rulings favorable to corporate interests.
The money raised by the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) comes from untraceable sources — and Barrett previously rebuffed a Democratic senator’s request that she ask outside groups to refrain from spending big money to try to influence a congressional review of her appellate court nomination.
JCN previously spent as much as $27 million to block President Barack Obama’s 2016 Supreme Court pick and place conservative jurists Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the high court. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/09/amy-coney-barrett-judicial-crisis-network-supreme-court-donations
2020-09-28 Amy Coney Barrett Worked on Bush v. Gore Donald Trump says he expects the Supreme Court to decide the 2020 election, as it did in Bush v. Gore. If Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, the court will have three justices who worked directly on the case that undemocratically determined the 2000 election.
Three years ago, Barrett told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “one significant case on which I provided research and briefing assistance was Bush v. Gore.” She said she worked on the case for the law firm Baker Botts while it was in Florida courts. She declined to detail the scope of her work on the case and for other clients at the firm, saying: “I no longer have records of the matters upon which I worked.”
Earlier last week, Trump refused to say that he would peacefully transfer power if he loses the election in November. He further suggested the Supreme Court will likely decide the election, underscoring the need to fill the seat left open by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/09/amy-coney-barrett-bush-gore-election-trump
2020-09-28 The Court of God: How a Catholic Secret Society Took Over SCOTUS As the American media lurches forward onto the predictable spectacle that such a lopsided court will, no doubt, elicit from the irredeemably partisan media, it is worth shining a spotlight on the links Barrett has to an organization described by a defector as a “totalitarian” group “imbued with fascist ideas turned to religious purposes” with direct involvement in the darkest activities of what some call the permanent or “deep” state.
The man who is said to vet the president’s list of SCOTUS candidates, Leonard Leo, is the executive vice president of the arch-conservative Federalist Society, which has figured in the appointment of all but one of the conservative justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court, including Trump’s two now-installed nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-court-of-god-how-a-catholic-secret-society-took-over-scotus/271612/
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