Tag: Antonin Scalia

Trump to Pick Amy Coney Barrett, a Conservative Woman of Faith, as His Nominee for the Supreme Court…as Liberals Prepare to “Kavanaugh” Her

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

FoxNews.com reports that

Amy Coney Barrett, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 7th Circuit, is reportedly one of the top contenders for President Trump’s nomination to the seat vacated by the death of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg was the face of the liberal bloc on the Supreme Court, meaning that an appointment by Trump and confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate could potentially significantly shift the ideological balance of the court for years. Barrett’s record, including cases she’s ruled on during her time as an appeals judge and her scholarship as a law professor at Notre Dame, are set to be intensely scrutinized by the media and the Senate Judiciary Committee should Trump choose her.

Carrie Severino, the president of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said that Barrett and the other women on the Trump shortlist may disagree with Ginsburg on the issues, but have the intellectual firepower to fill in for the late legal luminary.

“These are really impressive women,” Severino said. “They’re worthy of following in her footsteps.”

Those on the left, however, have said they worry that Barrett would undo precedents like Roe v. Wade and impose her faith on others.

Here are a handful of the notable stances Barrett has taken that might indicate the effect she could have on the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence.

Gun rights

Perhaps the most high-profile opinion Barrett has written is a dissent in Kanter v. Barr, a case that upheld a Wisconsin law taking gun rights away from non-violent felons. The majority opinion was written by Judges Joel Flaum and Kenneth Ripple, who were appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

“History is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,” Barrett wrote. “But that power extends only to people who are dangerous.”

She added: “[W]hile both Wisconsin and the United States have an unquestionably strong interest in protecting the public from gun violence, they have failed to show, by either logic or data … that disarming Kanter substantially advances that interest. On this record, holding that the ban is constitutional as applied to Kanter does not ‘put[] the government through its paces’ … but instead treats the Second Amendment as a ‘second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.'”

Due Process

Barrett wrote the majority opinion in the case Doe v. Purdue, a due process and Title IX challenge by a Purdue University student who had been accused of sexual assault, which led to the student losing his Navy ROTC scholarship.

The students in the case were identified as John Doe and Jane Doe to preserve their anonymity. Jane alleged that John had woken her up while they were sleeping together by groping her over her clothes and admitted to her that he had “digitally penetrated” her while she was asleep on a different occasion. John denied all the accusations to the school.

According to Barrett’s opinion, Purdue then allegedly wrote a report that “falsely claimed that [John] had confessed to Jane’s allegations;” refused to let John see evidence in the case; did not allow him to present witnesses; did not let him cross-examine Jane; and later “found him guilty by a preponderance of the evidence of sexual violence.”

The case was dismissed by a lower court, and Barrett was considering whether the claims on their face merited such a quick dismissal or whether the appeals court should order a closer look at the proceedings.

Criminal Law

In the case Rainsberger v. Benner, Barrett authored an opinion in which she denied qualified immunity — a protection for government officials from being sued for judgment calls they make on the job — for a police officer who was alleged to have submitted a document “riddled with lies and undercut by the omission of exculpatory evidence” that led to a man being put in jail for two months.

Qualified immunity has been a hot topic in recent months as police come under increasing scrutiny for alleged misdeeds on the job, whether that be police brutality or lying on documents as Benner was accused of. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., briefly pushed a bill to scale back qualified immunity for police earlier this summer — an idea that was widely supported by Democrats.

Abortion

Barrett has been involved with a handful of cases that implicated abortion 7th Circuit. In one 2018 case she dissented from a denial of en banc rehearing — meaning she wanted the entire court to reexamine a decision by three judges — after the 7th Circuit ruled unconstitutional an Indiana law banning abortions for reasons relating to the sex, race or potential disability of the fetus. The law also banned fetuses from being disposed of as medical waste.

Barrett joined a dissent by Judge Frank Easterbrook that labeled the ban on abortions for sex, race and disability reasons “the eugenics statute” and argued the Supreme Court had never ruled on such a law so it should not be automatically considered illegitimate.

Immigration

Barrett has for the most part sided with the Trump administration on immigration cases. In Cook County v. Wolf, a case on the Trump administration’s controversial “public charge” rule allowed immigrants who were likely to use welfare to be barred from getting visas, Barrett said the rule was a “policy choice,” that should not be resolved in litigation.

