Graham booed over Gorsuch vote

2seaoat wrote:Folks who attack Hobby Lobby do not see what a nothing case it was, as it was about the ease of alternatives when religious freedom was involved.  Yet, the same folks that cry what a horrible decision it was have no problem in the fact that the Robert's court ruled to allow peyote and illegal drug in religious ceremonies, but that decision which is consistent with some political slants, was attacked by conservative groups, and Roberts was all but tar and feathered when he made the correct ruling on the Affordable Care Act.

No, as much as Scalia was wrong headed on issues, his defense of the fourth amendment turned the Supreme Court on the growing Police State where officers thought they knew the law and that the exceptions to the fourth amendment were a blank check......Scalia said simply NO.   To paint any judge with such a broad brush is wrong.   Now Thomas is very weak base on his record and is fair game, but Robert's, Scalia, and Gorsuch are recognized legal scholars.

http://files.pfaw.org/uploads/2017/02/Neil-Gorsuch-Fact-Sheet-2.pdf

Every case is not about your blankin' property rights.

Sea you needed to listen carefully to the discussion of Gorsuch before the Senate Judiciary Committee vote.  I have to believe you didn't or you'd have been appalled at some of the rulings discussed, or, if nothing else, at the reports of tens of millions of dark money it was revealed have been spent by special interests to get Gorsuch elected -- the NRA and Koch Bros. among them.  DISGUSTING.

Is it any wonder this judge refused to say what he thought about Citizens United? Obviously he LOVED that one.

Gorsuch launched into an attack on plaintiffs‘ lawyers for using such
cases as vehicles for ―free ride[s] to fast riches.‖
He concluded that they involve ―frivolous claims.
[that] impose[] an enormous toll on the economy, affecting virtually every public
corporation in America at one time or another and costing business
billions of dollars in settlements every year.‖

I guess the obscene lawyer commercials in Pensacola and Mobile(I have NEVER seen anything like this in the rest of the country) has become so common that folks who attack Gorsuch do not see the abuses or the other side of the coin and think that nothing can be done. Bull chit. This idea that folks are going to get the BIG BUCK as society pays for lottery lawsuits, in fact does have to be scaled back. This arrogance that gives free reign without some protections against frivolous claims is the same hubris which found Hillary isolated from Americans. The idea that layer after layer of regulation and tyranny by government employees cannot be challenged, and that some of the peeling back of the same can be positive is pure arrogance. Yes, there are bad people trying to eliminate good regulation, but where are good people who are trying to peel back bad regulation and overstepping the authority of government.

It is simple. You need to recognize both sides of an argument and not be caught up in the arrogance. I can read. I find his decisions refreshing and correct. If the Supreme Court goes too far retrenching, then there will be a new president, Supreme Court, and congress. The sky is falling bull chit has to stop, and common sense middle ground must prevail.

Is it any wonder this judge refused to say what he thought about Citizens United?

A judge should not be talking about how they will rule on substantive issues. For the ill informed, this idea of a judge not answering positions on specific cases is seen as stonewalling. It is not. If a person read Citizens United they would find that the decision is correct as to the freedom of association guaranteed under the constitution, and it gives congress a clear path to better define public corruption which can fall short of pro quid quo. The Supreme Court's failing in Citizens United was a poorly written paragraph which did not more clearly give congress a path to properly regulate that which is deemed to be public corruption. The Supreme Court was naive to think money and political association short of quid pro quo is not per say public corruption, but in their wisdom they left the door open for Congress to address the same. To blame the supreme court decision because congress does not have the political will to address public corruption with unlimited money, is incorrect. Congress could easily define public corruption in such a way as to make citizens united not a blank check for those wishing to buy government. The idea that the case has to be overturned, or that there is a need for a constitutional convention is mostly parrots who have not read the case, or understand the powerful public corruption power left to congress.

