SCOTUS

[RedFromMI]

Kram - it is not clear the proposition will even pass. 42%/45% a few weeks ago to pass/not pass.

[kramerica.inc]

Kram - it is not clear the proposition will even pass. 42%/45% a few weeks ago to pass/not pass.

I know. There's a lot of focus on CO and Lousiana's propsition, in the light of ACB's appointment to the SCOTUS.
If RvW is struck down, these state laws will be paramount.

[ggait]

Colorado Abortion ban could be felt nationwide, undoubtedly opening it up to court rulings:

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/31/92963742 ... nationwide

Last poll I saw was -18 points on this. And that margin has been accomplished only on the back of a serious dis-information campaign out here.

I actually didn't vote on it myself because I hadn't studied up on it. Ballots in CO are always so chock full of propositions regarding so many different kinds of things (left, right, sane, crazy) that a lot of people just skip over most/all of them.

But if this were somehow to pass accidentally, it would be overwhelmingly reversed in next year's election once people focused on it. So it would be gone/moot before ACB would ever have a chance to consider.

[kramerica.inc]

Colorado Abortion ban could be felt nationwide, undoubtedly opening it up to court rulings:

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/31/92963742 ... nationwide

Last poll I saw was -18 points on this. And that margin has been accomplished only on the back of a serious dis-information campaign out here.

Were this to somehow pass accidentally, it would be overwhelmingly reversed in next year's election. So it would be gone/moot before ACB would ever have a chance to consider this.

Must have heard wrong. Just a few days ago:

https://coloradosun.com/2020/10/29/abor ... expensive/

Leading up to Election Day, the limited polling data available suggests Proposition 115 is too close to call.

In the final days, supporters of Proposition 115 are focusing on unaffiliated voters who haven’t yet cast a ballot, while opponents said they were fighting against misinformation and what they consider confusing ballot language.

The campaigns point to two polls conducted in recent weeks that showed the race at a statistical dead-heat, and neither side is surprised by the tight margin.

[ggait]

Poll published yesterday:

A new poll conducted just days before the 2020 election shows Democrats Joe Biden and John Hickenlooper are poised for double-digit victories in Colorado.

Biden, a Democrat, leads President Donald Trump 53% to 41% in the presidential race with only a fraction of voters undecided, according to the Keating Research poll of likely voters shared with The Colorado Sun. The Democratic firm correctly forecasted the last two presidential elections in Colorado.

In the U.S. Senate race, Hickenlooper holds the advantage at 53% compared to 42% for Republican incumbent Cory Gardner. The margin of error for the poll — which was conducted Thursday through Sunday in partnership with Onsight Public Affairs — is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

The poll also found voters aligned against Proposition 115, a ballot measure that would impose a ban on abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy. The measure gets just 38% support compared with 56% against.

But like I said, if it slips through accidentally, it won't last past the next election.

[seacoaster]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/opin ... e=Homepage

"You remember the legal horror show called Bush v. Gore? The Supreme Court couldn’t possibly replicate that. But don’t underestimate the justices’ capacity for self-inflicted wounds. The sequel’s being scripted and it may be worse.

Twenty years ago, the court stepped in to halt a recount in the disputed 2000 presidential election. Both the Constitution and federal law specifically entrusted Congress to resolve such a deadlock. But the justices recklessly inserted themselves anyway. The fiercely divided ruling cost the court its legitimacy and hurt the country.

Now there are widespread worries that the court will jump in again. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” President Trump said in late September. Having just placed Amy Coney Barrett, the sixth Republican-appointed justice on the court, he is evidently thrilled about that prospect.

Only two justices remain on the court who were there in 2000 — Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Have they and their fellow justices learned anything from the court’s misadventure?

One of the biggest myths about the court — born of its continuing gratuitous interventions in contentious issues that should have been left to Congress and states — is that it had no choice but to meddle. That self-proclaimed textualist, Justice Antonin Scalia, told an interviewer years after Bush v. Gore, “We were the laughingstock of the world — the world’s greatest democracy that couldn’t conduct an election.” He omitted any mention of where in the Constitution he had unearthed a “Laughingstock” clause that justified the court’s intrusion.

On occasion, he had a smugger response when asked about the 5-to-4 ruling. “Get over it!” he’d say. Justice David Souter, who dissented, never did, so appalled was he about Bush v. Gore.

The court’s docket is discretionary. The only plausible explanation for the court’s taking up Bush v. Gore is institutional arrogance — the belief that the justices alone could save the country from a crisis that wasn’t a crisis. But the Constitution and a federal statute provide what to do in such instances, even if a president isn’t chosen by Inauguration Day. That hubris not only made the justices look like partisans in robes but also raised the stakes for future court nominations.

When the court shuts down a recount, invents an individual’s right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, unleashes big money into campaigns, guts voting rights and sets abortion policy, presidents and senators react accordingly. The storm over Justice Barrett’s confirmation is the latest chapter in a story that begins with the justices themselves.

Bush v. Gore involved just one state, Florida. This year, that case might look like a picnic. With so many battleground states and with hundreds of lawsuits, no doubt this is the most litigated election ever.

Still, elections should be garden-variety state matters, even races for the presidency. State courts should be left to make decisions based on their own state laws and state constitutions. Yet there’s plenty of reason to think some of the justices would be happy to substitute their own judgment.