In Yafai v. Pompeo, Barrett backed a State Department decision to deny a visa to the wife of an American citizen for allegedly trying to smuggle in children, despite the fact that the parents said their children had died in a drowning accident. The decision was reconsidered but the wife was still not given a visa.

Barrett said that the fact the denial was reconsidered, under the law and Supreme Court precedent, fulfilled the legal requirements the State Department had to meet. In a decision on whether or not the full court should rehear the case, she said that the State Department was given significant discretion and that the appeals court could not require more evidence than a simple citation of what law the decision was made under.

Death Penalty

Barrett spent a long time in academia, primarily as a professor at Notre Dame, which is her alma mater. She co-authored an article called “Catholic Judges in Capital Cases,” which examines the competing obligations of Catholics when asked to rule in a death penalty case. It suggested there might be some instances in which a Catholic judge should recuse himself or herself from such proceedings.

“Catholic judges must answer some complex moral and legal questions in deciding whether to sit in death penalty cases. Sometimes (as with direct appeals of death sentences) the right answers are not obvious. But in a system that effectively leaves the decision up to the judge, these are questions that responsible Catholics must consider seriously,” she wrote along with John H. Garvey, who is now the president of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

“Judges cannot — nor should they try to — align our legal system with the Church’s moral teaching whenever the two diverge,” the article says. “They should, however, conform their own behavior to the Church’s standard. Perhaps their good example will have some effect.”

Ever since Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, the Far Left Democratic Party has been protesting the fact that Trump gets to pick her successor and attempting to force him to wait until after the 2020 Presidential Election and the inauguration of the next President.

Of course, the Dems and the Never-Trumpers, all Nattering Nabobs of Negativity, knew whom the President was going to pick…and they had already made up their minds about her.

They knew that…shudder…President Trump was going to pick someone who was a Christian and who was unashamed of their faith.

And, of course, Trump did.

Christians still make up 75% of America’s population, so odds were that Trump’s nominee would believe in the Triune God.

And, that’s a good thing.

The legendary Judicial Giant who Trump’s first appointee, Neil Gorsuch, replaced, Antonin Scalia, was a Christian American.

Here is what he said about the role of Christianity in our government, which remains in sharp contrast to the Rewritten History and wish-casting of the “Democratic Socialists” whose heads are exploding even as we speak.

In his dissenting opinion in the 2005 case McCreary County v. ACLU, Justice Antonin Scalia explained:

Those who wrote the Constitution believed that morality was essential to the well-being of society and that encouragement of religion was the best way to foster morality. The fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself…

President Washington opened his Presidency with a prayer, and reminded his fellow citizens at the conclusion of it that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” President John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts Militia, “we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

After going on to quote similar sentiments from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Scalia continued:

Nor have the views of our people on this matter significantly changed. Presidents continue to conclude the Presidential oath with the words “so help me God.” Our legislatures, state and national, continue to open their sessions with prayer led by official chaplains. The sessions of this Court continue to open with the prayer “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” Invocation of the Almighty by our public figures, at all levels of government, remains commonplace. Our coinage bears the motto, “In God We Trust.” And our Pledge of Allegiance contains the acknowledgment that we are a Nation “under God.” As one of our Supreme Court opinions rightly observed, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”

With all of this reality (and much more) staring it in the face, how can the Court possibly assert that “the First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between… religion and nonreligion,” and that “[m]anifesting a purpose to favor… adherence to religion generally,” is unconstitutional? Who says so? Surely not the words of the Constitution. Surely not the history and traditions that reflect our society’s constant understanding of those words.

While the ever-increasing turn toward Marxism and the constant protesting and threatened violence by the New Bolsheviks of the Democratic Party, is very troubling, I find solace in the fact that they are still a minority in this country.

In my opinion, today, President Trump will pick ANOTHER winner.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Dems’ Fears Realized as Trump Picks a Christian Constitutionalist to Fill SCOTUS Vacancy

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

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As you probably know by now, last night President Donald J. Trump announced that Brett Kavanaugh will be his nominee to fulfill the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Christian American Conservatives praised Kavanaugh’s nomination last night…and with good reason.

Per ChristianityToday.com…

As a young lawyer, Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy, the man he may now replace. In 2003, he was appointed to the DC circuit by George W. Bush, though he wasn’t officially confirmed until 2006 after a long stall by Democrats who expressed skepticism of his record and level of experience.

A staunch defender of religious liberty, Kavanaugh rejected challenges to prayers at the president’s inauguration and the phrase “so help me God” in the presidential oath.