Sorry, there have been abuses by regulatory agencies who go way beyond the intent of congress. I have posted here that I am involved with drainage districts and their attempts to roll back abusive expansion of jurisdictional waters of the United states where a wet area in a farm field where a tile is broken after five years becomes jurisdictional waters of the United states and a farmer cannot repair his tile or take a tractor into that part of his field. It is insane, and the fact that the Trump administration, and congress pulled back some of this expansion is a good thing for family farmers I know who where threatened with a 25k fine if they farmed a portion of a farm which had been in their family since the 1850s. I have been at farm bureau meetings where folks were lobbying their congressmen and trying to fight back the carte blanche which had been given to the ACE.

I have told the story where I was simply going to put a new causeway to the islands, and I permitted the same with IEPA, Water Resources with the Department of Natural Resources, the local county, and the Army Corps of engineers. The Army corps said I had to do an archeology study before I could put a six damn tubes on my own property. They can give exemptions, but NO....I had to hire a damn college professor who came out with a shovel and dug about 20 holes and determined that there was nothing of importance, although he found a square nail which has been common since the 1900s, and when I got the bill it was $1,500. It is not all large greedy corporations who are trying to rape America who want to peal back the regulatory power of the expanding bureaucracy. There are clear areas which this must be done, and yes, I agree 100% that there are other areas that folks must dig in their heels and fight. The rachel Maddow arrogance and focus on minutia has led the Democratic Party to abandon common sense and the middle class. I voted for Hillary Clinton because she was the most qualified and I understood the disaster we were facing with President Trump, but when a qualified judge is raked over the coals for revenge, and people try to make him into some kind of radical judge, this country will NEVER accept the hysteria, and the result is bad people in fact take control. We need measured common sense.

2seaoat wrote:Is it any wonder this judge refused to say what he thought about Citizens United?

A judge should not be talking about how they will rule on substantive issues.


We're not talking about pending cases.

For the ill informed, this idea of a judge not answering positions on specific cases is seen as stonewalling.  It is not.   If a person read Citizens United they would find that the decision is correct as to the freedom of association guaranteed under the constitution, and it gives congress a clear path to better define public corruption which can fall short of pro quid quo.


I think you meant "quid pro quo", and if that isn't the spirit of the Citizens United decision, I surely don't know what is.



  The Supreme Court's failing in Citizens United was a poorly written paragraph which did not more clearly give congress a path to properly regulate that which is deemed to be public corruption.   The Supreme Court was naive to think money and political association short of quid pro quo is not per say public corruption, but in their wisdom they left the door open for Congress to address the same.

You mean "per se".

  To blame the supreme court decision because congress does not have the political will to address public corruption with unlimited money, is incorrect.  Congress could easily define public corruption in such a way as to make citizens united not a blank check for those wishing to buy government.   The idea that the case has to be overturned, or that there is a need for a constitutional convention is mostly parrots who have not read the case, or understand the powerful public corruption power left to congress.

To expect this Congress to address public corruption is like asking your local bookie to hold your life savings. Even the use of the word "conservative" to describe today's GOP is ludicrous. A better term would be "grifter".

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/14/466744083/6-major-supreme-court-cases-that-would-have-been-different-without-scalia

6 Major Supreme Court Cases That Would Have Been Different Without Scalia

In terms of the ideological balance of the Supreme Court, the death of Justice Antonin Scalia is monumental. With Scalia, the court had four reliable conservative votes and, in Justice Kennedy, the court had a conservative swing vote.

That led to many decisions that were decided by a razor thin 5-to-4 margin. To gauge Scalia's importance, we dug through the Supreme Court Database and found that during Obama's presidency, 53 cases have been decided by a 5-4 majority that included Scalia.

Here are six cases that could have turned out vastly different without Scalia:

Close Cases Affected By Scalia's Vote:

1. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission:

The 2010 decision restructured the campaign finance landscape. According to SCOTUSblog, the court decided that the "government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections. While corporations or unions may not give money directly to campaigns, they may seek to persuade the voting public through other means, including ads, especially where these ads were not broadcast."

