First the Republicans demonized Obamacare as "Death Panels" and "Socialism."
They even tried to shut down the government in order to "repeal it." Didn't work.
It's true there have been problems with the website, but what website in history didn't have glitches? The poutrage from all sides on social media is astonishing since Twitter and Facebook have their own share of problems from hackers and spammers to the KoobFace virus.
Obama even apologized on TV to Chuck Todd of MSNBC in a cringeworthy interview which never should have happened. There's no reason to apologize to media shills since Obamacare hasn't even taken effect yet, and people are still mostly shopping for plans. I have no doubt these kinks in the system will be worked out by January. Millions have already gotten new coverage under the program, including young adults who can now stay on their parents healthcare plans until age 26. Like my daughter for instance, who stayed on the family coverage while in Law School and who now has to buy her own plan as a practicing attorney. Her financial adviser just told her today her best bet for coverage in the coming year is . . . wait for it . . . Obamacare.
Apparently President Bill Clinton didn't get the memo. You remember Bill, the guy who wasn't able to pass his own healthcare initiative while in office, but has now decided to babble about Obama's failure to launch. This has been another moment of chagrin for most Democrats who want to keep our party together in 2014. The hotter heads among us are already saying they will not vote for Hillary in 2016 if Bill is going to attack Obama. That can't be good.
President Obama can thank Bill Clinton for the psycho-drama.
Instead of putting some steel into the spines of wavering Democrats, Clinton this week took the opportunity to rebuke the White House for its broken promise that no one would lose their health insurance under ObamaCare. The comments unleashed a no-holds-barred Democratic freak-out, pushing Obama to announce on Thursday a plan to make good on that vow.
. . . As one of the Democratic Party's most respected figures, his word still carries weight among the party faithful, particularly in red states where Obama is kryptonite. So when Clinton publicly chided the administration, it gave congressional Democrats acres of cover to do the same.
Yesterday it all came to a head as there was a revolt among Blue Dog House Democrats like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana who are trying to assauge angry vociferous voters in their districts whose health plans have been cancelled. This has actually affected a small number of Americans but you would think it was happening to every single person from the way the media is covering the story. The Emoprog media, Clinton and these turncoat-Demo-Rats apparently don't even understand what the whiners are whining about, or how ACA Obamacare works.
Why were the plans cancelled by these companies? Because their plans were craptastic to begin with, with high deductibles and almost no hospital coverage. The insurance companies who did this to customers weren't in compliance with the new law, so therefore had to cancel these ridiculous plans. Shall I add that any of those plans could have been cancelled for ANY reason even without Obamacare. Now that we have a "marketplace" of plans, all those policy owners have to do is go search out a new plan instead of whining to Fox and to their local Congressman.
But of course President Obama, who is the nicest and most patient President this country has EVER had, at least in my lifetime, explained it all again in terms even an ex-President can understand. And he said if those silly people want an extension on their horrible coverage, they can have it. I'm not as nice as Barack Obama, so I say to them: Good luck with that. See you next year when you smack your head and sign up for Obamacare.
I'll let the President have the last word - Listen, People!!!
“I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, ‘This is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity’ a week before the Web site opens if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.”
. . . And you know, buying health insurance is never going to be like buying a song on iTunes. You know, it’s just a much more complicated transaction.”
This is a shocking new public service announcement from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence based on the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Florida. One reason it is so chilling is that it accurately recreates the night of the shooting through the use of witness testimony and actual 911 recordings.
Senator Elizabeth Warren hit the ground running in her first Banking Committee Hearing. She wasted no time lambasting the spineless regulators who are letting off the big banks with fines and slaps on the wrist instead of taking them to trial. Her goal was to expose the weakness of regulators who see fines as enough penalty for the crimes committed, and she pointed out that when these cases aren't taken to trial then no testimony of wrongdoing is ever put down on the record. So in effect, the bankers get off scott-free without any new information that congress could use to improve the banking system.
“I want to note that there are district attorneys and U.S. attorneys who are out there everyday squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial to ‘make an example,’ as they put it,” she told bank regulators testifying at a Senate Banking Committee hearing. “I am really concerned that too-big-to-fail has become too-big-for-trial.”
. . . Warren acknowledged that trials are expensive but she insisted that if an agency is unwilling to go to trial it is because they are “too timid” or lack resources. She said that the consequence is that if large financial institutions can break the law and “drag in billions” in profits and settle, then they don’t have much incentive to follow the law.
“Every time there is a settlement and not a trial, it means we didn’t have the days and days and days of testimony about what those financial institutions were up to,” Warren said.
Senator Elizabeth Warren at the Feb. 14, 2013 Banking Committee Hearing titled "Wall Street Reform: Oversight of Financial Stability and Consumer and Investor Protections." The witnesses were: The Honorable Mary Miller, Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, U.S. Department of the Treasury; The Honorable Daniel Tarullo, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; The Honorable Martin Gruenberg, Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; The Honorable Tom Curry, Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; The Honorable Richard Cordray, Director, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; The Honorable Elisse Walter, Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; and The Honorable Gary Gensler, Chairman, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The Preliminary Hearing for the Aurora "Batman Movie" shooting last year is going on in Centennial, Colorado, and disturbing details are emerging.
According to the Denver Post, here's the list of incredibly dangerous items that James Holmes, the mentally ill shooter, bought in the months before the massacre:
four guns;
6,295 rounds of rifle, shotgun, and handgun ammo
dozens of gun magazines
ballistic gear
weapon slings
two laser sights
two tear-gas canisters
hundreds of practice targets
explosive chemicals
fireworks supplies
handcuffs
a military first-aid dressing
ATF agent Steven Beggs said the purchases — all from online retailers or the Gander Mountain and Bass Pro Shops sporting goods stores in the metro area — began May 10 and ended July 14. There were five purchases in the first week of July alone.
Did you catch that ~ almost 7,000 rounds of ammunition, and no one even blinked when he bought it. Tear Gas? No problem. Explosive Chemicals? Just some good clean fun for a young white man in Colorado.
Defense attorneys made it clear that all of that stuff was acquired legally under Colorado Law, and that there is no screening process for mental illness no matter how dangerous the purchase:
After prosecutors finished questioning Beggs, defense attorney Tamara Brady asked him whether it was illegal, for instance, to buy body armor or tear gas.
Beggs said it wasn't in Colorado.
"Is there any process in place in Colorado," Brady persisted, "to screen out whether a severely mentally ill person is purchasing these items?"
Beggs said no.