In 2000, the court’s logic was that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection” rendered Florida’s system unconstitutional because different counties used different standards to evaluate contested ballots. Never mind that the counties all set out to determine the intent of any given voter. Never mind that George W. Bush’s lawyers had raised the equal protection argument only in passing.

Why would they do otherwise? There were 3,141 counties in the United States. Most contained multiple municipalities, most of which had separate voting precincts. There were different machines, ballot designs and instructions. Lines could be short in some neighborhoods, around the block in others. Many of the disparities disproportionately affected Black people, the chief intended beneficiaries of the 14th Amendment. Yet the court had never gone near declaring that such variances amounted to constitutional transgressions.

In Bush v. Gore, the justices did. Had they finally seen the light when it came to voting inequities? Nope. They were apparently ambivalent enough about their own reasoning that they said the case should not be considered a precedent. Bush v. Gore is the Lord Voldemort of Supreme Court jurisprudence — the case that must not be named.

So maybe the court cooks up some rationale that, lo and behold, again benefits the Republican candidate. Couldn’t happen? It already is, as recent rulings from the court underscore. It’s true that Chief Justice John Roberts on Oct. 19 surprised us, keeping the court out of the political storm. He split from the other four Republican-appointed justices to allow election officials in Pennsylvania to count certain mailed ballots received after the polls close on Election Day. He did so to avoid overruling an interpretation of Pennsylvania law by the state’s own highest court.

Then, last week, he sided with his fellow Republican-appointed justices to block Wisconsin from counting mailed ballots received after Election Day. His distinction was that in Wisconsin it was a federal and a not a state judge who extended a state electoral deadline. That, the chief justice said, wasn’t OK. He was the only justice to make that distinction.

With Justice Barrett on the court, the chief justice doesn’t much matter anymore. Even without him, the court has five other justices appointed by Republicans. The occasionally restrained chief has been the swing justice in the past two years. No more. We don’t know for sure what Justice Barrett thinks about court interventions in presidential elections, but we do know that she, like John Roberts, went to Florida as a private lawyer in 2000 to assist Bush. (Her task, wouldn’t you know it, was to make sure Republican voters’ mailed absentee ballots got counted.)

In their opinion last week on Pennsylvania ballots, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito Jr. and Thomas — all appointed by Republicans — didn’t bother with the chief justice’s salami-slicing. They seemed to indicate that even a state court’s enforcement of voting rights under a state constitution would be unacceptable if that enforcement differed from the judgment of a state legislature. Who but the Supreme Court to fix that?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn’t sign that opinion. Instead, he had issued his own in the Wisconsin case that actually cited Bush v. Gore, favorably so. Twenty years ago, when he was a private lawyer, he liked the ruling so much that he gave a TV interview on the court’s steps extolling it. Count them up: At minimum, that’s four votes ready to repeat the ignominy of Bush v. Gore. Voldemort may live again, and the horror show of 2000 reprised.

Justice Barrett and the rest of them might learn a lesson not from Justice Scalia’s “Get over it!” defense but from former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She’s the only justice in the Bush v. Gore majority who has publicly expressed misgivings about the entire episode.

“Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it — goodbye,’” she told The Chicago Tribune in 2013, eight years after retiring.

For the good of the country — and for its own good — the Supreme Court ought to stay a million miles away from any Trump v. Biden or Biden v. Trump this year."

[cradleandshoot]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/opin ... e=Homepage

"You remember the legal horror show called Bush v. Gore? The Supreme Court couldn’t possibly replicate that. But don’t underestimate the justices’ capacity for self-inflicted wounds. The sequel’s being scripted and it may be worse.

Twenty years ago, the court stepped in to halt a recount in the disputed 2000 presidential election. Both the Constitution and federal law specifically entrusted Congress to resolve such a deadlock. But the justices recklessly inserted themselves anyway. The fiercely divided ruling cost the court its legitimacy and hurt the country.

Now there are widespread worries that the court will jump in again. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” President Trump said in late September. Having just placed Amy Coney Barrett, the sixth Republican-appointed justice on the court, he is evidently thrilled about that prospect.

Only two justices remain on the court who were there in 2000 — Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Have they and their fellow justices learned anything from the court’s misadventure?

One of the biggest myths about the court — born of its continuing gratuitous interventions in contentious issues that should have been left to Congress and states — is that it had no choice but to meddle. That self-proclaimed textualist, Justice Antonin Scalia, told an interviewer years after Bush v. Gore, “We were the laughingstock of the world — the world’s greatest democracy that couldn’t conduct an election.” He omitted any mention of where in the Constitution he had unearthed a “Laughingstock” clause that justified the court’s intrusion.

On occasion, he had a smugger response when asked about the 5-to-4 ruling. “Get over it!” he’d say. Justice David Souter, who dissented, never did, so appalled was he about Bush v. Gore.

The court’s docket is discretionary. The only plausible explanation for the court’s taking up Bush v. Gore is institutional arrogance — the belief that the justices alone could save the country from a crisis that wasn’t a crisis. But the Constitution and a federal statute provide what to do in such instances, even if a president isn’t chosen by Inauguration Day. That hubris not only made the justices look like partisans in robes but also raised the stakes for future court nominations.

When the court shuts down a recount, invents an individual’s right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, unleashes big money into campaigns, guts voting rights and sets abortion policy, presidents and senators react accordingly. The storm over Justice Barrett’s confirmation is the latest chapter in a story that begins with the justices themselves.

