Tag Archives: U.S. Supreme Court

Best Quotes of the Week – July 2, 2022

“We will not live in a world, not in my city, where our rights are taken from us or rolled back. Fuck Clarence Thomas!”

Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago, reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision and Justice Clarence Thomas’ statement that other rulings should be considered, including same-sex marriage

Lightfoot is Chicago’s first openly-queer mayor.

“Mr. Justice Thomas had much to say today about my loving marriage.  Oddly he didn’t have much to say about his ‘Loving’ marriage.”

Andrew McDonald, Connecticut Supreme Court Justice, about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

McDonald, who is openly queer and married his husband Charles Gray in 2009, was referring to the 1967 Loving vs. Virginia ruling that legalized interracial marriage.

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar with his family. Bexar County Sheriff’s office

“I’m the Sheriff of Bexar County, but also a Dad of two beautiful and intelligent young women. As their Dad I will defend my daughters’ ability to do what they feel is right with their own bodies and to love whomever they choose.  My job is chasing predators, rapists, and human traffickers, not someone exercising a right… If it’s truly about protecting children, how about starting with the ones in our schools?”

Javier Salazar, Sheriff of Bexar County, Texas, announcing he won’t prosecute women seeking abortion

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Worst Quotes of the Week – June 25, 2022

“For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, after the High Court overturned Roe vs. Wade

Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell are three of the most seminal decisions the Supreme Court has made.  Liberals and moderates are already warning that these and other rulings are now under threat from the Court’s conservative majority.

“The deal on ‘Gun Control’ currently being structured and pushed in the Senate by the Radical Left Democrats, with the help of Mitch McConnell, RINO Senator John Cornyn of Texas, and others, will go down in history as the first step in the movement to TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY. Republicans, be careful what you wish for!!!”

Donald Trump, about the new gun deal passed by the U.S. Senate, on his social platform Truth Social

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Best Quotes of the Week – June 25, 2022

“With sorrow – for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection – we dissent.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in their dissent of the decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade

The trio warned that abortion opponents now could pursue a nationwide ban “from the moment of conception and without exceptions for rape or incest.”

“Thirty years, murder after murder, suicide after suicide, mass shooting after mass shooting, Congress did nothing.  This week we have a chance to break this 30-year period of silence with a bill that changes our laws in a way that will save thousands of lives.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, after passage of a bill to address gun violence in the U.S.

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Best Quotes of the Week – June 4, 2022

“This bullshit you get from this guy about mental health and evil.  The only evil that exists is when the leader of this state has a problem and is a problem of epic proportions.”

Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, criticizing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for citing mental illness as a key factor in mass shootings, but thwarting funding for mental health care

“How many children have to die before you start to care?”

Jamiee Roeschke, in a statement to the National Rifle Association

Jaimee and her sister survived a shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, in 2019, in which two students died after a gunman opened fire on the school’s quad.

“No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”

Matt Schruers, President of Computer & Communications Industry Association, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling temporarily blocking the State of Texas House Bill 20 from being enforced

A lower court will resolve a preliminary First Amendment challenge to the statute, also known as Texas’ “social media law”.

“No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”

Matt Schruers, President of Computer & Communications Industry Association, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling temporarily blocking Texas’ HB 20 from being enforced

A lower court will resolve a preliminary First Amendment challenge to the statute, also known as Texas’ “social media law”.

Schruers added, “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute.  This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law. We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law.”

Schruers added, “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute.  This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law. We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law.”

“This is not an academic conversation. This is a very real conversation where people’s lives could be destroyed by these criminal prosecutions.  In Texas, you’re an adult at 17. We are looking at the prospect of a 17-year-old girl who has an unplanned pregnancy and is seeking an abortion [being] subjected to first-degree felony charges — up to 99 years in jail — and that’s just absolutely unacceptable.”

Austin City Councilman José Vela, on how the city will attempt to shield its residents from prosecution under a Texas law that will criminalize abortion, if Roe vs. Wade is overturned

Vela is proposing a resolution that would direct the city’s police department to make criminal enforcement, arrest and investigation of abortions its lowest priority and restrict city funds and city staff from being used to investigate, catalogue or report suspected abortions.

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Worst Quotes of the Week – May 14, 2022

“I think I can speak for myself and other colleagues that align with my policy beliefs — we’ll continue to do our best to make abortion not just outlawed, but unthinkable”

Texas Rep. Briscoe Cain, about the possibility the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn 1973 Roe vs. Wade

Cain is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the Texas State Legislature.

“If you were to take or destroy the eggs of a sea turtle — now I said, the eggs…. The criminal penalties are severe: up to a $100,000 fine and a year in prison.  Now, why do we have laws in place to protect the eggs of a sea turtle, or the eggs of eagles?  Because, when you destroy an egg, you’re killing a pre-born baby sea turtle or a pre-born baby eagle.  Yet when it comes to a pre-born human baby rather than a sea turtle, that baby will be stripped of all protections in all 50 states…. Is that the America the left wants?”

Montana Sen. Steve Daines, arguing that human egg cells should be afforded the same protection as eagle and turtle eggs, in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate

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Best Quotes of the Week – May 14, 2022

“The wife of a Supreme Court justice doing what Ginni Thomas did is utterly unheard of in the history of the United States.  Justice Thomas, talking about [the] legitimacy of institutions – either the White House or the court itself – he should recuse himself, which he refuses to do, from any case involving the president of the United States and the election.”

Carl Bernstein, condemning Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for criticizing Americans opposed to the possibility of Roe vs. Wade being reversed

Describing Thomas as “rogue” and “disingenuous”, he added, “There is a real failure of institutions, especially on the Supreme Court, by a rogue justice who would not say, ‘I’m going to step aside.’”  Bernstein also noted that Thomas’ wife, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, had worked to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Thomas had given a speech at the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference in Atlanta last week chastising people for “becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes.”  The Court, Thomas said, “can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want.  The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that.”

It has to be noted that, in December 2000, Thomas was among the SCOTUS justices who ordered the state of Florida to stop counting ballots for the presidential election; thus handing George W. Bush the presidency.

“I’m a rape victim myself.  And when you realize what’s happened in your life, the trauma, the emotional, the mental, the physical trauma in a woman’s life, that decision ― she should make that decision with her doctor and between her and her God.”

Rep. Nancy Mace, in an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation”

Mace added that, while she backs abortion rights and wants to see abortion laws handled at the state level, she would personally only support anti-abortion legislation in South Carolina that has exceptions for rape, incest and in cases where the woman’s life is in jeopardy.

“Is the state of Mississippi going to force those girls and women who have this tragedy inside them to carry the child to term?  Are you going to force them to do that?”

Jake Tapper, interviewing the Governor of Mississippi Tate Reeves about the possibility the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision

It was a Mississippi case that led to this critical moment in judicial history.  Tapper also asked Reeves if the state will force mothers to carry a child to term, even if the fetus is detected with “serious or fatal abnormalities that will not allow [it] to live outside the womb,” and in cases of incest.

Reeves argued that abortion procedures overwhelmingly happen in elective cases while incest is a much more uncommon circumstance by comparison.  “If we need to have that conversation in the future about potential exceptions in the trigger law, we can certainly do that,” he said.

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Tweet of the Week – May 7 2022

Sen. Lindsey Graham

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Political Cartoon of the Week – May 7, 2022

Keith Knight

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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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