Also, police didn't test Holmes for drugs or alcohol, even though he was acting strangely and his pupils were dilated:
In afternoon testimony, Aurora homicide Detective Craig Appel testified that police did not request a blood sample from Holmes after he was arrested. He said Holmes' pupils were wide, but that "I saw no indication that he was under the influence of anything."
But under defense questioning, he said Holmes' behavior was at times odd while he was under observation. Paper bags had been placed over his hands to preserve evidence and Holmes played with them as though they were puppets, Appel said. He also tried to place a staple into an electrical socket, he said.
Obviously by then the police were as in shock as everyone else from the horrific shooting, and maybe they figured he was crazy so why bother with a drug test? The Defense is trying to protect their client from as many charges as possible, and the age old way to do that is to prove that the police and the state laws are somehow lacking or negligent. All well and good for Holmes, but what the testimony really does is damn him for playing the flawed system so well.
He knew that no matter how many weapons or scary substances he bought, alarm bells wouldn't go off in the stores where he bought supplies. No one could legally ask about his mental history even if his eyes were rolling around in his head and he showed schizophrenic tendencies. He knew the state laws allowed him to buy as much ammunition as his heart desired in order to carry out his vicious plot.
And on top of that, Holmes booby-trapped his apartment in a diabolical way that he hoped would cause a fire at the same time as the shooting, drawing away police resources so he could shoot up the movie theater. This is really over the top. If police hadn't realized the apartment was rigged, how many more lives would have been lost?
There was a trip-wire leading from the door to a thermos filled with glycerine that was perched over a frying pan filled with potassium permanganate, Gumbinner said.
. . . On top of the fridge was a remote-controlled “pyrotechnic” box filled with 6-inch fireworks shells. Holmes left the remote for it outside, in a trash bag with a toy car and a boom box on a timer, the agent said.
His fantasy was that someone on the street would hear the music, open the bag, decide to play with the car, fiddle with the remote and detonate the explosives, Gumbinner said.
. . . "He said he rigged his apartment to explode or catch fire in order to divert police resources to his apartment,” Gumbinner said, recounting an interview with Holmes.
No one played with the toy car or banged on the door, though. And when Holmes was arrested outside the Century 16 multiplex – after allegedly killing a dozen people and wounding 58 – he quickly told police about his traps.
We may never know why Holmes wanted to hurt so many people in such a flamboyent and destructive way, and maybe there just is no answer. But something good can come of this if states like Colorado will begin to stand up to the NRA and create more hurdles. If government can't do it, then gun shops and sporting goods stores should realize they may be held accountable in the future if they don't support a screening process. Hey, if bartenders can be arrested for serving drinks that lead to deaths, then gun runners certainly can.
St. Louis talk radio host Dana Loesch, also a frequent guest on CNN, alleges in the suit filed in federal district court in St. Louis that the site is refusing to publish her work while "sabotag[ing] her attempts to labor in a similar fashion elsewhere through public misstatements and private threats to sue those who would otherwise employ Loesch."
Loesch is seeking her freedom from the company and at least $75,000 in damages.
Breitbart.com is "binding Loesch to what amounts to an indentured servitude in limbo," she charges in the suit, which was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The lawsuit also hints at broader woes for the site, whose leaders now include an old friend of Breitbarts, a pair of his young proteges, and filmmaker Steven Bannon, who is best known for a film defending Sarah Palin.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington ...ruled that the lawsuit, filed by the public interest group Common Cause, members of the House of Representatives and undocumented aliens who would have benefited from passage of the so-called Dream Act, represented an unwarranted intrusion into the Senate’s right operate as it sees fit.
. . . Other plaintiffs include four Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives: John Lewis, of Georgia; Michael Michaud, of Maine; Hank Johnson, of Georgia; and Keith Ellison, of Minnesota; and three Mexican-born U.S. residents who alleged they were denied the benefits of immigration law changes in the House-passed Dream Act because it was blocked by Senate filibuster.
The suit was filed against Vice President Joseph Biden in his capacity as Senate President, and other Senate officers.
The case is Common Cause v. Biden, 12-cv-775, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Washington).
The younger brother of Bernard Madoff will serve 10 years in prison for his role in his brother's Ponzi scheme that stole billions of dollars from investors, a U.S. judge said on Thursday.
Peter Madoff, 67, pleaded guilty in June to criminal charges including conspiracy to commit securities fraud for falsifying the books and records of the investment advisory company founded by his brother.
U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain adopted prosecutors' recommendations and sentenced Madoff to 10 years in prison. She also ordered him to forfeit what she called a "draconian" $143.1 billion, which she said would seal his "financial ruination."
Robert Bork, a symbol of the U.S. conservative legal movement and a failed nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, died on Wednesday . . . Bork, 85, died in a northern Virginia hospital where he had been treated for an infection.
. . . "To bork" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002 with the definition, "To defame or vilify (a person) systematically, especially in the mass media, usually with the aim of preventing his or her appointment to public office; to obstruct or thwart (a person) in this way."
. . . After a fierce confirmation fight, the Senate rejected Bork 58-42, the largest margin of defeat for any Supreme Court nominee and a big defeat for Reagan.
Bork remained bitter for years and conservatives regarded him as a martyr to liberal activism and unreason, and used him as a rallying cry in subsequent battles.
A Texas State Trooper who was thrust into the spotlight Tuesday after dash camera video showing her giving body cavity searches to two women became public has been suspended.
Trooper Kelly Helleson was suspended Wednesday, the day after the two women she searched as part of a traffic stop earlier this year sued her and another trooper for what they called a violation of their privacy.
. . . The two women 38-year-old Angel Dobbs and her niece, 24-year-old Ashley Dobbs, were pulled over in Irving on their way to Oklahoma by a male trooper after the trooper noticed the women tossing cigarette butts out the window of their car. That trooper, David Farrell, claimed to smell marijuana coming from the vehicle and requested the search by a female trooper.
Farrell remains on active duty.
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996, prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriages. Both the First and Second Circuit Court of appeals have struck down a provision of the law denying federal benefits, like Social Security benefits or the ability to file joint tax returns, to same-sex couples legally married. Because of these lower court rulings, DOMA has been declared unconstitutional in some regions of the country but not others -- an issue the Supreme Court now has a chance to rectify by reviewing the Second Circuit decision.
The court will also consider California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage that voters passed in 2008. Prop. 8 passed after the California Supreme Court granted same-sex couples the right to marry, putting California voters in the unique position of taking away rights granted by the court. After Prop. 8 passed, a federal court followed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said Prop. 8 was unconstitutional.