2. Hollingsworth v. Perry:

In this case, the Supreme Court sidestepped a big, broad decision on gay marriage. The majority opinion drew an unlikely coalition — Scalia joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the more liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan — saying that petitioners did not have standing to challenge a lower court ruling that struck down Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot initiative that made same-sex marriages illegal in California.

3. Glossip v. Gross:

Amid a rash of botched lethal injection cases, the Supreme Court took up a case challenging the constitutionality of the drug cocktail used by Oklahoma. In 5-to-4 decision in 2014, the court decided the cocktail did not violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and usual punishment.

4. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores:

In a case that challenged the contraception mandate of the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby, saying family-owned and other closely held companies can opt out of the mandate if they have religious objections to it.

5. Town of Greece v. Galloway:

The question before the court for this case was whether a town in upstate New York was violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution when it opened its meetings with a prayer. By a narrow margin, the court decided the town was using prayer for "permissible ceremonial purposes," not as an "unconstitutional establishment of religion."

6. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes:

In 2011, the Supreme Court threw out the largest sex discrimination lawsuit in American history.

As NPR's Nina Totenberg wrote at the time: "The issue before the Supreme Court was whether female employees as a group could be certified as a single class, suing Wal-Mart at a single trial. Lawyers for the women introduced evidence showing that female employees held two-thirds of the lowest-level hourly jobs at Wal-Mart, but only one-third of the management jobs, and that women overall were paid on average $1.16 per hour less than men in the same jobs, though the women had more seniority and higher performance ratings."

A federal judge had certified the class, but Wal-Mart appealed all the way to the Supreme Court and won.

*************

http://supremecourtdatabase.org/analysisCaseListing.php?sid=1501-TWOFOLD-6748&pg=0

The Democrats never abandoned the middle class nor common sense...that's your party...the one that capitalized on the Wikileaks hacks and kept a constant witch hunt going against Hillary until the week before the election, when Comey made his notorious disclosure that there was, then wasn't, anything criminal to report against Hillary...nothing to Benghazi, nothing to the email "scandal", no current attempt to prosecute her for anything she did or didn't do...now that the election is over. Blaming people like Maddow, who pushed back against relentless propaganda by YOUR PARTY, is ridiculous.

2seaoat wrote:

Gorsuch launched into an attack on plaintiffs‘ lawyers for using such
cases as vehicles for ―free ride[s] to fast riches.‖
He concluded that they involve ―frivolous claims.
[that] impose[] an enormous toll on the economy, affecting virtually every public
corporation in America at one time or another and costing business
billions of dollars in settlements every year.‖


[Lord only knows what that's all about, please try to comment in English instead of gibberish. You go on to say:]


I guess the obscene lawyer commercials in Pensacola and Mobile(I have NEVER seen anything like this in the rest of the country) has become so common that folks who attack Gorsuch do not see the abuses or the other side of the coin and think that nothing can be done.  Bull chit.  This idea that folks are going to get the BIG BUCK as society pays for lottery lawsuits, in fact does have to be scaled back.   This arrogance that gives free reign without some protections against frivolous claims is the same hubris which found Hillary isolated from Americans.   The idea that layer after layer of regulation and tyranny by government employees cannot be challenged, and that some of the peeling back of the same can be positive is pure arrogance.  Yes, there are bad people trying to eliminate good regulation, but where are good people who are trying to peel back bad regulation and overstepping the authority of government.  

Are you making a case FOR tort reform here? You mention tyranny by the government--a Trump-supporter's claim if I ever heard one--yet say nothing about the tyranny of corporate power.  

Huge tort awards are one of the few ways average citizens can fight back when corporations value profits over human well-being.

You then go on to complain, in perfect sync with every outrageous Trump diatribe, that the national fabric is being destroyed by government regulation.

