Browsed by
Category: Law/Crime

Clarence Thomas’s dystopia is becoming our reality

Clarence Thomas’s dystopia is becoming our reality

Corey Robin writes: On Friday, June 24th, Justice Clarence Thomas got something he’s sought his entire adult life: recognition. Writing in support of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Thomas recommended that the Court, as a next move, strike down a half century’s worth of “demonstrably erroneous” precedents establishing the right to contraception, the right to same-sex sexual conduct, and the right to same-sex marriage. On television and across the Internet, commentators took notice. Insiders have long…

Read More Read More

‘Operation Higher Court’: Inside the religious right’s efforts to entertain and influence Supreme Court justices

‘Operation Higher Court’: Inside the religious right’s efforts to entertain and influence Supreme Court justices

Politico reports: The former leader of a religious right organization said he recruited and coached wealthy volunteers including a prominent Dayton, Ohio, evangelical couple to wine, dine and entertain conservative Supreme Court justices while pushing conservative positions on abortion, homosexuality, gun restrictions and other issues. Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister who headed the Faith and Action group headquartered near the Supreme Court from 1995 to 2018, said he arranged over the years for about 20 couples to fly to Washington…

Read More Read More

Extremists controlling the Supreme Court are the biggest threat to American democracy

Extremists controlling the Supreme Court are the biggest threat to American democracy

George Soros writes: The United States has been a constantly evolving democracy ever since it was founded in 1776, but its survival as a democracy is now gravely endangered. A set of loosely interconnected developments at home and abroad is responsible for this crisis. From abroad, the US is threatened by repressive regimes led by Xi Jinping in China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia who want to impose an autocratic form of government on the world. But the threat to the…

Read More Read More

Biden defends planned visit to Saudi Arabia as U.S. judge asks whether crown prince should get immunity

Biden defends planned visit to Saudi Arabia as U.S. judge asks whether crown prince should get immunity

Reuters reports: President Joe Biden on Saturday defended his decision to travel to Saudi Arabia saying human rights would be on his agenda as he gave a preview of a trip on which he aims to reset ties with the crown prince, who he previously denounced as a pariah. Biden will hold bilateral talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and his leadership team, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his visit to the Middle East next week. The…

Read More Read More

Ex-Trump White House counsel Cipollone ‘cooperative’ with Jan. 6 committee during lengthy interview

Ex-Trump White House counsel Cipollone ‘cooperative’ with Jan. 6 committee during lengthy interview

NBC News reports: Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone appeared before the House Jan. 6 committee for a marathon interview Friday, sitting for more than seven hours of questions. Cipollone, who panel vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., has repeatedly described as a critical witness, joined the committee for a videotaped and transcribed closed-door interview around 8:45 a.m. ET, and left shortly before 5:30 p.m., taking numerous breaks with his attorneys throughout the day. He was in the deposition…

Read More Read More

Right-wing evangelical activist bragged about praying with justices inside Supreme Court

Right-wing evangelical activist bragged about praying with justices inside Supreme Court

Rolling Stone reports: At an evangelical victory party in front of the Supreme Court to celebrate the downfall of Roe v. Wade last week, a prominent Capitol Hill religious leader was caught on a hot mic making a bombshell claim: that she prays with sitting justices inside the high court. “We’re the only people who do that,” Peggy Nienaber said. This disclosure was a serious matter on its own terms, but it also suggested a major conflict of interest. Nienaber’s…

Read More Read More

Global dismay as Supreme Court ruling leaves Biden’s climate policy in tatters

Global dismay as Supreme Court ruling leaves Biden’s climate policy in tatters

The Guardian reports: Joe Biden’s election triggered a global surge in optimism that the climate crisis would, finally, be decisively confronted. But the US supreme court’s decision last week to curtail America’s ability to cut planet-heating emissions has proved the latest blow to a faltering effort by Biden on climate that is now in danger of becoming largely moribund. The supreme court’s ruling that the US government could not use its existing powers to phase out coal-fired power generation without…