The high court is expected to hear arguments in both cases in March and issue rulings over the summer.
"It's been our belief all along that the ultimate fate of Proposition 8 will be in the hands of the Supreme Court," said Andrew Pugno, general counsel for the advocacy group ProtectMarriage, which sought the high court's intervention.
"I fully believe that this court's going to come down on the side of freedom and equality," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which fights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights.
. . . Even if the court sides with gays and lesbians, opponents of same-sex marriage say it won't end the debate.
"The majority of Americans who have voted to protect marriage as the unity of a man and a woman are never going to go away," said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. A Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, he said, "would launch a national culture war."
Meeting in private on Friday at their last weekly conference before the court's holiday recess, the justices considered requests to review seven cases dealing with same-sex relationships. Five of them were challenges to the federal marriage law, one to California's gay marriage ban and another to an Arizona law against domestic partner benefits.
The court had been widely expected to take up at least one of the challenges to the federal marriage law, given that two federal appeals courts had found the law unconstitutional. Less clear was what the court would do with the California gay marriage ban.
"Taking both a states' rights case like Prop 8, and a case involving Congress's authority in the DOMA ... suggests that the court is ready to take on the entire issue, not just piecemeal it," said Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for the individuals defending California's gay marriage ban.
"I had thought the Court would take it in stages instead of doing DOMA and Perry at the same time," said Paul Smith of Jenner & Block, who had assisted in another DOMA challenge pending before the justices. On the DOMA grant of review, he added, "The arguments are pretty much the same in all the cases. It makes sense in some ways to have a decision below from the court of appeal."
Professor Douglas NeJaime of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles called the combination of grants in Perry and Windsor "really interesting" and added, "It's really hard to know exactly what the justices are thinking. Windsor is the DOMA case that presents the heightened scrutiny question and it was raised in Perry but the Ninth Circuit didn’t go there. The justices could be interested in saying its time to say sexual orientation classifications merit heightened scrutiny."
On the other hand, NeJaime said, "They could be prepared to split the difference and say a federal law like DOMA that denies recognition to valid state law marriages is unconstitutional, but not be prepared to find that states can't prohibit marriage themselves."
A third possibility, according to NeJaime, is that the justices will find both Prop 8 and DOMA Section 3 unconstitutional under the Constitution's lowest scrutiny—rational basis review.
I'm starting a new weekly feature called "Law Links" to alert readers to legal actions here and around the world. This has always been an interest of mine, and even more-so now that my daughter is a new attorney who just passed the Bar Exam and is in court every day.
Editor's Note: On Tuesday, December 4, we expect one or more opinions at 10 a.m. We will be live blogging.
On Friday, the Court has granted two new cases, Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett (12-142) and Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. (12-398 ). The Court did not act on the same-sex marriage cases. Additional orders are expected Monday at 9:30.
Even as digital technology has made reproducing, remixing and repurposing creative works easier -- with potentially enormous benefits for consumers and producers of new works -- the monopoly privileges of copyright have expanded. The result is a bizarre combination of rampant copyright violations, frequent encroachment on legitimate fair use, suppression of new technologies and business models, and the ever-present threat of draconian penalties.
The United States Supreme Court rejected a request from a Chicago-area prosecutor to review a recent ruling that the First Amendment protects a right to record the actions of police officers as they perform their public duties.
. . . The Supreme Court's decision to let the Seventh Circuit's ruling stand is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which spearheaded the case. The ACLU's chapter in Massachusetts also had success vindicating a First Amendment right to record the actions of public officials. The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled police violated the rights of a Boston man when they arrested him for using his cell phone to record the arrest of a suspect. In March, the city agreed to pay $170,000 to settle his civil rights lawsuit.
The Associated Press said that (Judge) Kelley’s 39-page ruling concluded that the voucher program violates provisions in the state constitution regarding the Minimum Foundation Program, or MFP, which determines how public schools are funded. “The MFP … was never meant to be diverted to private educational providers,” Kelley’s ruling said.
What Jindal’s team has been doing is implementing a voucher program, potentially the country’s largest, as a result of a new law that in part allows the state to offer vouchers to more than half of its students, or some 450,000 students. About 10,000 have applied, with most of the slots given to Christian schools, some of which didn’t really have the resources to handle the influx. They also use curriculum that promotes Young Earth Creationism, the belief that Earth is no older than 10,000 years old — and that human beings lived alongside dinosaurs — despite definitive scientific consensus that it is billions of years old.
A silly copyright notice is sweeping Facebook . . . with users attaching pseudo-legalese to their status updates in a misguided effort to prevent Facebook from owning or commercially exploiting their content. The notice incorrectly implies that Facebook has recently changed the copyright provisions of its user agreement. It then unnecessarily asserts a user’s copyright over his Facebook posts (you retain such copyright without posting a notice) and cites the “Berner Convention,” an irrelevant international treaty properly spelled “Berne Convention.” The notice then instructs Facebook to get written permission to make commercial use of the user’s content, which is pointless as Facebook users agree to let the social network make money off their posts when they sign up for the service.
Popular hoax-debunking site Snopes addressed this copyright notice in the spring and updated their refutation today. Also, Facebook has taken the further step of putting out a statement of its own:
There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users’ information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.
Big News: A federal judge appointed by George Bush has struck down the GOP's landmark Defense of Marriage Act, which states that the only real marriage is that of one man and one woman.
This ruling comes one day after it was reported that John Boehner and the House Republicans had spent $1.5 million defending DOMA.
House Republican leaders have effectively spent all the money they allotted themselves: BLAG members House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last year signed a $1.5 million contract with attorney Paul Clement to represent them in cases involving DOMA, or the federal ban on same-sex marriage.
To date, Republican leaders have intervened in 14 DOMA cases. They have lost five in a row.
And now they've lost again, in a huge victory for equal rights.
Today's ruling marks one step closer to the day when all American families can enjoy the blessings of equal protection under the law. #DOMA
W]e conclude that review of Section 3 of DOMA requires heightened scrutiny. The Supreme Court uses certain factors to decide whether a new classification qualifies as a quasi-suspect class. They include: A) whether the class has been historically “subjected to discrimination,”; B) whether the class has a defining characteristic that “frequently bears [a] relation to ability to perform or contribute to society,” C) whether the class exhibits “obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics that define them as a discrete group;” and D) whether the class is “a minority or politically powerless.” Immutability and lack of political power are not strictly necessary factors to identify a suspect class. Nevertheless, immutability and political power are indicative, and we consider them here. In this case, all four factors justify heightened scrutiny: A) homosexuals as a group have historically endured persecution and discrimination; B) homosexuality has no relation to aptitude or ability to contribute to society; C) homosexuals are a discernible group with non-obvious distinguishing characteristics, especially in the subset of those who enter same-sex marriages; and D) the class remains a politically weakened minority.