“We cannot resolve this case by discounting the sense of anguish and outrage plaintiffs and some other Americans feel at listening to a government-sponsored religious prayer,” he stated in the 2010 case. “We likewise cannot dismiss the desire of others in America to publicly ask for God’s blessing on certain government activities and to publicly seek God’s guidance for certain government officials.”

In the 2015 case, Priests for Life v. HHS, Kavanaugh opposed a decision against a challenge to the Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate, dissenting from the DC circuit’s decision not to review the case.

According to Kavanaugh’s dissent, the HHS regulations “substantially burden the religious organizations’ exercise of religion because the regulations require the organizations to take an action contrary to their sincere religious beliefs (submitting the form) or else pay significant monetary penalties.”

Kavanaugh also dissented on a recent, contentious case in which a pregnant teenager in immigration custody sought an abortion, arguing that as she was a minor, the US government had a responsibility to attempt to transfer her out of government detention and into the care of a sponsor before she made her final decision on whether to seek an abortion. His opinion was overruled by his fellow judges, but some pro-life advocates critiqued Kavanaugh for not going far enough in condemning the girl’s right to an abortion in the first place.

Early in his career, Kavanaugh worked on the recount that led to George W. Bush’s election to the presidency. Before that, he made a case for President Clinton’s impeachment following his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, a fact that may pose a stumbling block for some Republicans in light of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into foreign interference in the nation’s presidential election and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The next appointee will further cement the judiciary’s conservative shift, as early last year, President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. He was confirmed last April.

Ever since Justice Kennedy announced that he was stepping down, the Far Left Democratic Party has been protesting Trump’s pick for Kennedy’s successor.

Of course, the Dems and the Never-Trumpers, all Nattering Nabobs of Negativity, had no clue as to whom the President was going to pick. All they knew was that they were against him/her.

One of the fears of those who oppose whatever Trump does was that he was going to pick someone who was a Christian and who was unashamed of their faith.

And, of course, Trump did.

Christians still make up 75% of America’s population, so odds were that Trump’s nominee would believe in the Triune God.

And, that’s a good thing.

The legendary Judicial Giant who Trump’s first appointee, Neil Gorsuch, replaced, Antonin Scalia, was.

Here is what he said about the role of Christianity in our government, which remains in sharp contrast to the Rewritten History and wish-casting of the “Democratic Socialists” whose heads are exploding even as we speak.

In his dissenting opinion in the 2005 case McCreary County v. ACLU, Justice Antonin Scalia explained:

Those who wrote the Constitution believed that morality was essential to the well-being of society and that encouragement of religion was the best way to foster morality. The fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself…

President Washington opened his Presidency with a prayer, and reminded his fellow citizens at the conclusion of it that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” President John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts Militia, “we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

After going on to quote similar sentiments from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Scalia continued:

Nor have the views of our people on this matter significantly changed. Presidents continue to conclude the Presidential oath with the words “so help me God.” Our legislatures, state and national, continue to open their sessions with prayer led by official chaplains. The sessions of this Court continue to open with the prayer “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” Invocation of the Almighty by our public figures, at all levels of government, remains commonplace. Our coinage bears the motto, “In God We Trust.” And our Pledge of Allegiance contains the acknowledgment that we are a Nation “under God.” As one of our Supreme Court opinions rightly observed, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”

With all of this reality (and much more) staring it in the face, how can the Court possibly assert that “the First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between… religion and nonreligion,” and that “[m]anifesting a purpose to favor… adherence to religion generally,” is unconstitutional? Who says so? Surely not the words of the Constitution. Surely not the history and traditions that reflect our society’s constant understanding of those words.

While the ever-increasing turn toward Marxism and the constant protesting and threatened violence by the New Bolsheviks of the Democratic Party, is very troubling, I find solace in the fact that they are still a minority in this country.

In my opinion, President Trump picked ANOTHER winner.

Until He Comes,

KJ

More WINNING! President Trump Nominates a Great Heir Apparent to Justice Antonin Scalia

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Justice, appointed by an AMERICAN PRESIDENT by the name of Ronald Reagan, was a man’s man, a Christian and a Constitutionalist, who believed in American Exceptionalism and Traditional American Values.

His Legal Writings were brilliant in scope and interpretation.

By contrast, Former President Barack Hussein Obama was the first Editor of the Harvard Law Review, who never contributed to that publication.

Obama’s childish snubbing of Justice Scalia’s Funeral tells you everything that you need to know about him.

