Originally published at: There’s an Obvious Reason Why The Republican Justices Sound So Nervous
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes. Chief Justice John Roberts addressed a judicial conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday and grumbled about the public’s purported failure to appreciate how impartial the Supreme Court is. “I think they view us as truly political actors,” said Roberts,…
Democrats ought to make reforming the court a larger issue. There is a through line of republican justices veering from their duty to interpret the law in order to advance the power and agenda of republicans beginning with Bush v. Gore. Roberts, while not on the court in 2000, his career plus his opinions prove him to be a clear republican hack and danger to our democracy with his agenda to boost corporate power and to destroy voting rights. His recent defensive words give away his caginess in carrying out his agenda
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Roberts has been a racist legal hack (although as unfailingly polite as a 19th-century Kentucky Colonel) since he earned his neoConfederate stripes at the knee of unreconstructed racist (look up his antics in Arizona) William Rehnquist. No more than a Manchurian Candidate for Jim Crow politics. ::: Also please notice how these SC Justices on the media prowl never put themselves in a situation where they have to answer uncomfortable questions, challenges, and followup facts. They preach, lecture, and foam in conferences. and from behind lecterns. And they never acknowledge that 3 of their biggest critics are ON THE SUPREME COURT.
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Roberts has helped create a country of the rich, by the rich, for the rich, paid for by the rest of us. Heck of a job Johnny.
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No, John. It’s not us. Maybe if the Supreme Six stopped playing GOP operatives masquerading as Supreme Court Justices, we’d believe you. Since Alito flies anti-democratic flags, Thomas goes to the Federalist Society and says liberals are basically murderers and have no place in America, while his wife tried to overthrow the 2020 election, and Gorsuch goes on Fox News to hawk his new book, Roberts wife is getting paid big bucks to place lawyers in front of her own husband, and he isn’t even declaring that properly. They break their own precedents to get their desired results, they make up shit that isn’t in the constitution, like the immunity for the president, and they are an imperial court and we know it. Stop lying to us!!!
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They know why they’re there. It’s also part of the contract to pay public lip service to “impartiality”. A concept I think you be hard pressed to see demonstrated by Alito, Roberts, Kavanaugh and Thomas. Gorsuch has kind of odd moments of it, as does Coney-Barret, not many but it does happen. Gorsuch is a bad banner bearer for SCOTUS impartiality as we’ve seen. They’ll need to try Coney-Barret, but I have a suspicion that she’d be very uncomfortable in an unscripted setting.
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“judges are like umpires”
And umpires are never biased, never miss anything, and would never make any bad calls!
/s
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“Persuading the public that a Republican-controlled Court issuing Republican-friendly decisions is not a Republican body has never been more difficult.”
Stating the obvious here, but that’s what it is is!
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December 12, 2000 is a shameful date in our history that exposed the absolute partisan makeup of the SCOTUS. And it has gotten much more ideologically aligned since then. Stopping the constitutionally mandated counting of the votes in Florida and appointing Bush jr. president changed the country in as profound a manner as did 9-11-2001. Everyday of that Bush maladministration served up a new atrocity, a new attack on political norms that henchman Karl Rove warned we better not point out or criticize. It was the best and worst of times to have gained access to the internet and all the information available. Bush jr. set the table for this ungodly maladministration of the dotardians.
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Republican power depends on Democratic weakness. McConnell stacked the court and his boycott of the Garland nomination should have brought Congress to a halt until his nomination was voted on. MAGA is Blitzkrieg and Jim Crow for every Democrat. The two Parties are not the same and the Supreme Court does matter.
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This picture says it all. Kavanaugh looking like he got caught, and Roberts looking like is grimly serving some terrible master.
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Republican power rests on their ownership of the media, 100%, in every small and medium market in the country.
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Clarence Thomas said: "… progressivism as incompatible with 'the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence,” and as “intertwined” with ‘Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao.’
Shows what propaganda he was reading in his formative years. The GOP has been spouting this horse shit beginning with the Bolshevik Revolution.
It scared the piss out of the upper classes here and in Europe. In the 20s and 30s and with FDR, the rich were scared shitless of a parallel revolution erupting in this country. And they took seriously Marx’s warning of a specter haunting Europe. They understood we had a nearly feudalistic society here ready to explode.
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Republican power is based on their willingness to be evil bastards, traitors, and hypocrites. They gleefully talk about driving credit card debt up, say gas prices have never been better, the economy is so good and who cares about inflation. They are honest, in an Ayn Rand, fuk-u kind of way and if voters don’t see this, well Trump may get a third term. Pure big, bad Capitalism: eternal debt peonage for students, bankruptcy for seniors with health problems, wage slavery, war and a cooking planet, the whole bad deal.
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It may not be “an accurate understanding of what we do,” but it’s certainly an accurate understanding of what they have done.
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Roberts is saying that we aren’t smart enough to understand their decisions. The six partisan hacks on his court go out of their way to marginalize groups who are not white or do not share their brand of politics. The gutting/elimination of the VRA is just the latest decision that flies in the face of fairness and the constitution. Alabama is hoping that this court overturns the 14th Amendment. I will not be surprised if they do.
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Term limits, rotate justices to and from the lower courts, limits on the number of justices appointed by a single president, enforcement of an ethics code, cameras in the courtroom…let’s get started.
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I sort of disagree. We should accept at face value their claim that the court is not political. That means that the necessary reforms of the court to bring it in line with the federal appeals court model (expanding the court to 27 justices, a mandatory retirement age whereupon they have senior status, having them sit in panels to hear most cases and only en banc for very important cases or on rehearing) are not political in nature but really administrative.
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Five of the six were nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote when they entered office. Bush gets a double because of the Bush v Gore decision.
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