This is a really big deal. Jacobs is not simply saying that DOMA imposes unique and unconstitutional burdens on gay couples, he is saying that any attempt by government to discriminate against gay people must have an “exceedingly persuasive” justification. This is the same very skeptical standard afforded to laws that discriminate against women. If Jacobs’ reasoning is adopted by the Supreme Court, it will be a sweeping victory for gay rights, likely causing state discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to be virtually eliminated. And the fact that this decision came from such a conservative judge makes it all the more likely that DOMA will ultimately be struck down by the Supreme Court.
One unfortunate caveat is necessary: Judge Chester Straub, a Clinton-appointee, dissented. Nevertheless, this marks the second time that a prominent conservative court of appeals judge declared DOMA unconstitutional, and it relies on a sweeping rationale in doing so. Supporters of equality have a great deal to celebrate today.
The law, a crowning achievement for Walker that made him a national conservative star, took away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most workers and has been in effect for more than a year.
Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas ruled that the law violates both the state and U.S. Constitution and is null and void.
In his 27-page ruling, the judge said sections of the law "single out and encumber the rights of those employees who choose union membership and representation solely because of that association and therefore infringe upon the rights of free speech and association guaranteed by both the Wisconsin and United States Constitutions."
Colas also said the law violates the equal protection clause by creating separate classes of workers who are treated differently and unequally.
The ruling applies to all local public workers affected by the law, including teachers and city and county government employees, but not those who work for the state. They were not a party to the lawsuit, which was brought by a Madison teachers union and a Milwaukee public workers union.
The people of Wisconsin clearly spoke on June 5. Now, they are ready to move on. Sadly a liberal activist judge in Dane County wants to go backwards and take away the lawmaking responsibilities of the legislature and the governor. We are confident that the state will ultimately prevail in the appeals process.
Dana Brueck, spokeswoman for Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, was quoted in the Milwaukee Journal: We believe the law is constitutional. We are reviewing the decision, but we're planning to appeal.
A judge living in the fantasy world of Dane County has decided they are going to substitute their singular opinion as opposed to the collective will of Wisconsin, through the Legislature and the recall process. We have litigated, reviewed and elected people because of Act. 10. In each case, they say the law works. And it is.
However, union representatives are delighted and see this as a great victory:
Walker's attempt to silence the union men and women of Wisconsin's public sector was an immoral, unjust and illegal power grab. Now, a court has ruled that the essential provisions of Act 10, Scott Walker's draconian attack on public worker's right to collectively bargain, is unconstitutional.
~ Phil Neuenfeldt, President of the Wisoncin AFL-CIO Union, via CNN
This decision will help to re-establish the balance between employees and their employers. The decision gives us an opportunity to get back to the Wisconsin values of sitting down and working together to iron out differences, not taking away the constitutional rights of our citizens.
~ Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha), via Milwaukee Journal
Even before Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr. released his decision, lawyers on both sides of the case had pledged to appeal the ruling.
A petition to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is expected within days, if not hours. More legal briefs and courtroom arguments are expected. Others have been eyeing a parallel challenge in federal court.
Simpson denied a request for a preliminary injunction blocking the state from implementing the law, which requires voters to show state-issued identification before casting ballots.
Opponents complained the new law will unfairly bar as many as 1 million Pennsylvanians from the polls. Supporters say it was necessary to cut down on election fraud.
Voting rights advocates plan to appeal the case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which will likely issue its own ruling before the November election. There is currently an even 3-3 split between Democrats and Republicans on the Court; the 7th Justice, Republican Joan Orie Melvin, is under suspension because of an unrelated corruption scandal.
Since Simpson ruled to uphold the law, Democrats will need one crossover vote to win a majority and strike down the law. Chief Justice Ronald Castille, a moderate Republican from Philadelphia, is most likely to side with the Democrats.
The federal Justice Department is also looking into whether Pennsylvania’s voter ID complies with federal law.
These two candidates couldn't be more different. You can't tell me that "both sides are exactly the same" or "both sides are just as bad." There's a fundamental difference between a thinker like Barack Obama who actually cares about people, and a glib businessman like Mitt Romney who seems to have no convictions or opinions of his own beyond what the Neocons tell him to say. And at least the President has his facts straight. Romney still thinks the Aurora shooter bought weapons illegally, when actually everything he had was legal under the laws of the state.
. . . we’ve been reminded recently that all this matters little if these young people can’t walk the streets of their neighborhood safely; if we can’t send our kids to school without worrying they might get shot; if they can’t go to the movies without fear of violence lurking in the shadows. (Applause.)
Our hearts break for the victims of the massacre in Aurora. (Applause.) We pray for those who were lost and we pray for those who loved them. We pray for those who are recovering with courage and with hope. And we also pray for those who succumb to the less-publicized acts of violence that plague our communities in so many cities across the country every single day. (Applause.) We can’t forget about that.
Every day – in fact, every day and a half, the number of young people we lose to violence is about the same as the number of people we lost in that movie theater. For every Columbine or Virginia Tech, there are dozens gunned down on the streets of Chicago and Atlanta, and here in New Orleans. For every Tucson or Aurora, there is daily heartbreak over young Americans shot in Milwaukee or Cleveland. Violence plagues the biggest cities, but it also plagues the smallest towns. It claims the lives of Americans of different ages and different races, and it’s tied together by the fact that these young people had dreams and had futures that were cut tragically short.
And when there is an extraordinarily heartbreaking tragedy like the one we saw, there’s always an outcry immediately after for action. And there’s talk of new reforms, and there’s talk of new legislation. And too often, those efforts are defeated by politics and by lobbying and eventually by the pull of our collective attention elsewhere.