History will remember Justice Scalia as a Giant Among Men.

Last night, the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, announced his choice to fill the vacancy left by the passing of Justice Scalia.

Before that announcement, as word got out as to the identity of Scalia’s proposed successor, NationalReview.com posted the following article…

President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court will be Neil Gorsuch, a well-respected conservative whose legal philosophy is remarkably similar to that of Antonin Scalia, the justice he will replace if the Senate confirms him. He is, like Scalia, a textualist and an originalist: someone who interprets legal provisions as their words were originally understood.

Gorsuch is a Colorado native and the son of a Republican politician, the late Anne Gorsuch Burford, who was a state legislator and then director of the Environmental Protection Agency for President Reagan. He attended Columbia University and Harvard Law School, after which he clerked for D.C. Circuit Court judge David Sentelle. He then clerked for Supreme Court justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy in 1993–94. The next year he studied for a doctorate of philosophy at Oxford University under the legal philosopher John Finnis.

After spending ten years at a law firm in Washington, D.C., Gorsuch went to work for the Justice Department in 2005–06. President George W. Bush nominated him to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico. His confirmation was quick and uncontroversial.

That Judge Gorsuch’s judicial philosophy is similar to Justice Scalia’s is evident from a tribute the former gave after the latter’s death. In that tribute, Gorsuch summarized and endorsed Scalia’s method of legal interpretation:

“Judges should instead strive (if humanly and so imperfectly) to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be — not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best. As Justice Scalia put it, “if you’re going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you’re probably doing something wrong.””

A lawyer who clerked for both Justice Scalia and Judge Gorsuch sees parallels between the two men. Gorsuch is “a law-has-right-answers kind of guy, an originalist and a textualist,” he says. “He believes that the enterprise of law is real and worth doing and not just politics by other means.”

A low-profile 2012 case, U.S. v. Games-Perez, illustrates how Gorsuch has applied these views. At issue was a federal law that authorizes prison terms for anyone who “knowingly violates” a ban on the possession of firearms by a convicted felon. A precedent in the Tenth Circuit held that a defendant who knew that he had a firearm could be sentenced under that provision even if he did not know that he was a convicted felon. (In the case Gorsuch was deciding, Miguel Games-Perez had previously taken a plea deal that the presiding judge had misdescribed as an alternative to being “convicted of a felony.”)

Gorsuch participated in a panel of three of the circuit’s judges that affirmed the prison sentence. Gorsuch concurred in the result because he felt bound by precedent. At the same time, he made a powerful argument that the circuit’s precedent could not square with the text of the law. And when the case later came before the circuit, he urged it to reconsider that precedent.

The case brought together several strands of Gorsuch’s thinking. It demonstrated his willingness, shared with Scalia, to overturn a criminal conviction when a proper reading of the law required it. He paid close attention to the text and grammar of the law while expressing skepticism about letting legislative history guide his decision. “Hidden intentions never trump expressed ones,” he wrote, adding an aside about “the difficulties of trying to say anything definitive about the intent of 535 legislators and the executive.” (Scalia was a foe of the judicial consideration of legislative intent for similar reasons.) And it showed, as well, his understanding that a judge must follow his duty even when it leads somewhere he dislikes. “He cared a lot about what the precedents are,” says the former clerk. “He was not interested in bending them or the usual tricks judges can use for getting around them if they don’t like them.”

Also like Scalia, Judge Gorsuch is skeptical of the “dormant commerce clause”: the longstanding legal doctrine that the Constitution’s grant of power over interstate commerce to Congress implies limits on the states’ power over it even when Congress has not spelled out those limits. And he shares Scalia’s preference for clear legal rules over vague “standards” that judges can manipulate to reach desired conclusions.

The former clerk sees similarities between Gorsuch and Scalia that go beyond legal issues. “[Gorsuch] took a lot of care with writing,” he says. “He has a pretty well-earned reputation as one of the best writers on the federal bench. He always cared a lot about an opinion having his voice.” The same was famously true of Scalia. But the voices are different: “Justice Scalia had a sharp pen for dissents. [Judge Gorsuch] is just temperamentally not inclined to do that.”

Sounds like a great pick, huh?

Well, the Demos are sharpening their steely knifes right now to try to keep the President’s Nominee from occupying a seat at the highest court in the land.

Why? Because the Senate Republicans refused to hold hearings on Lame Duck President Barack Hussein Obama’s proposed Nominee to fill Scalia’s position, Merrick Garland.