Bush v. Gore involved just one state, Florida. This year, that case might look like a picnic. With so many battleground states and with hundreds of lawsuits, no doubt this is the most litigated election ever.

Still, elections should be garden-variety state matters, even races for the presidency. State courts should be left to make decisions based on their own state laws and state constitutions. Yet there’s plenty of reason to think some of the justices would be happy to substitute their own judgment.

In 2000, the court’s logic was that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection” rendered Florida’s system unconstitutional because different counties used different standards to evaluate contested ballots. Never mind that the counties all set out to determine the intent of any given voter. Never mind that George W. Bush’s lawyers had raised the equal protection argument only in passing.

Why would they do otherwise? There were 3,141 counties in the United States. Most contained multiple municipalities, most of which had separate voting precincts. There were different machines, ballot designs and instructions. Lines could be short in some neighborhoods, around the block in others. Many of the disparities disproportionately affected Black people, the chief intended beneficiaries of the 14th Amendment. Yet the court had never gone near declaring that such variances amounted to constitutional transgressions.

In Bush v. Gore, the justices did. Had they finally seen the light when it came to voting inequities? Nope. They were apparently ambivalent enough about their own reasoning that they said the case should not be considered a precedent. Bush v. Gore is the Lord Voldemort of Supreme Court jurisprudence — the case that must not be named.

So maybe the court cooks up some rationale that, lo and behold, again benefits the Republican candidate. Couldn’t happen? It already is, as recent rulings from the court underscore. It’s true that Chief Justice John Roberts on Oct. 19 surprised us, keeping the court out of the political storm. He split from the other four Republican-appointed justices to allow election officials in Pennsylvania to count certain mailed ballots received after the polls close on Election Day. He did so to avoid overruling an interpretation of Pennsylvania law by the state’s own highest court.

Then, last week, he sided with his fellow Republican-appointed justices to block Wisconsin from counting mailed ballots received after Election Day. His distinction was that in Wisconsin it was a federal and a not a state judge who extended a state electoral deadline. That, the chief justice said, wasn’t OK. He was the only justice to make that distinction.

With Justice Barrett on the court, the chief justice doesn’t much matter anymore. Even without him, the court has five other justices appointed by Republicans. The occasionally restrained chief has been the swing justice in the past two years. No more. We don’t know for sure what Justice Barrett thinks about court interventions in presidential elections, but we do know that she, like John Roberts, went to Florida as a private lawyer in 2000 to assist Bush. (Her task, wouldn’t you know it, was to make sure Republican voters’ mailed absentee ballots got counted.)

In their opinion last week on Pennsylvania ballots, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito Jr. and Thomas — all appointed by Republicans — didn’t bother with the chief justice’s salami-slicing. They seemed to indicate that even a state court’s enforcement of voting rights under a state constitution would be unacceptable if that enforcement differed from the judgment of a state legislature. Who but the Supreme Court to fix that?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn’t sign that opinion. Instead, he had issued his own in the Wisconsin case that actually cited Bush v. Gore, favorably so. Twenty years ago, when he was a private lawyer, he liked the ruling so much that he gave a TV interview on the court’s steps extolling it. Count them up: At minimum, that’s four votes ready to repeat the ignominy of Bush v. Gore. Voldemort may live again, and the horror show of 2000 reprised.

Justice Barrett and the rest of them might learn a lesson not from Justice Scalia’s “Get over it!” defense but from former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She’s the only justice in the Bush v. Gore majority who has publicly expressed misgivings about the entire episode.

“Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it — goodbye,’” she told The Chicago Tribune in 2013, eight years after retiring.

For the good of the country — and for its own good — the Supreme Court ought to stay a million miles away from any Trump v. Biden or Biden v. Trump this year."

That gentleman from the NYT sure could use an extra large chunk of cheese with that whine.

[cradleandshoot]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/opin ... e=Homepage

"You remember the legal horror show called Bush v. Gore? The Supreme Court couldn’t possibly replicate that. But don’t underestimate the justices’ capacity for self-inflicted wounds. The sequel’s being scripted and it may be worse.

Twenty years ago, the court stepped in to halt a recount in the disputed 2000 presidential election. Both the Constitution and federal law specifically entrusted Congress to resolve such a deadlock. But the justices recklessly inserted themselves anyway. The fiercely divided ruling cost the court its legitimacy and hurt the country.

Now there are widespread worries that the court will jump in again. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” President Trump said in late September. Having just placed Amy Coney Barrett, the sixth Republican-appointed justice on the court, he is evidently thrilled about that prospect.

Only two justices remain on the court who were there in 2000 — Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Have they and their fellow justices learned anything from the court’s misadventure?

One of the biggest myths about the court — born of its continuing gratuitous interventions in contentious issues that should have been left to Congress and states — is that it had no choice but to meddle. That self-proclaimed textualist, Justice Antonin Scalia, told an interviewer years after Bush v. Gore, “We were the laughingstock of the world — the world’s greatest democracy that couldn’t conduct an election.” He omitted any mention of where in the Constitution he had unearthed a “Laughingstock” clause that justified the court’s intrusion.

On occasion, he had a smugger response when asked about the 5-to-4 ruling. “Get over it!” he’d say. Justice David Souter, who dissented, never did, so appalled was he about Bush v. Gore.