The lawyer ads you mention are a perfect example what happens when large interests capture the regulatory process. The reason you don't see those ads elsewhere is that they are not permitted, either by the state or by the bar. You can't complain about regulations on one hand and then bitch about what happens when they're gutted on the other.

You're down the rabbit-hole here, 2seaoat--one pill makes you larger and the other makes you small.

We're not talking about pending cases.

yes we are.

2seaoat wrote:We're not talking about pending cases.

yes we are.

IS THAT IT? That's your whole reply to her two excellent posts? "yes we are" is all you have to say?

Pitiful

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) denounced Neil Gorsuch’s views as too far outside the mainstream to back him for the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I cannot support a man with his views for a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court,” Sanders said on the Senate floor. “The Supreme Court is the most important judicial body in this country. The decisions that it reaches, even on a 5-4 vote, have a profound impact on all Americans, on our environment and on our way of life.”

Sanders was especially troubled by Gorsuch’s views on voting rights and campaign finance, and he repeated his presidential campaign call for the overturn of the Citizens United ruling that allowed more corporate money to flow into politics.

“That decision, Citizens United, is undermining American democracy and, in my view, is moving us toward an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of the wealthiest people in this country, the Koch brothers and others, now have the power not only to control our economy but our political life as well,” Sanders said.

The Vermont independent took what seemed to be a subtle shot at President Donald Trump, whose election run was heavily subsidized by a conservative tech billionaire who then chose his campaign staff.

“What the Republican leadership is striving towards is eliminating all campaign finance restrictions such that billionaires can say to somebody, ‘I’m going to give you $500 million to run for United States Senate from California, and you work for me, no independent expenditures,” Sanders said. “I will select your campaign manager, your speechwriter, your media writer, your pollster — you are my employee. That is what the Republican leadership here wants.”

Sanders strongly criticized Gorsuch’s views on voting rights, abortion rights, workers’ rights and corporate power.

“At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when so many people working throughout this country feel powerless at the hands of the wealthy and the powerful and their employers, we need a Supreme Court justice who will protect workers’ rights and not just worry about corporate profits,” Sanders said. “I fear very much that Judge Gorsuch is not that person.”

He blasted Republican leadership for obstructing President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees and then threatening to blow up Senate rules to push through Trump’s nominee.

“I would suggest to the Republican leader that instead of trying to push this nominee through with 50-some-odd votes, it might make more sense, rather than changing the rule, change the nominee and bring forth somebody who, in fact, can get 60 votes,” Sanders said.

*************

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/watch-bernie-sanders-denounces-neil-gorsuch-as-too-extreme-for-court-in-fiery-senate-floor-speech/

“I would suggest to the Republican leader that instead of trying to push this nominee through with 50-some-odd votes, it might make more sense, rather than changing the rule, change the nominee and bring forth somebody who, in fact, can get 60 votes,” Sanders said.


That just about says it all.

Telstar wrote:“I would suggest to the Republican leader that instead of trying to push this nominee through with 50-some-odd votes, it might make more sense, rather than changing the rule, change the nominee and bring forth somebody who, in fact, can get 60 votes,” Sanders said.


That just about says it all.

Trouble is, as I heard one Repub say today (didn't catch his name), if the Dems can't approve this candidate, there's not a candidate that this president could nominate that they would approve.

And he's probably right. That doesn't mean I think Gorsuch should be confirmed; only that I doubt Trump could/would select a decent judge no matter what.

“I would suggest to the Republican leader that instead of trying to push this nominee through with 50-some-odd votes, it might make more sense, rather than changing the rule, change the nominee and bring forth somebody who, in fact, can get 60 votes,” Sanders said.

Except that the nuclear option wouldn't be on the table except for the dems.

A convenient fact to ignore. Do we want mob rule or not comrades?

PkrBum wrote: “I would suggest to the Republican leader that instead of trying to push this nominee through with 50-some-odd votes, it might make more sense, rather than changing the rule, change the nominee and bring forth somebody who, in fact, can get 60 votes,” Sanders said.

