~ “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.
With the latest skullduggery once again embroiling the Kavanaugh nomination in turmoil, it’s easy to become distracted from recognition that the events to date have now put the Senate itself at center stage as to whether it will act in its constitutional role as a defender of the bedrock values on which our nation was established as a representative democracy upholding the rule of law and individual liberty, or whether it has abandoned its own order and adherence to its own rules that enable the Senate to operate, by allowing its immense powers to be employed arbitrarily without accountability to destroy individual citizens heedless of the norms of civilized society.
What we have seen to date since Brett Kavanaugh was first nominated has been an accelerating series of violation of all Senate order and procedures designed to protect the rights of all, between the immediate rush to oppose, demands for unprecedented amounts of documents and undue delay, hearings that violated norms of decorum and an orderly hearing process.
These actions have fundamentally transformed the minority’s constitutional privilege to provide Advice and Consent into “Crucify, Crucify”[…]
Below is an essay from Civil Truth who writes for Unified Patriots addressing the sham, correction, the search and destroy mission being waged against Judge Brett Kavanaugh by Democrats in Washington, D.C.
The Republican Party and the American people find ourselves teetering on the edge of the abyss.
Horatius Coclès defending the Sublicius Bridge, London, by Charles Le Brun. Circa 1643 Source: Wikimedia Commons
With the treachery of Jeff Flake coupled with the continued obstinacy of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski in demanding an impossible level of certainly, the time has come to put an end to the debacle of never-ending delay and continual bad faith dealings and to force the issue to a final confrontation.
And that includes matching the unprecedented Democratic destruction of the Senate with an unprecedented counterstroke:
Which is that the Republican leadership must make the following known to Flake, Collins, and Murkowski:
1) If they continue to ask for further delays, none will be given, but the nomination will go to a vote so that they and the rest of the Senate will have to go on the record with their vote.
2) If they vote against Kavanaugh so that the nomination fails, then the fall elections will be turned into an explicit referendum on Kavanaugh.
President Donald Trump announced a short while ago his choice for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, 10th Circuit. The judge’s credentials appear impeccable. He’s a constitutionalist and from what everyone is saying the closest one would ever get to Justice Antonin Scalia who passed last year. Progressives are not going to be happy.
Gorsuch is 49 years old and was born in Denver, Colo., where he sits on the 10th Circuit United States Court of Appeals, to which he was nominated by former President George W. Bush.
The judge has been married to Louise Gorsuch for more than 20 years, he said, and has two daughters.
He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991 and received a B.A. from Columbia University in 1988.
Gorsuch clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and former Justice Byron White.
He was the principal deputy to the associate attorney general and acting associate attorney general in 2005-2006.
Seen as an ardent defender of religious liberties, Gorsuch wrote a book on the ethics of assisted suicide and Euthanasia[…]
Must everyone, including, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg jump on the “If Donald Trump wins the presidency, I’m outta here bandwagon?”
They’re all dying for relevancy and they’re all elitists with money who played a major role in America journey beneath the sewer which renders them full of crap and yes, that includes Justice Ginsburg who interview with the New York Times entertained the thought of absconding to New Zealand should Donald Trump become POTUS45.
WASHINGTON — Unless they have a book to sell, Supreme Court justices rarely give interviews. Even then, they diligently avoid political topics. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg takes a different approach.
These days, she is making no secret of what she thinks of a certain presidential candidate.
“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” she said. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”
It reminded her of something her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, a prominent tax lawyer who died in 2010, would have said.
“‘Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand,’” Justice Ginsburg said, smiling ruefully.
In an interview in her chambers on Friday, Justice Ginsburg took stock of a tumultuous term and chastised the Senate for refusing to act on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.
Her colleagues have said nothing in public about the presidential campaign or about Mr. Obama’s stalled nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court. But Justice Ginsburg was characteristically forthright, offering an unequivocal endorsement of Judge Garland.
“I think he is about as well qualified as any nominee to this court,” she said. “Super bright and very nice, very easy to deal with. And super prepared…..
