"Tennessee woman who was denied an abortion despite a fatal abnormality says the state’s anti-abortion laws resulted in her losing an ovary, a fallopian tube and her hopes for a large family.”
What hell on earth for so many women and men our morally challenged supreme court hath wrought, when they cynically ruled our beloved Constitution and Bill of Rights does not give women the right to make their own health choices, and delegated that right to a bunch of ignorant grubby state politicians. How dare they⁉️
In the US ordinary people don't really notice how corrupt capitalism (the cancer stage of capitalism) is affecting their day to day life in all kinds of ways. They just notice that goods and services have gotten expensive but don't understand one of the major causes: private equity.
As Chris Geidner notes, Justice Clarence Thomas is mouthing off about what a "hideous place" Washington is. But for 33 years Thomas has willingly sat on the Supreme bench, exercising enormous influence from that place he claims to see as hideous. And:
"Over the next seven weeks, Thomas will be one of nine people releasing decisions in 40 cases at the Supreme Court that will set forth the standard" (cont. in /2)
Justice Clarence Thomas calls criticism of him ‘nastiness’ & ‘lies’
After facing harsh questions about his judicial decisions & accepting lavish gifts from a billionaire, #SCOTUS Justice #ClarenceThomas forcefully pushed back on
his critics Fri — saying he & his wife, #GinniThomas, have endured “nastiness” & “lies.”
Greg Olear continues his valuable reporting on the coterie of hard-right Catholics who have such influence on our federal government and who control the Supreme Court as a bloc. The coterie includes Leonard Leo, who is the kingmaker for the court, Kevin Roberts of Heritage Foundation, and Robert P. George of the Federalist Society.
"ProPublica won the prestigious public service Pulitzer Prize for what the judges described as 'groundbreaking and ambitious reporting that pierced the thick wall of secrecy surrounding the Supreme Court to reveal how a small group of politically influential billionaires wooed justices with lavish gifts and travel, pushing the Court to adopt its first code of conduct.'”
"Friends of the Court," ProPublica's investigation into Supreme Court justices' beneficial relationships with billionaire donors, has been awarded the #Pulitzer Prize for Public Service!
Here are the highlights from the reporting (THREAD)
Mark Silk notes that the "pro-life" movement is in political retreat following the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision and the chaos that decision has ushered in. The "pro-life" movement now finds itself "at serious odds with Americans' historical deference to diversity of belief."
Silk concludes that “the pro-life movement has pushed the political envelope too far.”
Sadly, impeachment will not work as conviction requires two thirds of the senate.
My take is do away with lifetime appointment as it does not prevent political bias. #SupremeCourt
“This is a fight for freedom, the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one’s own body & not have their government tell them what they’re supposed to do,” the VP said.
“Donald #Trump hand picked 3 members of the #UnitedStates#SupremeCourt because he intended for them to overturn #Roe, & as he intended, they did.”
#KamalaHarris harkened back to her grilling, as a senator on the judiciary cmte, of 2 of Trump’s #SCOTUS nominees, saying it was clear after their confirmation that the days of nationwide #abortion#access were numbered:
As Michael Podhorzer says, while our eyes are fixed on the sordid drama unfolding at the Supreme Court, we should not forget that behind those sordid Supremes lies the Federalist Society that has packed the Supreme bench for a reason:
The Federalist Society project is "to replace America’s liberal democratic constitutional order with an illiberal, revanchist one that does not protect civil rights or constrain the worst excesses of capital, and that allows the Court to make policy without democratic accountability."
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Elon Musk to back out of a settlement he struck with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018, over tweets he made about Tesla that regulators alleged were fraudulent.
To avoid enforcement, Musk agreed to a “Twitter sitter” — a company lawyer that was required to approve any social media posts he made about Tesla. Now, he’s claiming it is a violation of his First Amendment rights, but as @CNN reports, the Supreme Court doesn’t agree.
Presidential immunity and the ‘Dark Age Ahead’
By Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights April 28, 2024
"...For those at the highest reaches of commerce, (corporatized) science, and major professions—as well as for politicians elected from hopelessly gerrymandered districts—accountability & transparency has all but disappeared. In this environment, the ethics-challenged Supreme Court is inviting presidents, past, current & future, to join a club that members of the court are already in, an elite club of leaders in American society who are almost entirely unaccountable. If the Supreme Court can be in the club, why shouldn’t the president? The fact that some members of the court cannot see that this is what is happening is a testament to how accustomed those members have become to being unaccountable. These self-styled philosopher-kings believe it was ever thus ordained to be this way..."
One thing the members of the US Supreme Court should bear in mind, in their senseless considerstions: if the President of the USA has immunity, there is nothing to stop this President from "replacing" them. With their own blessings.
"While textualism and originalism were supposed to be, we were told, our touchstones for interpretation under the conservatives’ legal vision for America, we heard little of that from the court’s conservative men on Thursday when Donald Trump’s immunity claim came to the justices. Then, text and history were inconveniences.
"Arguments at the Supreme Court this week were not about law. They were about power & control. …
The warning siren was the arguments this week. The arguments from those men were evidence of a danger no longer hidden — even among the public statements of the justices of the Supreme Court — for the rule of law.
Clearly viewing that danger must be central to our understanding of where the country is at — & where it could be going."
Heather Cox Richardson summarizes Eli Stokols' report that New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger is driving his paper's hostile treatment of President Biden because of petty pique that Biden refused to sit for an interview with His Highness.
As I think about this story, I think of the parallel to the current big story that the Supreme Court is even more corrupt than many of us have imagined.
The common factor here: they do it because they CAN do it. Their power to inflict harm is unchecked, obviously by their own values and consciences, but also by the system itself.
The system is designed to allow certain arrogant, overweening, self-inflated and ego-driven people (usually male people) to do it because they CAN do it.
Donald Trump himself long having been an example of this dynamic….
Our big institutions – the Supreme Court, the media – will not save us, because they cannot save us. They cannot save themselves – from crippling arrogance and the belief that they owe nothing to anyone by way of accountability and virtuous behavior that places the well-being of our democracy first and foremost in their deliberations.
As Aristotle told us long ago, far from saving anyone, hubris merely sets up its practitioners for a big fall.
"The display we saw yesterday was a vivid illustration of how the Court has gone thoroughly rogue, cutting itself off from even the appearances of the processes that give it legitimacy. That is the core of the current Court’s corruption."
“Yesterday really knocked me sideways. I’ve got to be honest, I think I finally might have had the blinkers removed from my eyes on the Supreme Court. I’m somebody who grew up very much respecting the court system. I’ve been a lawyer for 20 years. When I grew up, the Supreme Court meant something and it was an establishment that had a lot of credibility."