Read More Read More

Christian nationalists are excited about what comes next

Christian nationalists are excited about what comes next

Katherine Stewart writes: The shape of the Christian nationalist movement in the post-Roe future is coming into view, and it should terrify anyone concerned for the future of constitutional democracy. The Supreme Court’s decision to rescind the reproductive rights that American women have enjoyed over the past half-century will not lead America’s homegrown religious authoritarians to retire from the culture wars and enjoy a sweet moment of triumph. On the contrary, movement leaders are already preparing for a new and…

Read More Read More

The Supreme Court is poised to cut the heart out of majority rule

The Supreme Court is poised to cut the heart out of majority rule

Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut write: The Supreme Court’s extremist justices are aiming their next dagger at the heart of the entire democratic enterprise: voters’ right to pick leaders of their choice. On Thursday, the court announced that it will hear Moore vs. Harper, a North Carolina case involving gerrymandered congressional district maps drawn by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature. Those maps would probably give Republicans control of 11 of 14 congressional districts in the state. North Carolina’s Supreme Court…

Read More Read More

After string of Supreme Court setbacks, Democrats wonder whether Biden White House is capable of urgency moment demands

After string of Supreme Court setbacks, Democrats wonder whether Biden White House is capable of urgency moment demands

CNN reports: Debra Messing was fed up. The former “Will & Grace” star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The mood was fatalistic, according to three people on the call, which was also co-organized by the advocacy group Build Back Better Together. Messing said she’d gotten Joe Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked…

Read More Read More

The norms the Supreme Court targeted this term all came from the same era

The norms the Supreme Court targeted this term all came from the same era

Bill McKibben and Akaya Windwood write: The supreme court, thank heaven, finally adjourned on Thursday, after a week of decisions that blew up much of the framework of American policy and politics. And a key thing to notice about that assault on American norms was how many of their targets were adopted in a few short years in the 1960s and 1970s. Roe v Wade, of course, dates to 1973, the fruit of many year’s work by committed feminists. Thursday’s…

Read More Read More

Bill McKibben: ‘Clean Air Act can’t really be used to protect clean air now

Bill McKibben: ‘Clean Air Act can’t really be used to protect clean air now

  After a bitter 50-year fight over climate change policy, the Supreme Court delivered another win to the right wing on Thursday. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court decided that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for existing power plants. “The Clean Air Act can’t really be used to protect clean air now,” says leading environmentalist, Bill McKibben. He says fossil fuel tycoons have successfully lobbied against decades of progress and shifting…

Read More Read More

Google allowed a sanctioned Russian advertising company to harvest user data for months

Google allowed a sanctioned Russian advertising company to harvest user data for months

By Craig Silverman, ProPublica, July 1, 2022 The day after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner sent a letter to Google warning it to be on alert for “exploitation of your platform by Russia and Russian-linked entities,” and calling on the company to audit its advertising business’s compliance with economic sanctions. But as recently as June 23, Google was sharing potentially sensitive user data with a sanctioned Russian ad tech company owned by Russia’s largest…

Read More Read More

Fox and other rightwing networks confront billion-dollar lawsuits over election fraud claims

Fox and other rightwing networks confront billion-dollar lawsuits over election fraud claims

The Guardian reports: In the months following the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock. There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime. But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN), and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave, new world wasn’t…

Read More Read More

Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony changed our minds about indicting Donald Trump

Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony changed our minds about indicting Donald Trump

Alan Z. Rozenshtein and Jed Handelsman Shugerman write: Until Tuesday, we had both publicly stated that the Department of Justice had insufficient evidence to indict former President Trump for his conduct on Jan. 6. Our conclusion, which we each came to independently, was largely grounded in First Amendment concerns about criminalizing purely political speech. But Tuesday’s explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, changed our minds. In particular, Hutchinson testified to hearing…

Read More Read More

The January 6 committee is going to have the final word

The January 6 committee is going to have the final word

Quinta Jurecic writes: During its astonishing Tuesday hearing about Donald Trump’s actions on the day of January 6, the House select committee investigating the insurrection made clear that the integrity of its work is under threat. “The same people who drove the former president’s pressure campaign to overturn the election are now trying to cover up the truth about January 6,” warned committee chair Bennie Thompson. “But thanks to the courage of certain individuals, the truth won’t be buried.” The…

Read More Read More