Garland was anti-Second Amendment, of course (look who nominated him).

The Senate Republicans were well within their rights to not hold hearings for Obama’s Nominee. Why should they have tipped the balance of power on the Supreme Court to the Left End of the Political Spectrum, just so an outgoing President could place another Liberal on the highest court in the land?

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McDonnell can be slow at times, but he’s not stupid.

Well, at least he wasn’t in that instance.

Filling the shoes of Antonin Scalia will be a daunting task. As I wrote at the beginning of this post, Judge Scalia was a man’s man, a Christian and a Constitutionalist, who believed in American Exceptionalism and Traditional American Values.

If Judge Gorsuch’s judicial/political beliefs are indeed similar to Scalia’s President Trump has indeed nominated a WINNER.

You know, not to contradict the President…but, I do not believe that I am going to get tired of all this WINNING.

How about you?

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

 

 

The Death of Justice Antonin Scalia: Time to Start “Borking”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Pendulum-NRD-600Last night, President Barack Hussein Obama addressed the nation concerning the passing of Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. As he showed during a State of the Union Address, several years back, to say that he did not care for this Judicial Giant, would be putting it mildly.

In fact, as his remarks, courtesy of whitehouse.gov reveal, ol’ Scooter is positively chomping at the bit to replace him with a Far left Extremist Judicial Activist of his own choosing.

Good evening, everybody.  For almost 30 years, Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia was a larger-than-life presence on the bench — a brilliant legal mind with an energetic style, incisive wit, and colorful opinions.     He influenced a generation of judges, lawyers, and students, and profoundly shaped the legal landscape.  He will no doubt be remembered as one of the most consequential judges and thinkers to serve on the Supreme Court.  Justice Scalia dedicated his life to the cornerstone of our democracy:  The rule of law.  Tonight, we honor his extraordinary service to our nation and remember one of the towering legal figures of our time.

     Antonin Scalia was born in Trenton, New Jersey to an Italian immigrant family.  After graduating from Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, he worked at a law firm and taught law before entering a life of public service.  He rose from Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel to Judge on the D.C. Circuit Court, to Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

     A devout Catholic, he was the proud father of nine children and grandfather to many loving grandchildren.  Justice Scalia was both an avid hunter and an opera lover — a passion for music that he shared with his dear colleague and friend, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  Michelle and I were proud to welcome him to the White House, including in 2012 for a State Dinner for Prime Minister David Cameron.  And tonight, we join his fellow justices in mourning this remarkable man.

     Obviously, today is a time to remember Justice Scalia’s legacy.  I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time.  There will be plenty of time for me to do so, and for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote.  These are responsibilities that I take seriously, as should everyone.  They’re bigger than any one party.  They are about our democracy.  They’re about the institution to which Justice Scalia dedicated his professional life, and making sure it continues to function as the beacon of justice that our Founders envisioned.

     But at this moment, we most of all want to think about his family, and Michelle and I join the nation in sending our deepest sympathies to Justice Scalia’s wife, Maureen, and their loving family — a beautiful symbol of a life well lived.  We thank them for sharing Justice Scalia with our country. 

God bless them all, and God bless the United States of America.

The Liebrals, over at The Washington Post elaborated on the situation facing our nation and Obama’s possible choices.

President Obama declared Saturday that he intends to nominate a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a move aimed at deepening his imprint on the nation’s highest court.

“I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time,” Obama said, adding that there’s “plenty of time” for the Senate “to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote. These are responsibilities that I take seriously, as should everyone. They’re bigger than any one party — they’re about a democracy.”

But the president faces a fierce and protracted battle with Republicans who have already signaled that they have no intention of allowing Obama to choose a nominee to succeed Scalia.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that Scalia should not be replaced until the next president has taken office. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said in a statement.

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) rejected that position. “It would be unprecedented in recent history for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacant seat,” he said in a statement. “Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential Constitutional responsibilities.”

Obama has nominated two justices to the court in the past, and he has expressed the desire for jurists with empathy. He did not discuss his thinking about that on Saturday night. Instead, he used the moment to pay tribute to Scalia, whom he described as an “extraordinary judicial thinker.”

In selecting Supreme Court nominees, Obama has relied heavily on the advice of Vice President Biden, a former Senate Judiciary chairman. Biden has demonstrated again and again a strong working relationship with McConnell, having previously negotiated several tax and budget deals. The court nomination may hinge on Biden’s ability to reach a deal with McConnell again.