The court’s docket is discretionary. The only plausible explanation for the court’s taking up Bush v. Gore is institutional arrogance — the belief that the justices alone could save the country from a crisis that wasn’t a crisis. But the Constitution and a federal statute provide what to do in such instances, even if a president isn’t chosen by Inauguration Day. That hubris not only made the justices look like partisans in robes but also raised the stakes for future court nominations.

When the court shuts down a recount, invents an individual’s right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, unleashes big money into campaigns, guts voting rights and sets abortion policy, presidents and senators react accordingly. The storm over Justice Barrett’s confirmation is the latest chapter in a story that begins with the justices themselves.

Bush v. Gore involved just one state, Florida. This year, that case might look like a picnic. With so many battleground states and with hundreds of lawsuits, no doubt this is the most litigated election ever.

Still, elections should be garden-variety state matters, even races for the presidency. State courts should be left to make decisions based on their own state laws and state constitutions. Yet there’s plenty of reason to think some of the justices would be happy to substitute their own judgment.

In 2000, the court’s logic was that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection” rendered Florida’s system unconstitutional because different counties used different standards to evaluate contested ballots. Never mind that the counties all set out to determine the intent of any given voter. Never mind that George W. Bush’s lawyers had raised the equal protection argument only in passing.

Why would they do otherwise? There were 3,141 counties in the United States. Most contained multiple municipalities, most of which had separate voting precincts. There were different machines, ballot designs and instructions. Lines could be short in some neighborhoods, around the block in others. Many of the disparities disproportionately affected Black people, the chief intended beneficiaries of the 14th Amendment. Yet the court had never gone near declaring that such variances amounted to constitutional transgressions.

In Bush v. Gore, the justices did. Had they finally seen the light when it came to voting inequities? Nope. They were apparently ambivalent enough about their own reasoning that they said the case should not be considered a precedent. Bush v. Gore is the Lord Voldemort of Supreme Court jurisprudence — the case that must not be named.

So maybe the court cooks up some rationale that, lo and behold, again benefits the Republican candidate. Couldn’t happen? It already is, as recent rulings from the court underscore. It’s true that Chief Justice John Roberts on Oct. 19 surprised us, keeping the court out of the political storm. He split from the other four Republican-appointed justices to allow election officials in Pennsylvania to count certain mailed ballots received after the polls close on Election Day. He did so to avoid overruling an interpretation of Pennsylvania law by the state’s own highest court.

Then, last week, he sided with his fellow Republican-appointed justices to block Wisconsin from counting mailed ballots received after Election Day. His distinction was that in Wisconsin it was a federal and a not a state judge who extended a state electoral deadline. That, the chief justice said, wasn’t OK. He was the only justice to make that distinction.

With Justice Barrett on the court, the chief justice doesn’t much matter anymore. Even without him, the court has five other justices appointed by Republicans. The occasionally restrained chief has been the swing justice in the past two years. No more. We don’t know for sure what Justice Barrett thinks about court interventions in presidential elections, but we do know that she, like John Roberts, went to Florida as a private lawyer in 2000 to assist Bush. (Her task, wouldn’t you know it, was to make sure Republican voters’ mailed absentee ballots got counted.)

In their opinion last week on Pennsylvania ballots, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito Jr. and Thomas — all appointed by Republicans — didn’t bother with the chief justice’s salami-slicing. They seemed to indicate that even a state court’s enforcement of voting rights under a state constitution would be unacceptable if that enforcement differed from the judgment of a state legislature. Who but the Supreme Court to fix that?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn’t sign that opinion. Instead, he had issued his own in the Wisconsin case that actually cited Bush v. Gore, favorably so. Twenty years ago, when he was a private lawyer, he liked the ruling so much that he gave a TV interview on the court’s steps extolling it. Count them up: At minimum, that’s four votes ready to repeat the ignominy of Bush v. Gore. Voldemort may live again, and the horror show of 2000 reprised.

Justice Barrett and the rest of them might learn a lesson not from Justice Scalia’s “Get over it!” defense but from former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She’s the only justice in the Bush v. Gore majority who has publicly expressed misgivings about the entire episode.

“Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it — goodbye,’” she told The Chicago Tribune in 2013, eight years after retiring.

For the good of the country — and for its own good — the Supreme Court ought to stay a million miles away from any Trump v. Biden or Biden v. Trump this year."

That gentleman from the NYT sure could use an extra large chunk of cheese with that whine.

[ABV 8.3%]

Colorado Abortion ban could be felt nationwide, undoubtedly opening it up to court rulings:

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/31/92963742 ... nationwide

Last poll I saw was -18 points on this. And that margin has been accomplished only on the back of a serious dis-information campaign out here.

I actually didn't vote on it myself because I hadn't studied up on it. Ballots in CO are always so chock full of propositions regarding so many different kinds of things (left, right, sane, crazy) that a lot of people just skip over most/all of them.

But if this were somehow to pass accidentally, it would be overwhelmingly reversed in next year's election once people focused on it. So it would be gone/moot before ACB would ever have a chance to consider.

man....just think. If you even spent 20% of the time you do, posting on these threads, on reading/researching the propositions......you mite vote. Instead, you STILL have to dissect tRump, each and every day

guess we all have our prioritites.

