U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Nino Edition

here lemme show you how my heart bypass sugrey SHOULD

here lemme show you how my heart bypass surgery SHOULD be done, hand me those ribspreaders

(good bartending being at least as important as cardiothoracic surgery, obv)

https://www.conservativebookclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/A-Time-to-Speak.jpg

I once suggested Bob write a book with the title: Martinis: The Original Understanding. He was partial to The Road to Hell is Paved with Olives. Bob observed that the original martini was a careful mixture of three or four (or five or six) parts gin (preferably Bombay or Tanqueray) to one part vermouth. The whole was shaken (not stirred) over ice in a cocktail shaker, served in a chilled martini glass, and garnished with a twist of lemon. A twist of lemon, mind you. That is what a martini was.

On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, I gave Bob a silver vermouth dispenser in the shape of an tiny old-fashioned oiling can (you can get them at Tiffany's). He found it amusing, but he regarded the unbridled diminution of vermouth, favored by many asking for a dry martini, as dangerously latitudinarian.

He recognized, however, that the battle to preserve the martini had far more radical enemies than the vermouth minimalists. One large heresy concerned the very foundation of the martini: gin. People might ask for a "vodka martini" (let's say) but that concoction, though possibly delicious (my concession, not his) was not a martini.

He sounds fun

oh man: http://www.nysun.com/editorials/robert-bork/88118/

Once the judge was in place, we sat down again. A waiter approached. Bork asked for a double martini. We sat solemnly while the martini was fetched. When it was set before the judge, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes (Kents, if we recall), and tapped one on his fingernail. The judge lit his cigarette. He inhaled deeply, and then exhaled. We remember to this day watching him and thinking to ourselves, “Don’t speak first. The judge will have to say something.”

The judge raised his martini glass by the stem. He took a long satisfying drink. He set it down carefully. He took another drag on his cigarette, exhaled. Then, the man who could have been the next Chief Justice of the United States uttered the wistful words: “You know, I could have been a newspaperman.” We recognize the moment mightn’t resonate but for those of us ink-stained wretches who labor in the press. But there it is.

The whole was shaken (not stirred)

just a cool guy insisting on a shitty drink so he can pretend to be james bond nbd

shaking it dilutes the drink by smashing and metling the ice u savage

actually he thinks James Bond debased the martini!

and martinis are heaven wtf

martinis are heaven when you're not insisting on preparing them incorrectly

Even as a gin partisan I have to say that shaking a martini is very, very important given the amount of heartburn that much unadulterated gin is likely to give you. You want it cold and slightly undercut by the vermouth and ice fragments so the harsh bite is rounded off and you just have the flavor leftover oh my fucking god who borked me

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/The_Swedish_Chef.jpg

Dan, GIMME THOSE

I dislike bits of shaved ice in my martini but will not get homicidal about it like the rejected SCOTUS nominee

I keep imagining Bork shouting "GIMME THEM THANGS" a la Damon Wayans Jr as Brad in Happy Endings

Bork sounds like a bigger pain the ass to serve than Fred Schneider.

Is Justice Ant planning to leave?

“Kennedy leaving and being replaced by a Trump pick will almost certainly move the court to the right and perhaps make the court the most conservative court we have had since the 1930s,” said Neal Devins, a William & Mary Law School professor who is co-writing a book on the court and its partisan divisions.

Kennedy has given no public indication of his plans, but he has drawn attention with a handful of semiprivate scheduling decisions. Perhaps most significantly, his next law clerk reunion will take place during the last weekend of June, offering the possibility that he will spring a piece of news on the gathering.

The timing is noteworthy because previous Kennedy reunions took place every five years, and this one comes four years after the 2013 event. In addition, it’s taking place at the end of June, just as the term concludes, rather than in mid-June like previous reunions.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-11/supreme-court-retirement-talk-focuses-on-pivotal-justice-kennedy

He sounds fun

about as fun as anyone who is always absolutely right about everything (while you are not) could be

JUSTICE Gorsuch had a busy day!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/us/politics/justice-neil-gorsuch-supreme-court.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Ugh. We'll be stuck with that annoying tone forever.