But the fate of the nomination would clearly be in Republican hands. While Democrats were able to change the rules in 2013 to make it easier to approve lower court judges with a simple majority, Supreme Court nominations still require 60 votes to advance past an opposition filibuster. To derail or delay the nomination, McConnell could simply not schedule a vote, but even if he allows Senate consideration of the nomination, Democrats do not have the numbers to overcome a GOP filibuster.

Although the Republican-controlled Congress could easily thwart an Obama nominee, such a decision could reverberate across the presidential campaign and into in the November elections, in which several GOP senators face tough, competitive races.

The most immediate outcome of the Scalia vacancy is that it offers Obama the chance to draw sharper battle lines with Republicans during an increasingly acrimonious presidential election.

The administration now faces a chaotic political and legal environment in which the president must prepare for a bitter confirmation fight or embrace the prospect of a deadlocked Supreme Court divided evenly between liberals and conservatives.

Scalia’s death also throws into doubt the outcome of some of the most controversial issues facing the nation in cases before the court this term: abortion, affirmative action, the rights of religious objectors to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, and the president’s powers on immigration and deportation.

A deadlocked court could leave appellate decisions in place without setting a precedent. That would please the administration on a case involving union membership, for instance, but would keep Obama’s executive action on deportation from being implemented.

White House officials would not comment Saturday evening on their deliberations about a potential nominee, but the administration has an extensive list of possible candidates to choose from, including some who would change the face of the court by virtue of their race or sexual orientation.

“Blocking a strong person of color, a woman or an historic LGBT candidate for the Supreme Court might cause conservatives more trouble than they think they’re preventing,” said Robert Raben, a Democratic consultant and lobbyist who served as a senior Justice Department official under President Clinton. “The perception of unfairness or bias at the height of a national election could seriously backfire.”

One former senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said the president was likely to look to someone young enough to make a mark on the court over several decades. Obama has appointed several such jurists to U.S. appellate courts, the person noted, providing him with a relatively deep bench to from which to choose.

Among the leading candidates would be Sri Srinivasan, a judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, who was confirmed to seat in a 97-to-0 Senate vote in May 2013. Srinivasan would be the first South Asian American on the court. He worked in the U.S. Solicitor General’s office under both Obama and President George W. Bush, and clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Other contenders from that same court include its chief judge, Merrick Garland, who is well liked by conservatives and was a finalist for such a nomination when Obama selected Justice Elena Kagan in 2010. Patricia Ann Millett, who won confirmation to the D.C. Circuit in December 2013, may also be considered.

Obama could also look to current or former administration officials, said those familiar with the president’s thinking, or even to the Senate. Among those officials are Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Eric Holder, the former attorney general.

Other potential choices could include Deval Patrick (D), the former governor of Massachusetts, or Paul Smith, who chairs the appellate and Supreme Court practice at Jenner & Block and, if confirmed, would be the first openly gay justice.

Beyond the D.C. Circuit, there are many other appellate judges the president could look to in selecting a nominee. Those include Paul Watford and Mary H. Murguia of the 9th Circuit; Albert Diaz of the 4th Circuit and Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson of the 1st Circuit.

Regardless of whom Obama selects, the combination of the timing of the opening, the stark division on the court and deeply partisan passion being evoked in both presidential primaries would make this confirmation battle unlike any of the past 40 years.

The last confirmation in the eighth year of a presidency was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose 97-to-0 vote in February 1988 came after two failed nomination efforts by President Reagan in the face of a Democratic-controlled Senate in late 1987. Kennedy is seen as a traitor among conservative activists, who view his rulings on abortion and gay rights with the liberal bloc as an example of GOP leaders choosing political expediency over ideological rigidity.

The only other attempt to fill a vacancy during a presidential election year came in 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson tried to elevate Abe Fortas to be chief justice. The Senate blocked Fortas. Subsequently, the other nomination to fill Fortas’s spot as associate justice was withdrawn during the final months of Johnson’s presidency.

Under normal circumstances, the nomination of a justice takes about 75 to 90 days, the first 60 or so involving a thorough vetting process by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Typically, the panel does not consider judicial nominees after mid-May, under a tradition established by the late Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). While chairing the Judiciary Committee, Thurmond declared that he would not take up new judicial nominations within a few months of a presidential election.

