John Roberts

The Westboro Baptist Church, The Supreme Court, And Free Speech

Ronald 2 Comments

What the author feared would happen has indeed occurred!

The Supreme Court of the United States has, by an 8-1 vote, decided that the hateful, anti gay Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, headed by the Reverend Fred Phelps, and consisting of about 50 people, almost all his relatives, have the right to disrupt military funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan to protest the fact that gays have rights, and that America is going to the devil because gays are allowed to exist in America!

The fact that a military funeral is a time of mourning and stress for those connected to the dead soldier apparently had no effect on the Court, except for Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who, somewhat surprisingly, was the only dissenter.

So the Westboro Baptist Church can continue its evil deeds and disrupt funerals and promote hate, and the right of privacy of funeral attenders, including the family of the deceased, does not matter!

This despicable group not only has done this dastardly deed to families of soldiers, but also were present at the funeral of the nine year old girl murdered when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was seriously wounded in Tucson, Arizona in January. The only difference there was that a large group of sympathizers of the parents of the young girl formed a wall of resistance to these characters, and kept them much further away from the funeral procession.

This is not, in the author’s mind, freedom of speech, or freedom of religion, or freedom of assembly. To call the Westboro Baptist Church a church is a mockery of the whole concept of religion!

All decent people will deplore this decision, and be embarrassed that Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined with Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and even the ultimate swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, in writing this reprehensible decision!

This is not a victory for free speech, but rather a victory for hate, and insanity, and lack of respect for the dead, and lack of patriotism regarding the military, who sacrifice themselves every day in far off lands!

Surprising, but the author must commend Samuel Alito for having the courage to go against the tide, a man that the author has not highly admired. So I salute Alito for his brave stand for decency!

The Obama Health Care Legislation Under Attack! It Could Stand Or Fall On Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Decision! :(

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The Obama Health Care legislation has come under severe attack from federal district court judges in Virginia and now Florida, with the Florida judge declaring the entire act unconstitutional! 🙁

26 states have petitioned the courts to undermine the legislation, and the purpose seems to be to destroy the entire law, even the parts that any sane person would support, such as keeping children on to age 26, ending a lifetime ban on coverage over a set amount, allowing a company to drop coverage once someone becomes sick, and preventing coverage for the millions of people with pre-existing conditions!

To think that a piece of legislation could be negated by a body of unelected, unaccountable judges, instead of an elected body of legislators is, to say the least, very disconcerting! 🙁

It is now obvious that the legislation will come up for review by the Supreme Court during the election campaign of 2012. And it is assumed that Justices Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Chief Justice Roberts will vote against it, and that Justices Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan will support it, leaving Justice Kennedy with the swing vote, as is often the case.

Years ago, conservatives complained that the Supreme Court is really the Kennedy Court, as his vote decided most cases by a 5-4 vote, and there was anger when Kennedy went with the liberals on the court on several cases, including Lawrence V. Texas, the gay rights case in 2003.

However, in recent years, Kennedy has more often joined the conservative side than the liberal side, so indeed the future of the health care law may hang on what he, a singular human being, determines is constitutional! 🙁

The Age Of Right Wing Republicans Begins! State, National, And Supreme Court Evidence Of The Changed Reality! :(

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A number of pieces of news today makes us aware of just how far right wing this country is to be taken by the Republican Party, once the new 112th Congress begins tomorrow! 🙁

News comes that the GOP Governors of many states are declaring “war” on public employee unions, making them the scapegoat of the economic crisis the nation faces! 🙁

The myth is that public service employees are overpaid, have too many benefits, and don’t work very hard. The facts are that people who work for state and local governments are NOT overpaid, and never have been, and while benefits might be better than average in a country where only 15 percent of private employers provide a traditional pension, the reason for their existence is exactly because pay in these jobs is below what many privately employed workers receive.

This is a case of turning the people of the states against their own teachers, police officers, firefighters, prison guards, nurses, social workers, librarians, and agency workers as a move of revenge, as if it is the fault of these workers that economic conditions are terrible.

Rather than blame corporations and the refusal of government to regulate their practices in the public interest, instead the goal is to destroy labor unions of all kinds, even though only NINE percent of all workers are union members! 🙁

Also, we learn that Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia have no problem being partisan, when they are supposed to be objective and neutral on public matters.