If tone were the worst thing about him...

Dayenu

You're right,this is worse than his tone-- Gorsuch cast the 5th vote in a 5 to 4 decision to execute this man--

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/04/21/gorsuch_votes_to_let_arkansas_execute_ledell_lee.html

Lee insisted upon his innocence from the day of his arrest through the night of his execution. He implored Arkansas to let him take a DNA test and compare the results to DNA collected at the scene of the murder he allegedly committed, but the state refused. Lee also presented evidence that his trial attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel and that the presiding judge lacked neutrality: At the time, the judge was having an undisclosed affair with the assistant prosecutor. (They later married.) Lee’s counsel on appeal appeared in court so drunk that he slurred his words. Moreover, Lee asserted that Arkansas’ use of midazolam to render him unconscious before stopping his heart was cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment: The drug may not actually induce unconsciousness and has caused other executions to go terribly awry.

But the Supreme Court split 5–4 on the Eighth Amendment question, with Gorsuch joining the conservatives in permitting Lee’s execution to move forward.

regardless of his guilt or innocence, it is a good thing that the death penalty exists so that we can make sure that the state can preserve the capability to kill bad people in the future.

I read that lees public defender was so stinkin drunk someone suggested they drug test him

The other Arkansas prisoner scheduled to be executed on the same day as Lee:

Stacey Johnson was convicted of the 1993 rape and murder of Carol Jean Heath. His conviction rested largely on testimony from the victim's 6-year-old daughter, but records obtained by the defense after the trial indicate that the girl told her therapist that she had not seen anything and was being pressured by her family to identify Johnson. Technology available at the time of Johnson's trial was not sensitive enough to provide DNA results from the sexual assault evidence collected from the victim's body, but newer methods may be able to rule out Johnson and even provide a match to an alternative suspect.

I'm less concerned about the midazolam than the second step of lethal injection, pancuronium bromide, which causes an intense, body-wide burning sensation for the minutes between when the anesthetic wears off and the potassium chloride stops the heart. There is a perfectly pain-free execution method, inert gas asphyxiation, but death penalty proponents oppose it because they believe that convicts should feel pain. This documentary, How to Kill a Human Being, in which former UK Conservative MP Michael Portillo examines the available methods, is eye-opening.

cool

http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/329981-trump-eyeing-second-supreme-court-seat

Trump's nominating himself?

so what will be Topic A at this dinner, when it happens?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/330161-trump-will-host-dinner-for-supreme-court-justices

The White House has reportedly cancelled a dinner with the justices of the Supreme Court

postponed, i thought

“Having eight was unusual and awkward,” Justice Alito said, according to The Journal article. “That probably required having a lot more discussion of some things and more compromise and maybe narrower opinions than we would have issued otherwise, but as of this Monday, we were back to an odd number.”

Ugh.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/27/opinion/the-roberts-court-2017-edition.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

UNELECTED JUDGE

Interesting and good considering current makeup of the SC

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-wont-review-decision-that-found-nc-voting-law-discriminates-against-african-americans/2017/05/15/59425b1c-2368-11e7-a1b3-faff0034e2de_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_court-1010a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.771a3d05dcd4

The Supreme Court will not review a decision that found North Carolina’s 2013 voting law discriminated against African American voters, the justices said Monday.

A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had found in 2016 that North Carolina legislators had acted “with almost surgical precision” to blunt the influence of African American voters.

And last summer the Supreme Court had divided evenly on whether the law could be used in last fall’s election while the appeals continued.

But the election resulted in a new Democratic governor and a Democratic attorney general, and they had told the court they did not want to defend the law enacted by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. The Republicans had asked to continue the appeal.