I suspect that the Supreme Court justice was merely being mischievous but taking into account the rulings that have come down these past few years from the Supreme Court, I may have that wrong.
When the Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in the fall of 1991, he was still new to the flowing black robes that cloak federal magistrates.
A rookie justice on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Thomas had served as a judge only since March 1990. Still raw from a bruising, 107-day confirmation process that wrapped up at the end of October 1991, Thomas had only a few weeks to prepare to hear cases that November.
“The easiest thing in the world under the circumstances would just be to go along to get along. He didn’t,” remembers Gregory Katsas, now a partner at Jones Day law firm and one of Thomas’ original cadre of clerks.
Instead, in an early episode that would become a trademark over the course of his career, the newest member of the court split with the other eight justices to write three solo dissents on complex and controversial cases.
When the Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in the fall of 1991, he was still new to the flowing black robes that cloak federal magistrates.
A rookie justice on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Thomas had served as a judge only since March 1990. Still raw from a bruising, 107-day confirmation process that wrapped up at the end of October 1991, Thomas had only a few weeks to prepare to hear cases that November.
“The easiest thing in the world under the circumstances would just be to go along to get along. He didn’t,” remembers Gregory Katsas, now a partner at Jones Day law firm and one of Thomas’ original cadre of clerks.
Instead, in an early episode that would become a trademark over the course of his career, the newest member of the court split with the other eight justices to write three solo dissents on complex and controversial cases.
Twenty-five years ago today—on July 1, 1991—President George H.W. Bush nominated Thomas to the high court. His subsequent independence and consistent judicial philosophy have endeared him to conservatives, earned the grudging respect of liberals, and helped transform the court.
Recent reports that Thomas planned to retire after a quarter-century on the court rocked the legal world. President Barack Obama already has nominated appellate judge Merrick Garland to take the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. If Thomas retired, the ideological balance of the bench would tip and the court could shift course permanently.
But those close to the 68-year-old jurist dismiss the retirement rumors as groundless.
“I feel like we’re at halftime at a football game,” says John Yoo, a Berkeley Law professor and former Thomas clerk. “We can look back at how his performance has been in the first half, but we really care about the second half and if his team is going to win.”
And by all accounts, Thomas has had a productive first half.
His career has been marked by a consistent drive to advance the judicial philosophy of originalism, a principle that requires interpreting the text of the Constitution within the bounds of how it would have been understood 229 years ago.
That philosophy often places Thomas in the minority and has prompted some of his most provocative written dissents on issues such as abortion, guns, and voting rights.
For conservatives, his jurisprudence is a refreshing cause célèbre.
“He looks to how the Constitution was understood at the time of the ratification. He goes to first principles,” John Eastman, a Chapman University law professor and former Thomas clerk told the Los Angeles Times. “He is willing to challenge precedents that deviate from the original understanding.”
Liberal constitutional scholars see a dangerous threat to progress in his judicial philosophy.
“In 25 years on the court, Justice Thomas has shown himself to be very conservative and more willing to radically change the law than his colleagues,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine Law School[…]
It was 50 years ago today that the phrase “Miranda warning” was born, after the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case about the Fifth Amendment.
The “Miranda” in the Miranda warning was Ernesto Miranda. He was arrested in March 1963 in Phoenix and confessed while in police custody to kidnapping and rape charges. His lawyers sought to overturn his conviction after they learned during a cross-examination that Miranda wasn’t told he had the right to a lawyer and had the right to remain silent. (Miranda had signed a confession that acknowledged that he understood his legal rights.)
The Supreme Court overturned Miranda’s conviction on June 13, 1966, in its ruling for Miranda v. Arizona, which established guidelines for how detained suspects are informed of their constitutional rights.
The decision consolidated three other cases that dealt with related issues: California v. Stewart, Vignera v. New York, and Westover v. United States.
In a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice Earl Warren said that “it is not admissible to do a great right by doing a little wrong. … It is not sufficient to do justice by obtaining a proper result by irregular or improper means.”
The syllabus for the case includes one of the best-known sentences in American culture.
“The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him,” it says.
Justices John Marshall Harlan II and Byron White issued dissents[…]