Filling the post of Scalia, however, will be anything but normal. He was the outspoken champion for the court’s conservative wing and had many admirers in the Senate, including McConnell. Obama’s first two appointments to the court were relatively easy because Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan were replacing liberal-leaning justices.

Senate conservatives, already predisposed to not approve of Obama’s choice, might be loath to allow him to replace their judicial hero with a liberal jurist who would tip the court in a left-leaning direction. As of now, Sotomayor and Kagan often sided with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer in the most ideologically driven cases, with Kennedy and sometimes Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. providing the tie-breaking votes.

If Republicans leave the Scalia seat vacant for any lengthy time, that sets up the chance of a series of 4-to-4 votes in which the ruling of the lower federal court would stand as the law of that particular region of the country.

That political math in the Senate means Obama will need the support of all 46 members of the Democratic caucus and at least 14 Republicans to end a filibuster and successfully appoint Scalia’s successor. In the president’s previous Supreme Court nominations, just nine and then four Republicans voted to confirm Sotomayor and Kagan, respectively.

So, what now? I will tell you “What Now”.

Time for McConnell and the Senate Republicans to grow a spine and do some “Borking”.

What do I mean by “Borking”?

On October 23, 1987, The New York Times printed the following article…

One of the fiercest battles ever waged over a Supreme Court nominee ended today as the Senate decisively rejected the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork.The vote was 58 against confirmation and 42 in favor, the biggest margin by which the Senate has ever rejected a Supreme Court nomination. [ Roll call, page 10. ] Judge Bork’s was the 27th Supreme Court nomination to fail in the country’s history, the sixth in this century, and the first since 1970, when the Senate rejected President Nixon’s nomination of G. Harrold Carswell by a vote of 51 to 45. There have been 104 Supreme Court justices in the nation’s history.

The vote came two weeks after Judge Bork, in the face of expected defeat, said he would not withdraw his name and wanted the full Senate to vote on his nomination. In a statement issued from his chambers at the Federal courthouse here, where he still serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Bork said he was ”glad the debate took place.”

”There is now a full and permanent record by which the future may judge not only me but the proper nature of a confirmation proceeding,” the 60-year-old judge said.

President Reagan, in a statement released by the White House, said, ”I am saddened and disappointed that the Senate has bowed today to a campaign of political pressure.” The Next Nominee? In the final hours of the three-day debate on the Senate floor, senators turned their attention to the next nominee for the vacancy on the court. The White House is not expected to name a new candidate before the middle of next week.

The President has publicly vowed to find a nominee who will upset Judge Bork’s opponents ”just as much” as Judge Bork himself. Mr. Reagan said today, ”My next nominee for the Court will share Judge Bork’s belief in judicial restraint – that a judge is bound by the Constitution to interpret laws, not make them.”

Meanwhile, senators on both sides of the debate urged the President to adopt a less confrontational tone.

Now, in the last year of the Obama Presidency (Praise God), it is imperative for the United States Senate to adopt president Reagan’s “confrontational tone”.

Why? Well, here is a quote for you…

In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?

Who said that?  Karl Marx?  Vladimir Lenin?  Danny Glover?  George Clooney?  Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm)?  Nope.  It was the Obama-appointed and Senate-ratified, Supreme Court Justice, Elena Kagan.  The quote was a part of her senior thesis, written almost thirty years ago while an undergraduate at Princeton. The title of the thesis: “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933”.

The Senate must “Bork” every single Supreme Court Nomination of this Lame Duck President.

He has done enough damage to our country, already.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

“So This is How Liberty Dies…With Thunderous Applause”…and a SCOTUS Ruling

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics7 Comments

wpid-fb_img_1435357963373.jpgWell, it happened. The overwhelming majority of American voters have been spat squarely in the face by five representatives of the Judicial Branch of our government, who decided, instead, that they wanted to be the Legislative Branch, and add a new “right” to our Constitution.

In other words, our votes in State Referendums, in which the overwhelming majority of states, voted against “gay marriage”, did not mean squat to the five self-righteous Liberals on the Supreme Court.

The following excerpts, from the dissenting Supreme Coast Justices, are courtesy of nationaljournal.com

Chief Justice John Roberts:

Roberts’s argument centered around the need to preserve states’ rights over what he viewed as following the turn of public opinion. In ruling in favor of gay marriage, he said, “Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law.”

Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas joined him in his dissent.

While Roberts said he did not “begrudge” any of the celebrations that would follow the Court ruling, he had serious concerns that the Court had extended its role from constitutional enforcer to activist.

