Day: October 3, 2022

SCOTUS Docket For The New Session

The docket is being set for the new session of the Supreme Court……is there any surprises?

The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday, hearing arguments for the first time after a summer break and with new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Already the court has said it will decide cases on a range of major issues including affirmative action, voting rights, and the rights of LGBTQ people. The justices will add more cases to their docket in the coming months, but here is a look at some of the cases the court has already agreed to hear, per the AP. The justices are expected to decide each of the cases before taking a summer break at the end of June:

  • Affirmative action: In cases from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the court could end any consideration of race in college admissions. If this seems familiar, it’s because the high court has been asked repeatedly over the past 20 years to end affirmative action in higher education. In previous cases from Michigan and Texas, the court reaffirmed the validity of considering college applicants’ race among many factors. But this court is more conservative than those were.
  • Voting rights: The court could further reduce protections for minority voters in its third major consideration in 10 years of the landmark Voting Rights Act, which was enacted to combat enduring racial discrimination in voting. The case the justices are hearing involves Alabama, where just one of the state’s seven congressional districts has a Black majority. That’s even though 27% of the state’s residents are Black. A ruling for the state could wipe away all but the most obvious cases of intentional discrimination on the basis of race.
  • Elections: Republicans are asking the justices to embrace a novel legal concept that would limit state courts’ oversight of elections for Congress. North Carolina’s top court threw out the state’s congressional map that gave Republicans a lopsided advantage in a closely divided state and eventually came up with a map that basically evenly divided the state’s 14 congressional districts between Democrats and Republicans. The state GOP argues that state courts have no role to play in congressional elections because the US Constitution gives that power to state legislatures alone. Four conservative justices have expressed varying levels of openness to the “independent state legislature” theory.
  • Clean water: This is yet another case in which the court is being asked to discard an earlier ruling and loosen the regulation of property under the nation’s chief law to combat water pollution. The case involves an Idaho couple who won an earlier high court round in their bid to build a house on property near a lake without getting a permit under the Clean Water Act. The outcome could change the rules for millions of acres of property that contain wetlands.
  • Immigration: The Biden administration is back at the Supreme Court to argue for a change in immigration policy from the Trump administration. It’s appealing a ruling against a Biden policy prioritizing deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk. Last term, the justices by a 5-4 vote paved the way for the administration to end the Trump policy that required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for their court hearing. In July, also by a 5-4 vote, the high court refused to allow the administration to implement policy guidance for deportations. A Trump-era policy favored deporting people in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties.
  • LGBTQ rights: A new clash involving religion, free speech, and the rights of LGBTQ people will also be before the justices. The case involves Colorado graphic and website designer Lorie Smith, who wants to expand her business and offer wedding website services. She says her Christian beliefs would lead her to decline any request from a same-sex couple to design a wedding website, however, and that puts her in conflict with a Colorado anti-discrimination law. The case is a new chance for the justices to confront issues the court skirted five years ago in a case about a baker objected to making cakes for same-sex weddings.
  • Art world: The court’s resolution of a dispute involving pieces by artist Andy Warhol could have big consequences in the art world and beyond. If the Warhol side loses a copyright dispute involving an image Warhol made of the musician Prince, other artworks could be in peril, lawyers say. But the other side says if Warhol wins, it would be a license for other artists to blatantly copy.

A full docket and the chance for SCOTUS to continue to chip away at our rights and privileges.

Anything new here?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Advertisement

GOP And The World Of Tomorrow

The mid-terms are just weeks away and there is much confusion on which way the votes will break…..will the country go back 70 years or will we look forward to the future?

The country as we have known it is at stake….is the end near?

It appears that all interest in the mid-terms is just not there…..and that makes me think that the results is all but sealed…..

Let’s look at the world of tomorrow if it breaks towards the GOP……

The party has issued its plan for the near future with a win and control of Congress…

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday directly confronted President Biden and the party in power, choosing battleground Pennsylvania to unveil a midterm election agenda with sweeping Trump-like promises, despite the House GOP’s sometimes spotty record of delivering and governing in Congress. McCarthy, who’s poised to seize the speaker’s gavel if Republicans win control of the House in November, hopes to replicate the strategy that Speaker Newt Gingrich used to spark voter enthusiasm and sweep House control in a 1994 landslide. The House GOP’s “Commitment to America” gives a nod to that earlier era but updates it in the age of Donald Trump, with economic, border security, and social policies to rouse the former president’s well of supporters, per the AP.

“What we’re going to roll out today is a ‘Commitment to America’ in Washington—not Washington, DC, but Washington County, Pa.,” McCarthy said at a manufacturing facility, standing with a cross-section of other lawmakers. “Because it’s about you, it’s not about us.” He offered a portrait of party unity despite the uneasy coalition that makes up the House minority—and the Republican Party itself. Propelled by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” voters, the Republicans need to pick up just a few seats to win back control of the House and replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi, though McCarthy’s ability to lead the House is far from guaranteed. McCarthy spent more than a year pulling together the House GOP’s often warring factions—from the far-right MAGA to what’s left of the more centrist ranks—to produce a mostly agreed-upon agenda.

Gingrich has been working with McCarthy and his team to craft the style and substance of the proposal. Mostly, the GOP pocket card hits broad strokes—energy independence, security, and an end to liberal social policies, particularly in schooling. Conservative Republicans, however, complain privately that McCarthy isn’t leaning hard enough into their priorities, as he tries to appeal to a broader swath of voters and hold the party together. Dems, meanwhile, aren’t impressed at all with the GOP’s agenda. “Long on slogans and short on details,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told union workers in Pittsburgh on Friday, according to excerpts of his speech. “That’s because the true details of Republicans’ agenda are too frightening for most American voters.”

Then there is the Constitution thing…..they want to re-write the document and not in a good way….

… former Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold wrote in an op-ed at The Guardian that Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution allows the document to be amended, either with amendments being proposed by two-thirds of Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states, or through a method that has never been tested: the establishment of a new constitutional convention.

To hold a new convention, two-thirds of all state legislatures—34 total—must apply to hold the gathering, where lawmakers would have broad freedom to change the Constitution however they saw fit. Three-quarters of states would have to ratify their proposed amendments.

“The right has already packed the Supreme Court and is reaping the rewards, with decisions from Dobbs to Bruen that radically reinterpret the Constitution in defiance of precedent and sound legal reasoning,” wrote Feingold, referencing recent rulings on abortion rights and gun control. “But factions of the right are not satisfied to wait for the court to reinterpret the constitution. Instead, they have set their sights on literally rewriting our foundational document.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/19/warnings-mount-over-right-wing-plot-rewrite-us-constitution

There is so much more at stake than a election of a few far right slugs….they could change the very country into something that was never intended by those far thinking Founders.

You have the power to protect this country from radical change….that is thinking that you want to save this country.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Then VOTE!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”