[seacoaster]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/opin ... e=Homepage

"You remember the legal horror show called Bush v. Gore? The Supreme Court couldn’t possibly replicate that. But don’t underestimate the justices’ capacity for self-inflicted wounds. The sequel’s being scripted and it may be worse.

Twenty years ago, the court stepped in to halt a recount in the disputed 2000 presidential election. Both the Constitution and federal law specifically entrusted Congress to resolve such a deadlock. But the justices recklessly inserted themselves anyway. The fiercely divided ruling cost the court its legitimacy and hurt the country.

Now there are widespread worries that the court will jump in again. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” President Trump said in late September. Having just placed Amy Coney Barrett, the sixth Republican-appointed justice on the court, he is evidently thrilled about that prospect.

Only two justices remain on the court who were there in 2000 — Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Have they and their fellow justices learned anything from the court’s misadventure?

One of the biggest myths about the court — born of its continuing gratuitous interventions in contentious issues that should have been left to Congress and states — is that it had no choice but to meddle. That self-proclaimed textualist, Justice Antonin Scalia, told an interviewer years after Bush v. Gore, “We were the laughingstock of the world — the world’s greatest democracy that couldn’t conduct an election.” He omitted any mention of where in the Constitution he had unearthed a “Laughingstock” clause that justified the court’s intrusion.

On occasion, he had a smugger response when asked about the 5-to-4 ruling. “Get over it!” he’d say. Justice David Souter, who dissented, never did, so appalled was he about Bush v. Gore.

The court’s docket is discretionary. The only plausible explanation for the court’s taking up Bush v. Gore is institutional arrogance — the belief that the justices alone could save the country from a crisis that wasn’t a crisis. But the Constitution and a federal statute provide what to do in such instances, even if a president isn’t chosen by Inauguration Day. That hubris not only made the justices look like partisans in robes but also raised the stakes for future court nominations.

When the court shuts down a recount, invents an individual’s right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, unleashes big money into campaigns, guts voting rights and sets abortion policy, presidents and senators react accordingly. The storm over Justice Barrett’s confirmation is the latest chapter in a story that begins with the justices themselves.

Bush v. Gore involved just one state, Florida. This year, that case might look like a picnic. With so many battleground states and with hundreds of lawsuits, no doubt this is the most litigated election ever.

Still, elections should be garden-variety state matters, even races for the presidency. State courts should be left to make decisions based on their own state laws and state constitutions. Yet there’s plenty of reason to think some of the justices would be happy to substitute their own judgment.

In 2000, the court’s logic was that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection” rendered Florida’s system unconstitutional because different counties used different standards to evaluate contested ballots. Never mind that the counties all set out to determine the intent of any given voter. Never mind that George W. Bush’s lawyers had raised the equal protection argument only in passing.

Why would they do otherwise? There were 3,141 counties in the United States. Most contained multiple municipalities, most of which had separate voting precincts. There were different machines, ballot designs and instructions. Lines could be short in some neighborhoods, around the block in others. Many of the disparities disproportionately affected Black people, the chief intended beneficiaries of the 14th Amendment. Yet the court had never gone near declaring that such variances amounted to constitutional transgressions.

In Bush v. Gore, the justices did. Had they finally seen the light when it came to voting inequities? Nope. They were apparently ambivalent enough about their own reasoning that they said the case should not be considered a precedent. Bush v. Gore is the Lord Voldemort of Supreme Court jurisprudence — the case that must not be named.

So maybe the court cooks up some rationale that, lo and behold, again benefits the Republican candidate. Couldn’t happen? It already is, as recent rulings from the court underscore. It’s true that Chief Justice John Roberts on Oct. 19 surprised us, keeping the court out of the political storm. He split from the other four Republican-appointed justices to allow election officials in Pennsylvania to count certain mailed ballots received after the polls close on Election Day. He did so to avoid overruling an interpretation of Pennsylvania law by the state’s own highest court.

Then, last week, he sided with his fellow Republican-appointed justices to block Wisconsin from counting mailed ballots received after Election Day. His distinction was that in Wisconsin it was a federal and a not a state judge who extended a state electoral deadline. That, the chief justice said, wasn’t OK. He was the only justice to make that distinction.

With Justice Barrett on the court, the chief justice doesn’t much matter anymore. Even without him, the court has five other justices appointed by Republicans. The occasionally restrained chief has been the swing justice in the past two years. No more. We don’t know for sure what Justice Barrett thinks about court interventions in presidential elections, but we do know that she, like John Roberts, went to Florida as a private lawyer in 2000 to assist Bush. (Her task, wouldn’t you know it, was to make sure Republican voters’ mailed absentee ballots got counted.)

In their opinion last week on Pennsylvania ballots, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito Jr. and Thomas — all appointed by Republicans — didn’t bother with the chief justice’s salami-slicing. They seemed to indicate that even a state court’s enforcement of voting rights under a state constitution would be unacceptable if that enforcement differed from the judgment of a state legislature. Who but the Supreme Court to fix that?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn’t sign that opinion. Instead, he had issued his own in the Wisconsin case that actually cited Bush v. Gore, favorably so. Twenty years ago, when he was a private lawyer, he liked the ruling so much that he gave a TV interview on the court’s steps extolling it. Count them up: At minimum, that’s four votes ready to repeat the ignominy of Bush v. Gore. Voldemort may live again, and the horror show of 2000 reprised.