. . . I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms. And we recognize the traditions of gun ownership that passed on from generation to generation -– that hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage. But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals – (applause) – that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities. I believe the majority of gun owners would agree that we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons; that we should check someone’s criminal record before they can check out a gun seller; that a mentally unbalanced individual should not be able to get his hands on a gun so easily. (Applause.) These steps shouldn’t be controversial. They should be common sense. So I’m going to continue to work with members of both parties, and with religious groups and with civic organizations, to arrive at a consensus around violence reduction – not just of gun violence, but violence at every level, on every step, looking at everything we can do to reduce violence and keep our children safe -– from improving mental health services for troubled youth – (applause) – to instituting more effective community policing strategies. We should leave no stone unturned, and recognize that we have no greater mission as a country than keeping our young people safe. (Applause.) And as we do so, as we convene these conversations, let’s be clear: Even as we debate government’s role, we have to understand that when a child opens fire on another child, there’s a hole in that child’s heart that government alone can’t fill. (Applause.) It’s up to us, as parents and as neighbors and as teachers and as mentors, to make sure our young people don’t have that void inside them.
Political implications, legal implications are something which will be sorted out down the road," Romney told NBC's Brian Williams during an exclusive interview here in London. "But I don't happen to believe that America needs new gun laws. A lot of what this young man did was clearly against the law. But the fact that it was against the law did not prevent it from happening.
Romney, who enacted an assault weapons ban as governor of Massachusetts (with the support of a Democratic legislature) would not say whether he still believes that weapons like the AR-15 assault rifle used in the Colorado shooting were "instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people," as he described them during the bill signing ceremony in 2002.
When Williams followed up later in the interview on the Aurora attack, Romney argued that it would take a change in heart, not laws, to stop future violence.
"And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won't. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what's essential, to improve the lots of the American people."
. . . As Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates explained: “All the weapons that he possessed, he possessed legally. And all the clips that he possessed, he possessed legally. And all the ammunition that he possessed, he possessed legally.”
Holmes used a handgun, a shotgun and an AR-15 assault rifle in his massacre — all legal, thanks to the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban in 2004, which had previously prohibited some versions of the AR-15. Holmes also had body armor, tear gas grenades, a gas mask and tactical gear. All are legal and widely available online at minimal cost (one website sells tear gas grenades for just $16 a pop). The only way it would have been illegal for Holmes to have his guns would be if he had been diagnosed as mentally ill or was a convicted felon, but neither was the case. His only record was a speeding ticket.
“Background checks, as required by federal law, were properly conducted, and [Holmes] was approved,” said a spokesman for Bass Pro Shops, where he bought one of his guns. Holmes had also booby-trapped his apartment with homemade explosives, but there’s no evidence yet that any of these devices were illegal either, as he made them himself with common materials like gasoline.
Pennsylvania has a problem with their voter ID laws, but it's not because of rampant voter fraud as the Republicans want us to believe. In fact, as in most states, everyone agrees that voter fraud is almost non-existent. Yet state legislatures keeping passing laws forcing everyone to get a picture ID or lose their right to vote in the Presidential election this year. This will put the burden mainly on urban dwellers who use public transportation and therefore do not have a driver's license, as well as the elderly who have been voting for years, thank you very much, without a picture ID.
Unlike Florida and Texas, Pennsylvania is not a state covered by Section 5 of the Voters Rights Act which requires preclearance from the Justice Department before voting laws can be changed. Only states that had low voter turnout under 50% in the early 60s were required to follow the preclearance rule. So Pennsylvania will be a test state, and possibly ground-breaking for other "swing" states that might try to suppress the African American vote using Voter ID Laws.
The ACLU is taking the State of Pennsylvania to court, while the Feds are looking into whether the law will impede voting.
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and other groups will spend the next week in Commonwealth Court trying to persuade a judge to grant a swift and immediate injunction. The Republican-controlled legislature passed the law four months ago with the stated purpose of discouraging election fraud.
*snip*
The ACLU is suing on behalf of 10 Pennsylvanians who do not have driver's licenses and who contend that the photo-ID requirement violates the state constitution, depriving them of their right to vote.
In legal papers filed last week, the civil liberties group says that those 10 are the tip of a human iceberg, that as many as a million or more Pennsylvania voters lack the types of photo ID that the law requires.
The ACLU included in its filing a surprising concession from state officials: a written stipulation that the state cannot pinpoint any instance of the kind of voter-impersonation fraud the new law aims to prevent.
The state stipulated that it is "not aware of any incidents of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania," and has "no direct knowledge of in-person voter fraud elsewhere." State officials also said they would offer no evidence that "in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the photo ID law."
In a three-page letter sent to Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele on Monday, DOJ requested state data on registered voters as well as the state’s list of individuals with driver’s licenses and ID cards.
Additionally, DOJ requested information on the state’s efforts to educate voters about the new law as well as documents and records supporting a March 14 statement from the office of Gov. Tom Corbett (R) which claimed “99 percent of Pennsylvania’s already have acceptable photo IDs.” (The state’s own data did not support that figure.) Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez requested Pennsylvania send the information to federal authorities within 30 days.
Pennsylvania has said that over 750,000 voters lack an adequate form of voter ID, a number greater than President Obama’s margin of victory in the state in 2008. One top Republican even said the voter ID law would help Mitt Romney win the state. As TPM reported, the public relations firm contracted to educate the public about the new voter ID law is stacked with Republicans.
Good discussion of this story on Hardball yesterday:
"Scripture says that 'He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. For the former things have passed away.'"
George Zimmerman told Sean Hannity that he thinks the shooting of Trayvon Martin is part of God's Plan, so he wouldn't go back and do anything differently. Zimmerman was was released on $1 million bond earlier in July.
HANNITY: Is there anything you regret? Do you regret getting out of the car to follow Trayvon that night?
ZIMMERMAN: No, sir.
HANNITY: Do you regret that you had a gun that night?
ZIMMERMAN: No, sir.
HANNITY: Do you feel you wouldn't be here for this interview if you didn't have that gun?
ZIMMERMAN: No, sir.
HANNITY: You feel you would not be here?
ZIMMERMAN: I feel it was all God's plan and for me to second guess it or judge it --
Barabara Walters was offered the interview, and even flew to Florida to speak to Zimmerman, but at the last minute he changed the terms: Via Huffington Post
When Walters and her team arrived in Florida, she said that Zimmerman came in dressed in a t-shirt, rather than a suit. "That should have been my first clue," she said.
According to Walters, Zimmerman said that the plans had changed, and he was refusing to do the interview unless ABC granted him one request. Walters refused to confirm that he had requested a month-long stay in a hotel. "It was a condition that, being a member of ABC News, I was unable to grant," she said.
. . . The drama took a bizarre twist when Walters announced that Zimmerman wanted to call into the show to speak to Walters. "He wouldn't do the interview, but now he has something to say," she said, later adding, "This has been an interesting day, to say the least."