In an order saying the court would not review the lower court’s decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. cited the state’s changed political scene, and indicated that not all of the justices agreed with the lower court’s decision.

“Given the blizzard of filings over who is and who is not authorized to seek review in this court under North Carolina law, it is important to recall our frequent admonition that ‘the denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case,’” Roberts wrote.

http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92522

Today the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a Fourth Circuit decision holding that a North Carolina voting law (one I’ve called the strictest set of voting rules rolled into one law passed since at least the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act) could not be enforced because it was passed with racially discriminatory intent.

....
"Given the blizzard of filings over who is and who is not authorized to seek review in this Court under North Carolina law, it is important to recall our frequent admonition that “[t]he denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case.” United States v. Carver, 260 U. S. 482, 490 (1923)."

These days at the Supreme Court, getting the Court not to hear a voting case is a significant victory. While the Court could well issue an adverse decision in the future, the 4th Circuit opinion stays on the books for now, and it has already been relied upon to hold other strict voting laws illegal (as in the Pasadena Texas case,

That's 2 takes on the Justice Roberts Order

Yeah, ideally I'd like the court to uphold the decision so it applies nationwide, but given the current court I think that's a very good result, and in time for 2018.

Hopefully the SC won't get to this Texas case till after 2018

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/05/15/despite-todays-supreme-court-ruling-the-future-looks-grim-for-voting-rights/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f4809980a334

The case to keep an eye on is the one coming from Texas, which in 2011 enacted one of the most absurdly discriminatory voting laws in the country. It required ID at the polls, but specified that certain kinds of ID more likely to be carried by Republicans (such as hunting licenses) would be considered valid, while kinds of ID more likely to be carried by Democrats (such as student IDs from state schools) wouldn’t. An estimated 600,000 legitimate Texas voters lack the kind of ID the law mandates, and so would be prohibited from voting.

The Texas law has been struck down by a district court, whose ruling was then upheld by an appeals court (which sent it back down for more fact-finding). In January, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the state, saying that they wouldn’t hear the case yet while the district court was still rehearing it. Then in April, the district court struck it down again. The Obama Justice Department had supported the plaintiffs, but the Trump Justice Department dropped that position.

That can all be a little confusing, but here’s what matters: With the conservatives on the Supreme Court now at full strength, they will probably hear the Texas case, and none of them have given any indication that they have a problem with the kind of restrictions Texas has in mind. If they uphold that law, it won’t just be Texans who are affected.

That’s because any such ruling would be a handbook for Republican legislatures everywhere, saying in essence, “Here’s how you can go about restricting the votes of racial minorities and young people. Do these things, avoid these other things, and your law will be upheld.”

Yeah, ideally I'd like the court to uphold the decision so it applies nationwide, but given the current court I think that's a very good result, and in time for 2018.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), 15. maj 2017 19:29 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They still have to redraw and do special elections in 17, right?

omg sad lol @ those valid ID distinctions

a hunting license wtf

whoa!

he Supreme Court ruled Monday that racial considerations pervaded the way North Carolina lawmakers drew congressional maps after the 2010 Census in order to maximize Republicans' advantage.

The 5-3 ruling, written by Justice Elena Kagan, was the latest in a series of decisions by the justices against the excessive use of race in redistricting, the decennial process of drawing new district lines for Congress and state legislatures.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented in part from the ruling, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Check out who joined the majority:

Odd breakdown in 15-1262 Cooper v. Harris: Kagan, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor v. Alito, Roberts, Kennedy

— Kimberly Robinson (@KimberlyRobinsn) May 22, 2017

fucking Kennedy.

Is that the name of Bill O'Reilly's next historical fiction novel?

can't wait for Gorsuch to start joining those five-vote majorities

Huh, is he not officially in the mix yet?

Thomas! HOLY SHIT

the case was heard before Gorsuch joined xpost

Baffled at what Thomas' reasoning could possibly be tbh