Except that the nuclear option wouldn't be on the table except for the dems.

A convenient fact to ignore. Do we want mob rule or not comrades?

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/327236-poll-trump-approval-score-worsens

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/bill-oreilly-fox-news-ads-236877

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thomas-jefferson-street/articles/2017-04-04/republicans-should-go-nuclear-on-the-filibuster-for-everything

Mob rule or democracy?

Senator Merkley is now filibustering the Gorsuch nomination. I'm watching on FB.

Let me be the first to tell everybody here.....Gorsuch will be appointed to the Supreme Court. They hysteria is the same hysteria which got Donald Trump elected. I agree that Citizens United has problems, but I think the biggest problem is that some people did not bother to read it. If Senator Sanders would quit whining and introduce legislation in the senate and work to get bipartisan support to close the door the supreme court left wide open on public corruption. Either we have stupid people who do not understand the freedom of association guaranteed under the constitution, or they fail to read the wide open door that congress can define public corruption and that does not necessarily have to rise to a quid pro quo standard and allow unlimited money in politics. I have listened for years Bernie complain on Thom Hartman's show about a need for a constitutional amendment, or Supreme Court justices to overturn the decision, but did he even bother to read the one area which he actually has the power to stop public corruption with unlimited money by defining the same with CONGRESSIONAL bills. I think sometimes I cannot figure what is most stupid.....Trump supporters, or those who completely go into hysteria without putting context on issues. I am embarrassed for the democratic party, and cannot believe Leahy is going along with this filibuster......two wrongs do not make a right.

That former classmate said a whole lot of nothing........his criticism was silly and lacked the detail to elevate it to any meaningful critique of the judge. Trying to bootstrap logic that it was a radical position to oppose divestment which could hurt a university, while still holding the concept that apartheid is bad is like walking and chewing gum.....some people cannot do both. How desperate will this get? He will be nominated.

2seaoat wrote:That former classmate said a whole lot of nothing........his criticism was silly and lacked the detail to elevate it to any meaningful critique of the judge.  Trying to bootstrap logic that it was a radical position to oppose divestment which could hurt a university, while still holding the concept that apartheid is bad is like walking and chewing gum.....some people cannot do both.   How desperate will this get?  He will be nominated.

So he gets nominated. Shit happens. Just because someone enjoys the taste of shit doesn't mean he should expect most real Americans to enjoy the taste of shit. Nominated or not he will still be a shit sandwich forced on real Americans by republicans.

2seaoat wrote:That former classmate said a whole lot of nothing........his criticism was silly and lacked the detail to elevate it to any meaningful critique of the judge.  Trying to bootstrap logic that it was a radical position to oppose divestment which could hurt a university, while still holding the concept that apartheid is bad is like walking and chewing gum.....some people cannot do both.   How desperate will this get?  He will be nominated.

Tell me all about the "frozen trucker" case and how this judge is in any way qualified. Tell me how any Trump nominee is worth the paper he's printed upon. You're just blowing smoke...are you reverting to your childhood?

Floridatexan wrote:Tell me all about the "frozen trucker" case and how this judge is in any way qualified.  Tell me how any Trump nominee is worth the paper he's printed upon.  You're just blowing smoke...are you reverting to your childhood?

I'm glad you brought up the frozen trucker case, FT, because, IMHO, it's a perfect example of how Gorsuch seems to rule in a vacuum of strict technicalities, with no view whatsoever to humanity or the social implications of his rulings. That's NOT what a SCOTUS justice should be made of. He's cut from the totally wrong cloth. Waaay too anal. I have to believe most if not all the other justices are cringing at the thought of having to deal with this guy, who's been painted as so heroic when in fact he's a disaster waiting to happen. A King Solomon this man will never be. We deserve far better! Whether or not his confirmation is inevitable, I'm glad some are standing up for what's right here -- because he ain't it.

Cite a specific law that overrides Gorsuch's ruling.