She then pointedly refused to put him on air. "Mr. Zimmerman, if you could not do the interview yesterday, I don’t think we should do a quick one today," she said. "In the future if you feel differently, we will consider it.”
WOFL-Channel 35 legal analyst Diana Tennis. “Mark O’Mara looked unhappy through most of that interview, and how he did not leap out of his chair and throw himself on his client at that moment, I don’t know,” Tennis said. “Just terrible, terrible, unfortunate judgment in the moment,” she added.
WOFL legal analyst Aramis Ayala saw the interview as a gift to the prosecution. “They do have a gift with a red bow on top of it to address his credibility,” she said.
WFTV-Channel 9’s Bill Sheaffer predicted that prosecutors will be prepared to cross examine Zimmerman about statements in the interview. Sheaffer added that Zimmerman’s lack of regret may hurt the shooter the most. “One may conclude from those statements that there is no remorse on the part of Mr. Zimmerman,” Sheaffer said.
On CNN, Sunny Hostin said the interview was very unusual for someone facing second-degree murder. “There’s a lot of objective evidence that, quite frankly, contradicts a lot of the things he said to the police,” she said. ‘I never think it’s a good idea for a defendant to use a strategy giving media interviews. It’s always a bad idea.”
“In Session” correspondent Jean Casarez, also talking to CNN, said it was “amazing” that Zimmerman did the interview. “The credibility of George Zimmerman is truly the entire case,” she said.
Casarez said that Zimmerman’s version of being injured by Martin might help the defense case. She added, however, that Zimmerman’s inconsistencies will determine whether he’s believed or not.
The idea that Paterno paid no attention to the '98 incident "is completely contradicted by the evidence," Freeh said.
In addition to raising doubt about Paterno's statement that he was unaware of the assault, the report contains evidence suggesting the former coach was the key to a decision by top university officials to back away from alerting state authorities to a 2001 shower incident involving a boy.
Officials initially planned to alert the state Department of Public Welfare about the allegation, which would have triggered an official, outside investigation.
But according to e-mails made public in the Freeh report, Timothy Curley, the athletic department director now awaiting trial in the scandal, urged the university to abandon this plan "after talking it over with Joe."
*snip*
The report's sobering contents include a highly critical glimpse of the once-sacrosanct coach's behavior between 1998 and Sandusky's 2011 arrest. Investigators portrayed Paterno as an active participant in an administrative effort to "conceal critical facts" and preserve the reputation of the university's signature athletic program.
By doing so, the report says, Paterno, Spanier, Curley, and Schultz displayed "a striking lack of empathy" for Sandusky's victims.
*snip*
Freeh told the story of a Lasch Building janitor who had witnessed a "horrific" Sandusky assault but was afraid he might lose his job if he reported an incident involving the much-admired coach.
"He was afraid to take on the football program, and if that's the culture on the bottom [of the Penn State football food chain], then God help the culture on top," Freeh said.
. . . Emails uncovered by the Freeh team indicated that Mr. Spanier approved a plan to ask Mr. Sandusky to get "professional help" and that he was concerned about making the university "vulnerable" should Mr. Sandusky's behavior continue. Though he denied knowing that Mr. Schultz and Mr. Curley considered reporting the matter to the state Department of Public Welfare, notes from a meeting he attended indicate that was also discussed.
These things don't match up with Mr. Spanier's contention that what he knew about was just "horseplay," said Wes Oliver, a law professor at Duquesne University.
"Based on what we have, there's enough to circumstantially infer that he knew," he said. "If he thought it was just a ... shower after tee ball, you don't recommend a psychologist after that."
Mr. Oliver believes the report could lead to charges against Mr. Spanier for failing to report the matter to authorities or to investigate further. And he believes Mr. Paterno, were he still alive, might have also faced charges, since there's evidence in the emails that he influenced Mr. Curley to not go to DPW.
Jeff Fritz, the attorney for Victim 4, agreed the report lays out evidence that could be used to charge Mr. Spanier. "What is clear is they made a conscious decision to make the wrong decision," Mr. Fritz said. "These weren't mistakes. These were crimes that were committed."
Michael Boni, the attorney for an individual who has been identified only as Victim 1, said he views it as "an admission by Penn State that it's liable to the victims of this cover-up.
"The report makes crystal clear that those four made a conscious, overt decision to not report Sandusky's transgressions," he said. "By not doing it, they brought about a situation where my client and others were abused as a direct result of their action."
“The outrage belongs squarely at the feet of Penn State officials, including Paterno, whose family has defended him by proclaiming he didn’t even use email in 2001.
Such a defense actually bears further evidence Paterno had long overstayed his time at Penn State, was out of touch and had become a liability to the program, not to mention the safety of young boys who wanted nothing more than to be around a football program they idolized, only to have their childhoods reduced to haunting memories of horrendous abuse.
It’s also time for the NCAA to step in and take a look. If there ever was a case of ‘lack of institutional control,’ this would seem to be it.
A strong example still needs to be made in the land ironically known as ‘Happy Valley.’ When it comes to protecting kids, there is a far greater principle at stake than protecting a football program’s diminished legends.”
“Paterno apparently persuaded the group to go easy on old Jerry. The athletic director, Tim Curley, e-mailed the other Sheep, ‘If Sandusky is cooperative, we would work with him.’
Astounding. The Three Sheep, part of a huge flock of JoPa [sic] worshipers, decided that confronting Sandusky rather than turning him in ‘is a more humane and upfront way to handle this.’
Only Paterno knows why he wanted his Three Sheep to call off the dogs. Was it out of compassion for Sandusky, or out of concern that Paterno's program and his legacy might take a hit?
To at least four young victims of abuse, that distinction probably isn't important.
Please, can we never again mention how many wins Joe Paterno racked up or how many libraries he built? The meaningful numbers in his legacy will probably never be known.”
"Let's use a reasonable amount of skepticism here. A man with Paterno's power doesn't just relinquish control. Not with something like this. Not when the allegations against Sandusky were so awful and incomprehensible that they could level all those years of goodwill and honor Paterno had built.
Although Curley and Schultz are facing perjury charges, there is a sense now that maybe Paterno was let off the hook.
This is not to say that Paterno deserved to have formal charges filed against him, especially given that the authorities decided otherwise. But what's becoming abundantly clear is that Paterno's image was only what he wanted us to see.”
