Tag Archives: U.S. Supreme Court
Worst Quotes of the Week – May 7, 2022
“I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, about the 1982 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Texas law that had denied state funding to educate children who had not been “legally admitted” to the United States
Abbott wants Texas to challenge the ruling because of its high cost to Texas taxpayers.
“Democrats have convinced themselves that Russia stole the presidency, which rightfully belonged to Hillary Clinton. And they mean it when they say it. And that’s why they are taking us to war with Russia. So, that’s not their goal — saving Ukraine, saving human lives. No, that’s not their goal. Instead, the war in Ukraine is designed to cause regime change in Moscow. They want to topple the Russian government. That would be payback for the 2016 election. So, this is the logical, maybe the inevitable, end stage of Russiagate.”
Tucker Carlson, describing how he thinks the Democratic Party is somehow responsible for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
“We shall have our theocracy very soon.”
Vincent James, a radical White nationalist celebrating the leaked Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade
James also said he hopes the decision will eventually lead Americans to seeing Justices Alito and Thomas “throwing gay people off of tall buildings”.
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Best Quotes of the Week – May 7, 2022
“We need more mechanics, not MBA’s.”
Paul Begala, former presidential advisor and current political commentator, on “Real Time With Bill Maher” 05/06/2022 (min. 38:20)
The panel was discussing the possibility President Joe Biden may cancel trillions in student debt.
“As we’ve warned, SCOTUS isn’t just coming for abortion — they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on which includes gay marriage and civil rights.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, regarding the possibility the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision
“As “Gilded Glamour and White Tie” pays homage to the period of rapid prosperity, industrialization and growth in the US from 1870 to 1890, some have called it ‘out of touch’.”
Maya Yang, about the annual gala that raises money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, in The Guardian
The event regularly attracts the wealthy and powerful, mostly from the entertainment community. While figures for the 2022 affair are unavailable, seats for the 2021 gala started at $35,000, although those on a highly selective guest list aren’t charged anything. Last year’s event raised more than $16 million. The MMA’s Costume Institute is the only department at the museum that is required to raise its own funds. A smattering of the night’s excess can be found here.
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Right to Control
Many of the cases that arrive before the U.S. Supreme Court begin with individuals either trying right a wrong or make their own lives better. They rarely expect to launch a national movement. That was pretty much the case when Norma McCorvey found herself pregnant with her third child in 1969. An unemployed carnival worker living outside Dallas at the time, McCorvey apparently had led a rough life and had given up her first two children for adoption. She didn’t need – and couldn’t afford – to bring another child into the world. However, the state of Texas didn’t allow for abortions except to save the life of the mother. Even rape and incest victims couldn’t end their unwanted pregnancies. Like so many women in her situation, McCorvey was too poor to travel to another state where abortions were safe and legal. She even tried to obtain an illegal abortion, but again the cost was prohibitive. She sought legal help and ended up under the guidance of attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington.
In 1970, after McCorvey had given birth and given up the baby, Coffee and Weddington filed paper work challenging the Texas law and bestowed the name “Jane Roe” upon their client. They targeted then-Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade. Wade had entered the national spotlight nearly a decade earlier when he prosecuted Jack Ruby for killing Lee Harvey Oswald who had been accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy. (Wade would later come to light as a ruthless prosecutor who engaged in unscrupulous legal maneuvers to ensure criminal prosecutions, no matter the cost and despite evidence to the contrary.)
After McCorvey’s suit was filed, a Texas district court ruled the state’s abortion ban violated the constitutional right to privacy under the 14th Amendment. Wade persisted, however, and vowed to prosecute any doctor who performed what he deemed unnecessary abortions in the state. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court and, in a 7-2 ruling on January 22, 1973, abortion was fully legalized in the United States.
That was pretty much the end of the issue until the 1980s, when right-wing religious leaders began stoking the fires of anti-abortion rhetoric. It accompanied the presidency of Ronald Reagan who openly stated he wished for a return to an America before the 1960s. That should say enough about his bigoted state of mind, but it aligned with a growing hostility towards progressive ideology and civil rights legislation.
Earlier this week the unexpected news arrived that the Supreme Court may overturn Roe vs. Wade by the end of its current term in June. We wouldn’t know anything about this if it wasn’t for the leak of a draft opinion by Associate Justice Samuel Alito who declares the Roe decision “egregiously wrong” in terms of constitutional practicality. Chief Justice John Roberts has confirmed the veracity of the statement, but has joined many others in condemning the leak.
For many of us the leak isn’t the main concern. It’s what it says. There is now a very real possibility that nearly a half century of protection for that part of women’s overall health care could end because a handful of conservative extremists on the High Court want to inject their personal views into it.
For their like-minded ilk in the American public, the overturning of Roe marks the end of a long-fought battle in their alleged “pro-life” agenda; a perverted early Mother’s Day gift. It doesn’t matter that a majority of Americans don’t want to see a complete ban on abortion. They’ve been working for this moment over the past four decades.
For liberals, though, this is a much more dire situation. While the current case that brought Roe back into the forefront is limited to just abortion, progressives see other seminal SCOTUS decisions in the judicial crosshairs. It really isn’t extraordinary to see such cases as Obergefell vs. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage, reversed. Along with abortion, queer rights have been a target of far-right conservatives. But, if the Court sees fit to outlaw abortion at the national level (and leave it up to individual states), it could also reasonably overturn Griswold vs. Connecticut, which ruled that states could not deny birth control to married couples. Before that decision, married residents of Connecticut (and a few other states) couldn’t legally purchase birth control.
To some conservatives, abortion has become another form of birth control, which is not what contemporary feminists who jump-started the modern women’s movement desired. The latter group had always declared that abortion should be a woman’s last choice. But, with the overall concept of birth control in mind, is it possible a woman who has a tubal ligation could be criminally prosecuted? For that matter, could men who have vasectomies be subject to criminal jurisprudence? How about condoms or IUDs? Could those be outlawed?