Justice Barrett and the rest of them might learn a lesson not from Justice Scalia’s “Get over it!” defense but from former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She’s the only justice in the Bush v. Gore majority who has publicly expressed misgivings about the entire episode.

“Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it — goodbye,’” she told The Chicago Tribune in 2013, eight years after retiring.

For the good of the country — and for its own good — the Supreme Court ought to stay a million miles away from any Trump v. Biden or Biden v. Trump this year."

That gentleman from the NYT sure could use an extra large chunk of cheese with that whine.

I know that you don't much care, but he is the legal affairs editor at Newsweek, and wrote a book about the Florida Hanging Chad Fiasco of 2000. It's an opinion piece in the Times. And, not parenthetically, the guy is right.

[cradleandshoot]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/opin ... e=Homepage

"You remember the legal horror show called Bush v. Gore? The Supreme Court couldn’t possibly replicate that. But don’t underestimate the justices’ capacity for self-inflicted wounds. The sequel’s being scripted and it may be worse.

Twenty years ago, the court stepped in to halt a recount in the disputed 2000 presidential election. Both the Constitution and federal law specifically entrusted Congress to resolve such a deadlock. But the justices recklessly inserted themselves anyway. The fiercely divided ruling cost the court its legitimacy and hurt the country.

Now there are widespread worries that the court will jump in again. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” President Trump said in late September. Having just placed Amy Coney Barrett, the sixth Republican-appointed justice on the court, he is evidently thrilled about that prospect.

Only two justices remain on the court who were there in 2000 — Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Have they and their fellow justices learned anything from the court’s misadventure?

One of the biggest myths about the court — born of its continuing gratuitous interventions in contentious issues that should have been left to Congress and states — is that it had no choice but to meddle. That self-proclaimed textualist, Justice Antonin Scalia, told an interviewer years after Bush v. Gore, “We were the laughingstock of the world — the world’s greatest democracy that couldn’t conduct an election.” He omitted any mention of where in the Constitution he had unearthed a “Laughingstock” clause that justified the court’s intrusion.

On occasion, he had a smugger response when asked about the 5-to-4 ruling. “Get over it!” he’d say. Justice David Souter, who dissented, never did, so appalled was he about Bush v. Gore.

The court’s docket is discretionary. The only plausible explanation for the court’s taking up Bush v. Gore is institutional arrogance — the belief that the justices alone could save the country from a crisis that wasn’t a crisis. But the Constitution and a federal statute provide what to do in such instances, even if a president isn’t chosen by Inauguration Day. That hubris not only made the justices look like partisans in robes but also raised the stakes for future court nominations.

When the court shuts down a recount, invents an individual’s right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, unleashes big money into campaigns, guts voting rights and sets abortion policy, presidents and senators react accordingly. The storm over Justice Barrett’s confirmation is the latest chapter in a story that begins with the justices themselves.

Bush v. Gore involved just one state, Florida. This year, that case might look like a picnic. With so many battleground states and with hundreds of lawsuits, no doubt this is the most litigated election ever.

Still, elections should be garden-variety state matters, even races for the presidency. State courts should be left to make decisions based on their own state laws and state constitutions. Yet there’s plenty of reason to think some of the justices would be happy to substitute their own judgment.

In 2000, the court’s logic was that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection” rendered Florida’s system unconstitutional because different counties used different standards to evaluate contested ballots. Never mind that the counties all set out to determine the intent of any given voter. Never mind that George W. Bush’s lawyers had raised the equal protection argument only in passing.

Why would they do otherwise? There were 3,141 counties in the United States. Most contained multiple municipalities, most of which had separate voting precincts. There were different machines, ballot designs and instructions. Lines could be short in some neighborhoods, around the block in others. Many of the disparities disproportionately affected Black people, the chief intended beneficiaries of the 14th Amendment. Yet the court had never gone near declaring that such variances amounted to constitutional transgressions.

In Bush v. Gore, the justices did. Had they finally seen the light when it came to voting inequities? Nope. They were apparently ambivalent enough about their own reasoning that they said the case should not be considered a precedent. Bush v. Gore is the Lord Voldemort of Supreme Court jurisprudence — the case that must not be named.

So maybe the court cooks up some rationale that, lo and behold, again benefits the Republican candidate. Couldn’t happen? It already is, as recent rulings from the court underscore. It’s true that Chief Justice John Roberts on Oct. 19 surprised us, keeping the court out of the political storm. He split from the other four Republican-appointed justices to allow election officials in Pennsylvania to count certain mailed ballots received after the polls close on Election Day. He did so to avoid overruling an interpretation of Pennsylvania law by the state’s own highest court.

Then, last week, he sided with his fellow Republican-appointed justices to block Wisconsin from counting mailed ballots received after Election Day. His distinction was that in Wisconsin it was a federal and a not a state judge who extended a state electoral deadline. That, the chief justice said, wasn’t OK. He was the only justice to make that distinction.

With Justice Barrett on the court, the chief justice doesn’t much matter anymore. Even without him, the court has five other justices appointed by Republicans. The occasionally restrained chief has been the swing justice in the past two years. No more. We don’t know for sure what Justice Barrett thinks about court interventions in presidential elections, but we do know that she, like John Roberts, went to Florida as a private lawyer in 2000 to assist Bush. (Her task, wouldn’t you know it, was to make sure Republican voters’ mailed absentee ballots got counted.)