Paterno ran Penn State. We are Penn State? Forget it. Try I am Penn State. He listened to no one, answered to no one. In 2004, when Spanier and the head of the board of trustees reportedly went to Paterno’s house and said it was time for him to retire, he threw them out. The Penn State trains ran on Joe’s schedule in the ridiculous name of football. Yes, he did give $4 million to the school, and no one should ever argue against philanthropy, but charity also is never entirely altruistic: it burnished the avuncular JoePa image, a man above reproach who would never hide or conceal or obfuscate. But the world of Penn State football revolved around Paterno. It seemed inconceivable that in a matter involving someone who had been a loyal assistant coach for 30 years, Paterno would simply step aside and trust the judgment of others, or that others would make a judgment without his input.
It is totally unfair to say that Penn State officials did nothing. They did tell Sandusky he could no longer bring ‘guests’ on campus. There was no way of enforcing it of course, and the humaneness with Sandusky was so effective that he continued to sexually abuse children for another six years.
You can thank Curley for that. You can thank Schultz for that. You can thank Spanier for that. But most of all you can thank Paterno. He was the God of Happy Valley. People scurried and scrambled when he spoke, so you can bet it was he who was the primary driver behind the decision not to report Sandusky to authorities. It was he who on the basis of his own words in his grand jury testimony, gave the false impression that he had placed the matter in the hands of athletic director Curley and then walked away.
And thus ends the so-called legacy of Joe Paterno. The opinion of this blogger is that anyone who defends this man as "ethical" after this needs to read the report again, and then go read the testimony of Jerry Sandusky's victims. They could have been spared a world of pain and suffering, then-now-and in the future if Joe and Company had "done the right thing" and simply called police on Old Jer'. If they had acted like real men. Instead they covered up to be "humane" to their football buddy instead of the innocent children, and for that they deserve whatever they get here and hereafter.
Under the law passed in Texas, Holder said that "many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them – and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them."
"We call those poll taxes," Holder added spontaneously, drawing applause as he moved away from the original text of his speech with a reference to a fee used in some Southern states after slavery's abolition to disenfranchise black people.
The 24th amendment to the constitution made that type of tax illegal.
Holder spoke a day after a trial started in federal court in Washington over the 2011 law passed by Texas' GOP-dominated Legislature that requires voters to show photo identification when they get to the polls.
Under Texas' law, Holder noted, a concealed handgun license would serve as acceptable ID to vote, but a student ID would not. He went on to say that while only 8 percent of white people do not have government-issued photo IDs, about 25 percent of black people lack such identification.
In the United States, the poll tax has been connected with voting rights. Poll taxes enacted in Southern states between 1889 and 1910 had the effect of disenfranchising many blacks as well as poor whites, because payment of the tax was a prerequisite for voting. By the 1940s some of these taxes had been abolished, and in 1964 the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution disallowed the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting in federal elections. In 1966 this prohibition was extended to all elections by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that such a tax violated the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Whatever the political leanings of Chief Justice John Roberts, his choice to vote with the Liberal side of the Supreme Court in the ACA ruling was an honorable and brave thing to do. He rose above the fray and followed the rule of law, not the ramblings of some right-wing talking points. I don't agree with all his decisions - Citizens United is an abomination - but in this particular case, he did the right thing.
The fact is, John Roberts has a whole host of new fans and admirers because he helped save Obama's Health Care plan for America. And we won't forget.
My favorite tweet from yesterday, and possibly from all time, was this:
I have no idea if the person who tweeted that was a liberal or a conservative, or whether he agreed with the verdict rendered. They might love Justice Roberts or hate his guts. In a literary sense it works either way because Professor Severus Snape was an ambiguous character up until the end of the Harry Potter series when we saw his true nature. Both sides saw Snape as a traitor, yet he was actually just walking a dangerous line and trying to do the morally right thing under tough circumstances. And at the end of the story, he was the "bravest man" Harry Potter ever knew.
Sometimes that happens in real life. For me, after this ruling, Chief Justice Roberts is a hero like that.
Am I being corny? Perhaps, but listen to Chris Matthews waxing poetic about Roberts yesterday:
Roberts Rules! Let's Play Hardball.
. . . Let me start with one of the great days in this country's history. Today the Supreme Court led by the Chief Justice himself decided that Barack Obama's Health Care Act squares with the American Constitution. All the drum-beating, all the horrors floated up by the right-wing fever swamps are, after today, simply the hate-vapors of the perennial rejectionists to progress, the "rear guard" funded by the Koch Brothers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Today's Hero ~ Chief Justice John Roberts, who walked to the forefront of history and said yes to progress and and no to the role prescribed for him by the Right. He would not be that man, he would not let the court named for him carry historic blame for denying health care to tens of millions of Americans. He would not be the ramrod for yet another right-leaning partison-appearing Supreme Court ruling that would have been the third strike over the plate following Bush v. Gore and Citizens United. So let's start tonight by looking at this bold, defiant, grand decision by Chief Justice Roberts . . .
Earlier this week we read Justice Scalia's bizarre dissent on the Arizona Immigration case, in which he went into absolutely Pureblood Death Eater mode while comparing illegal Hispanics in Arizona to freed slaves before the Civil War and those with "contagious diseases." It's easy to see Roberts as the reverse - someone who decided to put the Law ahead of prejudices or his own personal opinions. And indeed, he ruled the opposite of Scalia in that case, as well as the ACA case.
Supreme Court expert and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Linda Greenhouse, wrote about Roberts role in the Immigration decision for the New York Times:, implying that Roberts willingness to go along with the majority might have driven Scalia nuts, LOL:
The first thing that jumped out at me was the name of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Justice Kennedy’s opinion, along with the expected names of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. The chief justice was, apparently, in complete agreement with the majority as evidenced by his silence – the dog that didn’t bark, you might say. He felt no need to write separately to express even a shade of difference from the majority or a hint of sympathy with the dissenting views of his usual allies. Beyond Justice Scalia’s transparent dislike for the president, perhaps it was the chief justice’s apostasy that drove him around the bend.
Yes, horrors that the Chief Justice wouldn't succumb to all the dog whistles in Justice Scalia's dissent. Maybe Roberts just isn't a racist?
About the Health Care Ruling, Greenhouse analyzed Roberts' role which is officially "Chief Justice of the United States."
. . . the title that he actually goes by, chief justice of the United States, seemed a good fit. He spoke for the country.
His decision to call the mandate a tax and to provide a clearly reluctant fifth vote for upholding it as within the Congressional taxing power was a deeply pragmatic call that saved the Affordable Care Act. Certainly by no coincidence, it also saved the Supreme Court from the stench of extreme partisanship that has hung over the health care litigation from the moment more than two years ago that Republican state officials raced one another to the federal courts to try to erase what they had been unable to block.