Why stop with Roe? Aside from Obergefell and Griswold, could the Court target Loving vs. Virginia, the case that struck laws against interracial marriage? How about Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, which outlaws racial desegregation in schools?
Remember that, when Antonin Scalia died in 2016, Republicans in the Senate displayed their usual contempt and disdain for President Obama by refusing to hold hearings on his nominee to the Court, until after Donald Trump got into office. They stated that, since Scalia’s death occurred during an election year, the incoming president should select his replacement. Yet, upon the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, they rammed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett – a character straight out of “The Handmaid’s Tale”.
That social and religious conservatives want to dictate what women can and cannot do with their own bodies conflicts with the long-held American vision of individual freedom. Many of these people screamed at the thought mandatory mask-wearing or forced vaccinations at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; crying they should have autonomy over their own bodies. Really? What an original concept.
Conservatives herald the beauty of life, but a life costs hard dollars in the very real world of child-rearing. Since 2019, for example, the state of Texas has experienced a 1,100% rise in children placed into foster care. Love and compassion alone won’t pay those bills, no matter how much prayer one puts forth. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie once emphasized that pro-life means the entire life cycle – not just up to the moment the fetus is born.
The reasons why an individual woman wants to end a pregnancy are myriad, but it is no one else’s business. As painful a decision as it may be, I’d rather see a woman end a pregnancy she doesn’t want than give birth to a child she doesn’t want. Children who come into the world unwanted are often unloved. That’s an awful fate for someone.
Regardless, pregnancy and birth are individual choices. No one – not the Supreme Court and not a politician – has the right to interfere with that.
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Most Hypocritical Quote of the Week – April 16, 2022
“I’d look them in the eye and tell them, ‘I love you.’”
Former Vice President Mike Pence, in a speech at the University of Virginia
During a Q&A session after the speech, a student asked, “I’m just wondering if one of your children came out to you as gay, how would you respond? What would you tell them?”
After the audience applauded his response, Pence added, “Let me say on this issue … if we got to know each other, you’d know the Pences love everybody. We treat everybody the way we want to be treated.
However, he went on to say, “But on this issue, and it’s frankly something that when the Obergefell decision was made which legalized same-sex marriage in America, the Supreme Court, Justice [Anthony] Kennedy wrote at the end, that this decision will likely create an intersection and tension between people in same-sex relationships and people in the exercise of their religious liberty.”
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Worst Quote of the Week – April 9, 2022
“Public defenders often have a natural inclination in the direction of the criminal. Their heart is with criminal defendants.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, on why he opposed the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court
Previously, Jackson had been a public defender. Despite right-wing opposition, Jackson was confirmed to the High Court by the U.S. Senate.
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Worst Quotes of the Week – March 26, 2022
“Do you agree…that babies are racist?”
Sen. Ted Cruz, to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, repeatedly asking about her views on racism, children’s books and critical race theory (CRT)
He specifically asked if she agrees with a children’s book called “Anti-Racist Baby,” by Ibram X. Kendi, which is in the library at Georgetown Day School, a private school in Washington, D.C., at which Jackson was a board member. Cruz held up a copy of the book and described it as one of the “most stunning” taught at the school. He claimed it teaches children that babies are taught to be racist, not born racist, and that they are encouraged to admit if they have been racist and to talk about it.
In response, Jackson noted, “Georgetown Day School, just like the religious school that Justice [Amy Coney] Barrett was on the board of, is a private school.”
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are? Do you attend church regularly?”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, inquiring about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s faith and how important it was to her
Jackson replied that, although faith played a big role in her life, she was reluctant to talk about it in detail because “I want the public to have confidence in my ability to separate out my personal views.” Jackson noted she is “Protestant, non-denominational”.
Graham conceded that judges could separate their religious beliefs with the way they rule. It must be highlighted, though, that Graham voted to confirm Jackson three times to other posts: her current seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a court considered second only to the U.S. Supreme Court; her previous seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; and her previous seat on the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
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Best Quotes of the Week – March 26, 2022
“You are worthy. You are a great American. I know what it’s taken for you to sit in that seat.”
Sen. Cory Booker, during Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearing
Booker chose to praise Jackson instead of asking her questions. Booker also railed against his Republican colleagues who highlighted specific cases from Jackson’s past. The senator referenced abolitionist Harriet Tubman and Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge in 1966, as role models in his life and who paved the way for Jackson’s historic path.
“That is the nature of a right. When there is a right, it means that there are limitations on regulation.”
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, in response to Sen. John Cornyn’s question whether a 2015 Supreme Court ruling establishing a right to same-sex marriage conflicts with the beliefs of some religions
Cornyn was referring to the High Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which compels states to recognize same-gender marriage under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“At some point, you have to follow the rules!”
Sen. Dick Durbin, to Sen. Ted Cruz, as the latter went beyond his time limit during the Jackson confirmation hearing
Frustrated with Durbin’s repeated gavel-banging, Cruz shouted, “You can bang it as loud as you want!”
“It shows considerable effort when somebody goes to that much trouble to create that many organizations to hide how much money they’ve spent to control the nominations process to the court.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, comparing the efforts of some conservative groups to the Republican Party’s recent attacks on progressive groups, such as Demand Justice, as well as Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
Demand Justice supports Jackson’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Whitehouse also specifically named The Federalist Society and Judicial Crisis Network among the conservative groups he claims encompass a vast network of secretive “dark money” groups that have played a major covert role in seating five of the Supreme Court’s current justices.
All told, he said, these groups have spent at least $400 million to help select and confirm Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
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Chief Writing Wolf 