Roberts has sworn in top aides of Speaker John Boehner, a highly unusual action, and Scalia, promoting his concept of “originalism”, now states that women are not protected constitutionally by the “equal protection” clause of the Constitution! 🙁

How outrageous such a statement is, and if that were to be utilized in the future by the Supreme Court majority, it could set us back to the 19th century, and include African Americans, Latinos, Jews, Catholics, and others as not being protected by the Constitution! Is this a move to repeal the 20th century by a reactionary Supreme Court, which would be overruling past Supreme Court cases upholding “equal protection”? 🙁

And finally, Darrell Issa is now asking corporations what laws they want considered for repeal as interfering with their economic activities, as he begins his term as head of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives! What could be more corrupt than that, and yet, Issa has the gall to say that the Obama Administration is the most corrupt in a long time! 🙁

It is hard to imagine that by 2012, there will not be “buyer’s remorse” about the Republican Party control of the House and growing influence in the Senate.

And realize that all that the Democrats need to regain control of the House of Representatives is a gain of 25 seats, certainly a manageable possibility!

The Evolving Supreme Court: The Dynamics Of Nine Human Beings Working Together!

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The Supreme Court has undergone a lot of change in the past five years, with four appointments to the Court.

George W. Bush appointed John Roberts as Chief Justice and Samuel Alito as an Associate Justice, while Barack Obama chose Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan as Associate Justices.

Roberts has certainly made his impact as Chief Justice, and has become controversial because of his activism, which contradicts his testimony that he believed in “stare decisis”, the role of precedent in deciding whether to accept past Court decisions. Instead, Roberts has become a confrontational Chief Justice, including criticizing President Obama for attacking the revolutionary Citizens United Case of January, 2010.

Alito seemed to be quieter, but this year, he openly objected to Obama’s criticism of the Citizens United Case, and is now regarded as an outspoken conservative firebrand in the same vein as Roberts, meaning that the four conservatives on the Court are very aggressive in their advocacy. No one would ever accuse Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas as being “wallflowers” in their activist views, even though Scalia claims to be an advocate of “originalism”, interpreting the Constitution based on the actions of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

But the liberal side of the Court has also been much more outspoken. Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, now the oldest member of the Court, is certainly willing to express her views, and Justice Stephen Breyer is seen as the intellectual leader of the liberal wing of the Court.

But even the newest Justices are making clear their liberal tendencies. Justice Sotomayor is seen by the New York Times as “guiding” the liberal wing. Sotomayor spoke up for prisoner rights, with a challenge by Justice Alito.

And Justice Elena Kagan has joined Sotomayor in what is described as a subtle shift of the Court, with Sotomayor more passionate and Kagan as a “bridge builder”, but yet seen as strengthening the liberal wing. Kagan is seen as having the ability to draw Anthony Kennedy, the truly independent member of the Court, to consider her side of the issue, much like John Paul Stevens used to be able to do that in his latter years on the Court.

What this all means is that the Supreme Court is in constant readjustment of nine human beings, with evolution of the dynamics fascinating to watch and to evaluate on a regular basis! 🙂

The Roberts Supreme Court: Back To The Gilded Age And The 1920s! :(

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New evidence is now available indicating that the Supreme Court headed by John Roberts, the 17th Chief Justice, since 2005, has become the most pro business Supreme Court since the 1920s and the earlier Gilded Age, both periods in which corporations were given license to run amuck over small business, labor, and consumers in their mad dash for maximum profits and exploitation! 🙁

The Citizens United case in January, allowing unlimited corporate contributions in political campaigns, upending a century of regulatory laws on that subject, is just the most obvious case.

But with a five member majority, with two appointments by Ronald Reagan, one by father George H W Bush and two by son George W. Bush, the Supreme Court now has demonstrated that 61 percent of the time, they favor big business, as compared to 46 percent in the last five years under Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and 42 percent in all the years since Earl Warren became Chief Justice in 1953.

The Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have been able to get a sympathetic ear from the Supreme Court in greater percentages as the years go by, and this is another troubling piece of evidence, shown by many legal scholarly analyses, that the concept of “an equal day in court” for everyone is really a myth! 🙁

What is emerging is the disturbing reality of a growing oligarchy which wins the day in the courts and in the Congress so often that the idea of a “land of opportunity” and the “American dream” is more than ever, for almost everyone, except a small elite, a total distortion of reality! 🙁