. . . But it is Chief Justice Roberts’s extraordinary role that is most intriguing. He has just completed his seventh term as chief justice, and at 57 could well serve another quarter-century or longer. Clearly he is playing a long game.
. . . John Roberts doesn’t like the Affordable Care Act. He went to great lengths in his opinion to show his total agreement with the plaintiffs’ core argument: that the requirement to buy health insurance was an unprecedented effort by Congress to force people into a market they had chosen not to enter, to create commerce where none existed. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion pierced gaping holes in the chief justice’s analysis. But he stuck to his position, coming within an inch of invoking what Justice Ginsburg ironically labeled “the broccoli horrible” and warning that “under the government’s theory, Congress could address the diet problem by ordering everyone to buy vegetables.”
Since there were four justices who also saw the mandate that way, as Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Anthony M. Kennedy explained in an unusually structured opinion that all four signed as co-authors, the mandate might have died right there. But then the chief justice abruptly pivoted and declared that because the penalty for not buying insurance functioned as a tax, it could be upheld as a tax and the mandate was therefore constitutional.
“I think this term was the turning point in the legacy of John Roberts,” Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe said in an e-mail to the Globe. “He now has a chance to be a truly great chief justice. Of course, he dissented in some of the liberal-leaning decisions of the current largely conservative court, but when push came to shove he was where he needed to be.” Tribe, who taught Roberts and President Obama at Harvard Law School, said Roberts’s decision to become the swing vote in a 5-4 decision “saved the day — and perhaps the court.”
In the same article, Joel B. Grossman of Johns Hopkins University said:
“It’s kind of an act of leadership rather than an act of ideology . . . I can’t imagine his sympathies were with expanding congressional power, but I think he recognized that there might even be a crisis if he cut this law off at the knees.”
. . . “He is going to be chief for a long time and one thing you don’t want is to lose control of the court,” he said. “This fits the model of wanting to keep the court together and perhaps even to approve something he personally found distasteful.”
Roberts must have known that the conservatives would see him as a sell-out, shun him socially, and immediately launch ad hominem attacks as bad or worse as those aimed at the President. And in fact, it started in less than 24 hours.
Ben Shapiro, Editor of Breitbart.com launched a series of damning tweets:
This is the greatest destruction of individual liberty since Dred Scott. This is the end of America as we know it. No exaggeration.
Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky took a different route, issuing a Press Release that dissed the entire decision as moot somehow, as if Justice Roberts had no authority to render a verdict. In fact, he carefully doesn't mention Roberts at all, which is telling, and refers to the majority opinion as "couple people" who "declare something." Yeah, the Supreme Court doesn't matter unless they rule your way.
Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional. While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.
Actually, Rand, that's exactly what makes it so.
. . . Paul may want to review the 1803 case of Marbury V. Madison, which formed the basis for judicial review. In other words, it's what gave the Court its teeth -- it clearly defined the Court's role in the separation of powers in the federal government, making it the "supreme expositor of the Constitution."
This means that what the Court says goes -- regardless of whether a freshman Senator from Kentucky disagrees with it.
Rand Paul had so much criticism over his silly remark that he was still trying to explain in an interview the next day: Interview From Marketplace Health Care:
Hobson: Well thanks for being here. I want to start by asking you about some comments that you made yesterday that have gotten a lot of attention. You said: "Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be constitutional, does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional." Do you stand by that statement? Paul: You know, I still agree with Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito that the Constitution doesn't justify the law. Hobson: You're agreeing with the dissenters -- but that was not the ruling that the Supreme Court came down with. Paul: Right, but that's all I'm saying, if if you ask Justice Scalia if he thinks the law is Constitutional, he'll still tell you "no." So I'm entitled to have my opinion as to what is constitutional and what is not. No one's talking about whether the ruling has validity or not, I'm just saying that I agree with the dissenters that don't believe the law is constitutional
Okey dokey.
Next . . . the apoplectic and hyperbolic (and repetitive) Rush Limbaugh slamming Roberts as some kind of Evil Taxman out to destroy the world:
What we have been told by the Chief Justice of the Court and four liberals on the court - Obamacare's just a massive tax increase.
. . . the Chief Justice was just hell-bound, hell-bent to find a way to make this law applicable, so you know what? As a tax increase it works because there's no limit on the federal government's ability to tax....
. . . John Roberts said (mocking voice) "It's not our job to forbid this, it's not our job to protect people from outcomes, it's not our job to determine what is right or wrong or any of it. We can't forbid this if it's what the elected representatives and the people want." . . . But what if we were deceived?
. . . What happened today was that we were bludgeoned with a tax that requires us to do what the government mandates. We must do what they say. . . . It is a 'stealth tax' and that's what it was all along. A massive behavior modification program.
. . . Chief Justice says (mocking voice) 'I can't forbid this. It's not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices. I gotta find a way - Congress wants this - I gotta find a way to make it happen. Okay - we'll call it a tax!'
Let’s talk about Roberts. I’m going to tell you something that you’re not going to hear anywhere else, that you must pay attention to. It’s well known that Roberts, unfortunately for him, has suffered from epileptic seizures. Therefore he has been on medication. Therefore neurologists will tell you that medication used for seizure disorders, such as epilepsy, can introduce mental slowing, forgetfulness and other cognitive problems. And if you look at Roberts’ writings you can see the cognitive dissociation in what he is saying.
Oh Lord - "cognitive problems"? Really? Does this also explain Mitt Romney's lack of memory about everything he has ever said?
That statement is nasty two ways - not only is it egregious to bring up the private health matters of a Supreme Court Justice, it's insulting to anyone with epilepsy to imply that they can't make correct decisions. But isn't this just par for the course in Republican circles ~ bad health equals bad judgment equals "no insurance for you"? Don't the Republicans always imply that people with bad health or even children with pre-existing conditions from birth are somehow tainted and undeserving? Unless you're Ann Romney with high-functioning Multiple Sclerosis, or Dick Cheney with a defective heart, or Rick Santorum's poor little daughter, or Rush Limbaugh going blind from drug abuse. Oh yeah - that is irrelevant because they all have plenty of money for the best health care. It's only the poor and unemployed who don't deserve it.
All the more reason we need universal health care so people can get help without regard to their previous conditions or political affiliations. Death Eaters just aren't good at taking care of people. So thank you, Justice Roberts.