In their opinion last week on Pennsylvania ballots, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito Jr. and Thomas — all appointed by Republicans — didn’t bother with the chief justice’s salami-slicing. They seemed to indicate that even a state court’s enforcement of voting rights under a state constitution would be unacceptable if that enforcement differed from the judgment of a state legislature. Who but the Supreme Court to fix that?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn’t sign that opinion. Instead, he had issued his own in the Wisconsin case that actually cited Bush v. Gore, favorably so. Twenty years ago, when he was a private lawyer, he liked the ruling so much that he gave a TV interview on the court’s steps extolling it. Count them up: At minimum, that’s four votes ready to repeat the ignominy of Bush v. Gore. Voldemort may live again, and the horror show of 2000 reprised.

Justice Barrett and the rest of them might learn a lesson not from Justice Scalia’s “Get over it!” defense but from former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She’s the only justice in the Bush v. Gore majority who has publicly expressed misgivings about the entire episode.

“Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it — goodbye,’” she told The Chicago Tribune in 2013, eight years after retiring.

For the good of the country — and for its own good — the Supreme Court ought to stay a million miles away from any Trump v. Biden or Biden v. Trump this year."

That gentleman from the NYT sure could use an extra large chunk of cheese with that whine.

I know that you don't much care, but he is the legal affairs editor at Newsweek, and wrote a book about the Florida Hanging Chad Fiasco of 2000. It's an opinion piece in the Times. And, not parenthetically, the guy is right.

I get it coaster, it's an opinion piece. We both could go back and forth forever about the merits of his opinion. That is where all the fun is in any op-ed piece ever written.

[cradleandshoot]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/opin ... e=Homepage

"You remember the legal horror show called Bush v. Gore? The Supreme Court couldn’t possibly replicate that. But don’t underestimate the justices’ capacity for self-inflicted wounds. The sequel’s being scripted and it may be worse.

Twenty years ago, the court stepped in to halt a recount in the disputed 2000 presidential election. Both the Constitution and federal law specifically entrusted Congress to resolve such a deadlock. But the justices recklessly inserted themselves anyway. The fiercely divided ruling cost the court its legitimacy and hurt the country.

Now there are widespread worries that the court will jump in again. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” President Trump said in late September. Having just placed Amy Coney Barrett, the sixth Republican-appointed justice on the court, he is evidently thrilled about that prospect.

Only two justices remain on the court who were there in 2000 — Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Have they and their fellow justices learned anything from the court’s misadventure?

One of the biggest myths about the court — born of its continuing gratuitous interventions in contentious issues that should have been left to Congress and states — is that it had no choice but to meddle. That self-proclaimed textualist, Justice Antonin Scalia, told an interviewer years after Bush v. Gore, “We were the laughingstock of the world — the world’s greatest democracy that couldn’t conduct an election.” He omitted any mention of where in the Constitution he had unearthed a “Laughingstock” clause that justified the court’s intrusion.

On occasion, he had a smugger response when asked about the 5-to-4 ruling. “Get over it!” he’d say. Justice David Souter, who dissented, never did, so appalled was he about Bush v. Gore.

The court’s docket is discretionary. The only plausible explanation for the court’s taking up Bush v. Gore is institutional arrogance — the belief that the justices alone could save the country from a crisis that wasn’t a crisis. But the Constitution and a federal statute provide what to do in such instances, even if a president isn’t chosen by Inauguration Day. That hubris not only made the justices look like partisans in robes but also raised the stakes for future court nominations.

When the court shuts down a recount, invents an individual’s right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, unleashes big money into campaigns, guts voting rights and sets abortion policy, presidents and senators react accordingly. The storm over Justice Barrett’s confirmation is the latest chapter in a story that begins with the justices themselves.

Bush v. Gore involved just one state, Florida. This year, that case might look like a picnic. With so many battleground states and with hundreds of lawsuits, no doubt this is the most litigated election ever.

Still, elections should be garden-variety state matters, even races for the presidency. State courts should be left to make decisions based on their own state laws and state constitutions. Yet there’s plenty of reason to think some of the justices would be happy to substitute their own judgment.

In 2000, the court’s logic was that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection” rendered Florida’s system unconstitutional because different counties used different standards to evaluate contested ballots. Never mind that the counties all set out to determine the intent of any given voter. Never mind that George W. Bush’s lawyers had raised the equal protection argument only in passing.

Why would they do otherwise? There were 3,141 counties in the United States. Most contained multiple municipalities, most of which had separate voting precincts. There were different machines, ballot designs and instructions. Lines could be short in some neighborhoods, around the block in others. Many of the disparities disproportionately affected Black people, the chief intended beneficiaries of the 14th Amendment. Yet the court had never gone near declaring that such variances amounted to constitutional transgressions.

In Bush v. Gore, the justices did. Had they finally seen the light when it came to voting inequities? Nope. They were apparently ambivalent enough about their own reasoning that they said the case should not be considered a precedent. Bush v. Gore is the Lord Voldemort of Supreme Court jurisprudence — the case that must not be named.

So maybe the court cooks up some rationale that, lo and behold, again benefits the Republican candidate. Couldn’t happen? It already is, as recent rulings from the court underscore. It’s true that Chief Justice John Roberts on Oct. 19 surprised us, keeping the court out of the political storm. He split from the other four Republican-appointed justices to allow election officials in Pennsylvania to count certain mailed ballots received after the polls close on Election Day. He did so to avoid overruling an interpretation of Pennsylvania law by the state’s own highest court.