Roberts: “Understand well what this dissent is about: It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples.”

Judge Antonin Scalia:

According to Scalia, the five justices in the majority are using the 14th Amendment in a way that was never intended by its writers. “When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so,” he wrote.

“They [the majority] have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since.”

Scalia called out the majority for acting like activists, not judges. (He was similarly critical in Thursday’s ruling on health care.) “States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices’ ‘reasoned judgment,'” he wrote.

Scalia’s scorn went beyond picking apart the majority’s legal judgement. He also made fun of their language.

The majority began its opinion with the line: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.”

Scalia wrote that if he ever were to join an opinion that began with that sentence he “would hide my head in a bag,” saying such language was more like the “mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie” than, say, legendary Chief Justice John Marshall.

Elsewhere, the majority wrote “The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.”

Scalia scoffed at this assertion, saying that even “the nearest hippie” would know that marriage hinders the freedom of intimacy. Here are his words:

Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.

Judge Clarence Thomas:

In his own separate dissent, which Scalia also joined, Justice Clarence Thomas pilloried the majority opinion as “at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our nation were built.”

Kennedy and the Court’s liberal wing are invoking a definition of “liberty” that the Constitution’s framers “would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect.”

“Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government,” Thomas said. “This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it.”

Judge Samuel Alito:

In his dissent, Alito argues that gay marriage is not protected in the Constitution under the Due Process Clause because “liberty” only applies to those principles that are rooted in U.S. tradition. His argument is that the concept of gay marriage is new and therefore not included.

“For today’s majority, it does not matter that the right to same-sex marriage lacks deep roots or even that it is contrary to long-established tradition. The Justices in the majority claim the authority to confer constitutional protection upon that right simply because they believe that it is fundamental,” Alito writes.

Alito also reaffirms his position that there is no way to confirm what the outcome of gay marriage may be on the institution of traditional marriage and therefore the Court is and should not be in a position to take on the topic.

Philosophers, and historians—can predict with any certainty what the long-term ramifications of widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage will be. And judges are certainly not equipped to make such an assessment,” Alito wrote.

Alito’s belief is also that traditional marriage has existed between a man and woman for one key reason: children. His argument is:

For millennia, marriage was inextricably linked to the one thing that only an opposite-sex couple can do: procreate. Adherents to different schools of philosophy use different terms to explain why society should formalize marriage and attach special benefits and obligations to persons who marry. Their basic argument is that States formalize and promote marriage, unlike other fulfilling human relationships, in order to encourage potentially procreative conduct to take place within a lasting unit that has long been thought to provide the best atmosphere for raising children.

Now that the majority has ruled in favor of gay marriage, Alito offers a stark warning about future conflict between religious liberty and progressive ideas.

“By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas. Recalling the harsh treatment of gays and lesbians in the past, some may think that turnabout is fair play. But if that sentiment prevails, the Nation will experience bitter and lasting wounds,” he writes.

If you try to talk to a Liberal about this New Fascism, they will deny that there is any Fascism going on at all. In fact, they will tell you that this is “the will of the people” and they will site Democratically-stacked push polls in order to back their opinion up.

When you ask Liberals if , for example, “homosexual marriage” is the “will of the people”, why did voters in the overwhelming majority of states, including California, vote against it? And, if there is “no Fascism”, what do you call the fact that 2% of the population is having activist judges overturn the actual will of the people in order to get their way, in their attempt to redefine a word that has meant the same thing since time immemorial?

In response, you will usually see their eyes glaze over, like a deer in the headlights, or experience a dramatic pause in posting, if you are on the Internet.

Liberals can not legitimately defend the suppression of the First Amendment Rights of Christian Americans.

Fascism, in any form, remains indefensible, even, when a spineless Supreme Court narrowly sides in favor of popular culture and against God’s Law.

Have you ever heard the story of the frog in the pot of water?

You put a frog in the pot of tap water. You place that pot of tap water on the stove. You slowly increase the heat on that burner in increments, allowing the frog to get adjusted to the rising heat, so that he is content with staying in the pot of water, until he boils.

That is what has happened to America. Gradually, like the frog in the pot of water, we’ve allowed things that we intrinsically know are wrong, to become a part of our popular culture and everyday lives, burning away what were the Traditional American Values, upon which this country was founded, and upon which we were raised.

And now, the country which we have known and loved, all of our lives, is sitting here boiling in a facist stew of our own making.

God, be merciful.

Until He Comes,

KJ