U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

"...it is our duty"

but yes, i hope that is a good sign

it's not our job. However, if you all ask nicely...I'll do it just this once

Kavanaugh also making comments about severability that make it sound like they aren't yet ready to kill this thing.

"we can stab it with our steely knives, but we just can't *kill* the beast"

Well, yeah

if they don't strike it down, we're gonna hear a boatload of GOP whining about how "the democrats said the supreme court would take away our healthcare" while conveniently not mentioning how barrett votes on the matter

Breyer and Sotomayor are especially sharp in their questions.

if they don't strike it down, we're gonna hear a boatload of GOP whining

true, whining does seem to come by the boatloads these days

in boat parades, even

Aito, the worst justice.

couldn't see that page, but if you're referring to Alito, yes

god that infuriated me today

the comment about Obergefell and people only being only able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their own homes was really appalling

it was the 'how dare you try to suppress my right to discriminate against you' argument

a world without God would be nice

a world without God Alito would be nice

For years Thomas has gotten the press as the Cruelest Justice, but I can at least see the through-line of his opinions. Alito meanwhile, unlike even Gorsuch, is the grossest hack, never deviating from RNC policy.

a world without God would be nice

― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Saturday, November 14, 2020 1:22 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

sure does

sorry nvm

i just read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40081165-the-curse-of-bigness which is a nice short 150pp book of the history US anti-trust legislation/enforcement with emphasis on the obvious gilded age stuff, but also the role of robert bork and what happens next with tech companies.

Bork's pre-they-fucked-me book is on anti-trust legislation, no?

Yeah apparently his came up with a novel interpretation of the Sherman act that was basically: the only thing that matters is does it raise prices? If not then go nuts.

The Supreme Court late Wednesday night barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had imposed to combat the coronavirus.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.

The court’s ruling was at odds with earlier ones concerning churches in California and Nevada. In those cases, decided in May and July, the court allowed the states’ governors to restrict attendance at religious services.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/us/supreme-court-coronavirus-religion-new-york.html

Let's all die so some fucking idiots can engage in idiotic beliefs that betray their lack of belief in the first place!

Seriously, people who think you need a church to worship a higher power are lunatics. Might as well open up dance clubs and bars.

I thought it would take a little longer for Barrett to get some blood on her hands. Well done.

did you miss her actual first vote

Wow. Apparently Roberts and Gorsuch went at it:

“As we round out 2020 and face the prospect of entering a second calendar year living in the pandemic’s shadow, that rationale has expired according to its own terms,” Gorsuch wrote. “Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical. Rather than apply a nonbinding and expired concurrence … courts must resume applying the Free Exercise Clause.”

Gorsuch also accused Roberts of “a serious rewriting of history” for now insisting that his May opinion did not rely on a century-old Supreme Court precedent that allowed mandatory smallpox vaccinations in Massachusetts.

“We may not shelter in place when the Constitution is under attack. Things never go well when we do,” Gorsuch warned.

But Roberts noted that Gorsuch on Wednesday devoted three pages of his opinion to “exactly one sentence” the chief justice wrote in May referring back to the 1905 smallpox vaccination case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts.

“What did that one sentence say? Only that ‘[o]ur Constitution principally entrusts “[t]he safety and the health of the people” to the politically accountable officials of the States “to guard and protect,”’” Roberts wrote.

“It is not clear which part of this lone quotation today’s concurrence finds so discomfiting … But the actual proposition asserted should be uncontroversial, and the concurrence must reach beyond the words themselves to find the target it is looking for.”

one more like this and the laundering of Roberts as the Sensible Moderate by the mainstream (and a cUlTuRaL mArXiSt by the Right) will be complete.

Institution saved!

There was this one too, but I don't like it as much:
Soccer player and fans adored an amigo (5, 8)

Oops, wrong thread!

is it

Heh, knew that was coming

when everybody was wigged out that they'd flip the election, this is the kind of actual lunacy they should have expected. bending legal precedents to cater to religious interests. there's a lot more where this came from.

unless Clarence Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Alito all get the 'Vid and wind up on breathing machines

Lit a novena candle the second I read that sentence.

https://www.theicenter.org/sites/default/files/styles/resource_banner/public/Moses%20and%20Pharoah%20-%20Let%20My%20People%20Go_0.jpg?itok=BzAkNyyu

"Let my people go ... to church ... during a pandemic!"

Don't they usually say 'the constitution is not a suicide pact' or something?

would be something if people could be tested for their ability to uphold the law and practise it. So one could flush out all the bad pseudo judge types that have been impsed on people since nobody's managed to take out mitch yet.
peole with no ability being in roles for life just seems a little unjust, like.

It's the old slippery slope argument. If you let the government even once impose minor limits on the number of people allowed to congregate in a religious gathering during a deadly pandemic that spreads through human proximity, then they're going to want to do it during every deadly airborne pandemic.

The health care workers who will have to deal with the inevitable results of this stupendous idiocy would like to have a word with Justice Gorsuch.

Indeed. I'm immunocompromised, my husband works in an ED, and already one of the biggest communities they served during the course of that pandemic was an Orthodox Jewish community based in Jersey. They're already rationing machines, as well as gowns and other PPE.

As far as I'm concerned, governors should defy the SC. Public health takes priority over the worship of some mythical God, particularly since that worship doesn't need to take place in a specific place to be legitimate.

That, actually, is what pisses me off the most about this. If God is everywhere, if God is a living part of one's experience on this planet, then it doesn't make sense that one would need to visit a church to worship that God. Really puts the lie to the idea that religions aren't mind control mechanisms.

even my Fundie church preached that people made a church, not a building. I think it has more to do with people wanting more food at the potluck and not worship whatsoever

I'm actually totally serious, though— governors should defy these rulings.

You’re right, the rule of law is stupid

Every time the governors change the states should just revisit what laws actually count

Oh I dunno I feel like a good nullification crisis could really liven things up around here

THE RULE OF LAW IS GETTING PEOPLE FUCKING KILLED

Fuck your rule of law. Ridiculous fealty to absolute batshit rulings should be looked down upon by anyone with a conscience.

Oh I didn’t understand you before thanks for shouting