Then, last week, he sided with his fellow Republican-appointed justices to block Wisconsin from counting mailed ballots received after Election Day. His distinction was that in Wisconsin it was a federal and a not a state judge who extended a state electoral deadline. That, the chief justice said, wasn’t OK. He was the only justice to make that distinction.

With Justice Barrett on the court, the chief justice doesn’t much matter anymore. Even without him, the court has five other justices appointed by Republicans. The occasionally restrained chief has been the swing justice in the past two years. No more. We don’t know for sure what Justice Barrett thinks about court interventions in presidential elections, but we do know that she, like John Roberts, went to Florida as a private lawyer in 2000 to assist Bush. (Her task, wouldn’t you know it, was to make sure Republican voters’ mailed absentee ballots got counted.)

In their opinion last week on Pennsylvania ballots, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito Jr. and Thomas — all appointed by Republicans — didn’t bother with the chief justice’s salami-slicing. They seemed to indicate that even a state court’s enforcement of voting rights under a state constitution would be unacceptable if that enforcement differed from the judgment of a state legislature. Who but the Supreme Court to fix that?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn’t sign that opinion. Instead, he had issued his own in the Wisconsin case that actually cited Bush v. Gore, favorably so. Twenty years ago, when he was a private lawyer, he liked the ruling so much that he gave a TV interview on the court’s steps extolling it. Count them up: At minimum, that’s four votes ready to repeat the ignominy of Bush v. Gore. Voldemort may live again, and the horror show of 2000 reprised.

Justice Barrett and the rest of them might learn a lesson not from Justice Scalia’s “Get over it!” defense but from former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She’s the only justice in the Bush v. Gore majority who has publicly expressed misgivings about the entire episode.

“Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it — goodbye,’” she told The Chicago Tribune in 2013, eight years after retiring.

For the good of the country — and for its own good — the Supreme Court ought to stay a million miles away from any Trump v. Biden or Biden v. Trump this year."

That gentleman from the NYT sure could use an extra large chunk of cheese with that whine.

I know that you don't much care, but he is the legal affairs editor at Newsweek, and wrote a book about the Florida Hanging Chad Fiasco of 2000. It's an opinion piece in the Times. And, not parenthetically, the guy is right.

When you go back to the Bush v Gore decision i believe you are overlooking, and the author overlooks a very important point. The issue in Florida was WHY they stopped counting votes. They were no longer counting votes. The system for voting in Florida was so screwed up and confusing it allowed for the "hanging chad" problem. They were not trying to count votes in Florida. They were trying to determine who the person had voted for because the "hanging chad' made that subjective. The problem originated from the people that set up the system for voting in Florida. If your comfortable with the folks doing the recount trying to determine who the hell the people meant to vote for, how can you possibly do an accurate recount under those conditions? The answer is you can't, the SCOTUS did the only thing they could do. The onus on this foul up belonged to the people in Florida that set up the bonehead system in the first place. If they had done their jobs this issue would have never had to be decided by the SCOTUS.

[seacoaster]

"...the SCOTUS did the only thing they could do."

Exactly not. There was at least one other thing it could have done. You need to read more.

[cradleandshoot]

"...the SCOTUS did the only thing they could do."

Exactly not. There was at least one other thing it could have done. You need to read more.

It was not the job of the SCOTUS to fix the foul up of the people that ran the election. They could have ruled the election null and void and told the folks in Florida to try it again. They didn't authorize the Mulligan and should not have had to do so. When it gets to the point where the folks counting the votes have to become mind readers there is no accurate way to recount all the votes. Florida effed this vote up, not the SCOTUS. An accurate recount was no longer possible, not when the people doing so have to try and judge what the intentions of the voter were.

[kramerica.inc]

“Never. It’s never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they derive from faith or anywhere else on the law.”
-ACB, 2017 Senate Hearing

[ggait]

Abortion ban defeated (as expected) in CO 60/40.

Passes as expected in LA 60/40.

Show how SCOTUS's thoughts on RvW (with or without ACB) have so little practical significance. That's why Kav, Roberts and (probably) ACB will never vote to overturn RvW. Why invite the mother of all backlashes for something that won't hardly change anything. Peoples minds have not changed in the last 50 years and they are not going to change in the next 50 either.

Meanwhile the Obamcare case gets argued on Tuesday. Basically ACB's coming out party.

The decision should be 9-0 to uphold Obamacare. But I'll put my $2 on 6-3. With ACB voting to uphold.

[CU77]

Who do you think will be #6 in that count?

[ggait]

Who do you think will be #6 in that count?

I’d guess the three would be Thomas, Alito and one of Kav, Gors or maybe ACB.

[kramerica.inc]

“I totally reject and I have rejected throughout my entire career the proposition that, as you say, the end justifies the means or that a judge should decide cases based on a desire to reach a certain outcome.” — ACB, 2017 Senate hearing.

[youthathletics]

“I totally reject and I have rejected throughout my entire career the proposition that, as you say, the end justifies the means or that a judge should decide cases based on a desire to reach a certain outcome.” — ACB, 2017 Senate hearing.

Tee's up the argument about right and wrong with the recent/current election concerns, much like Alito decided in Pa. WRT to postmarked ballots. Almost seems like we are all being played to tear down everything as we once knew it.