“There Is No Such Thing As Settled Law”: If You Liked 10 Years Of The Roberts Court, You’ll Love The Next Republican President
There were plenty of terrifying moments in this month’s Republican presidential debate on CNN, but one of the most terrifying, to me, was when the candidates started to complain that the current U.S. Supreme Court isn’t conservative enough.
Specifically, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz went after Chief Justice John Roberts, who has led what law professor Erwin Chemerinksy has called “the most conservative court since the mid-1930s” but whose appointment the conservative far-right Cruz nonetheless called a “mistake.” What Cruz objected to was Roberts’ two votes to save the Affordable Care Act from frivolous conservative lawsuits. What he didn’t mention is that a less conservative right-wing Court would not have even entertained those politically motivated cases in the first place. In fact, the Court under Roberts has taken a stunning turn to the Right.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the day Chief Justice Roberts was sworn in to the Supreme Court. In that decade, aided by the confirmation of fellow George W. Bush nominee Samuel Alito, he has led a Court that has radically reshaped vast swathes of the law, undermining constitutional protections for civil rights and voting rights, reproductive freedom, workplace fairness, the environment, gun violence, consumer fairness and representative democracy as a whole.
As People For the American Way explains in “Judgment Day 2016,” a new analysis of Roberts’ decade at the head of the Supreme Court, under his leadership the Court “has issued more than 165 5-4 decisions, many of which have bent the law and defied logic, seriously harmed the rights of ordinary Americans, promoted the interests of powerful corporations, and damaged our democracy.”
The most infamous of these is probably Citizens United v. FEC, which, along with a set of related cases, gutted the country’s campaign finance system, allowing wealthy individuals and corporate interests almost unchecked influence over American elections. But the Roberts Court’s gifts to Corporate America did not end there. Among the cases decided by the court’s five-justice conservative majority were Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., which undermined women’s ability to seek equal pay for equal work; Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which upended religious liberty protections to allow corporations to deny full health insurance coverage to their employees; and AT&T v. Concepcion, which protected corporations that cheat large numbers of customers out of small amounts of money.
The Court’s conservative right-wing bent has extended to civil rights cases, most stunningly its 5-4 ruling gutting the enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act, which had allowed the Justice Department to review changes in voting laws in areas with a history of racial discrimination in election practices. In other cases, the court has been just one vote away from wreaking havoc on civil rights laws, including the 5-4 decision in which Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the four moderate Justices to preserve the ability to effectively enforce the Fair Housing Act, another critical achievement of the Civil Rights Movement.
This Court will rightly be remembered by many as the one that guaranteed gays and lesbians the right to marry in Obergefell v. Hodges. But that landmark case, in which Justice Kennedy joined the moderate Justices, was one bright spot in a very bleak landscape.
It’s important to remember as well that Chief Justice Roberts, whom Republicans are now attacking as too liberal, wrote the conservative justices’ scathing dissent in that case. If conservatives get one more vote on the Supreme Court, Obergefell could be in danger. If there is one thing the Roberts Court has taught us, it is that there is no such thing as settled law. Despite predictions that the Republican Party would just fold up its tent on the marriage issue, its presidential candidates are campaigning with promises to appoint Justices who will overturn the decision.
Whatever issue you care about most in the upcoming election – civil rights, health care, reproductive freedom, LGBT rights, or others – it will almost certainly end up before the Supreme Court. And the composition of that Court, and whether it will protect our rights or defer to big corporations and right-wing interests, will depend greatly on whether a Democrat or Republican is elected as our next president.
By the end of the next president’s first term, four of the current Supreme Court Justices will be in their 80s, past modern Justices’ average retirement age of 78. This means that the next president will likely have the power to either turn back the Court’s rightward swing … or preserve or worsen it for decades to come.
By: Michael B. Keegan, President, People for The American Way; The Huffington Post Blog, September 29, 2015
“Who Has A Seat At the Table?”: Walking His Talk, Obama Has Presided Over The Most Demographically Diverse Administration In History
Back in January 2013, Annie Lowrey wrote an article that surprised a lot of us titled: Obama’s Remade Inner Circle Has an All-Male Look, So Far.
…Mr. Obama has put together a national security team dominated by men, with Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts nominated to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as the secretary of state, Chuck Hagel chosen to be the defense secretary and John O. Brennan nominated as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Given the leading contenders for other top jobs, including chief of staff and Treasury secretary, Mr. Obama’s inner circle will continue to be dominated by men well into his second term.
From the White House down the ranks, the Obama administration has compiled a broad appointment record that has significantly exceeded the Bush administration in appointing women but has done no better than the Clinton administration, according to an analysis of personnel data by The New York Times.
Lowrey obviously wrote that when the administration was in the midst of transition, as many first-term appointees left their positions and the President was appointing their replacements. But it fed a meme that had been developed early on in the administration that the White House culture was dominated by men (at least until some folks decided to put a target on Valerie Jarrett’s back as the woman who was responsible for all of the President’s failings).
Recently, Juliet Eilperin revisited the whole issue of Obama’s appointments – not only of women, but a more broad perspective of diversity in the administration.
Obama has presided over the most demographically diverse administration in history, according to a new analysis of his top appointments. The majority of top policy appointments within the executive branch are held by women and minorities for the first time in history.
The transformation partly reflects a broader trend in U.S. society, but it also reflects the results of a calculated strategy by the nation’s first African American president. The shifts are significant enough, experts say, that they may have forever transformed the face of government…
O’Connell said that her research reveals that Obama has placed women and minorities in 53.5 percent of those posts. His predecessor, President George W. Bush, by contrast, installed women and minorities in 25.6 percent, while President Clinton’s number was 37.5 percent.
In order to chart that development over the last few presidents, the Washington Post provided some interesting graphs.
Due to the fact that the lead for this article was the announcement by the White House that President Obama will nominate Eric Fanning as the first openly-gay Secretary of the Army, Eilperin also notes the following:
And Fanning’s nomination punctuates the fact that members of the LGBT community have also made similar advances under Obama: There are now hundreds of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender appointees in the executive branch, compared with a handful in past administrations.
One omission in all this is the lack of any reporting on Native American appointments. I am not aware of any that the Obama administration has nominated to Cabinet positions, but the only Native American currently serving as a federal judge is Diane Humetewa, who was nominated by President Obama in September 2013 (the President previously nominated Arvo Mikkanen, but his confirmation was blocked by Senate Republicans).
When President Obama says that “everyone gets a seat at the table,” this is an example of him walking his talk.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, September 27, 2015
“The Perils Of A Small-Tent Party”: An ‘Archie Bunker’ Posture In A ‘Modern Family’ World
In the last national election cycle, the Republican losses obviously counted, but so too did the way in which they lost. GOP candidates, party officials later acknowledged, were catering to an increasingly narrow part of the population. The Republican Party’s base was getting older, whiter, and male-dominated.
GOP strategists were determined to change the party’s focus. They failed spectacularly.
Steve Schmidt, who served as Republican Sen. John McCain’s top strategist in the 2008 presidential election, said it’s problematic for the GOP to be seen as intolerant, particularly with moderate voters who help sway the general election.
“Of course it’s worrisome if you have a party that’s perceived as anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-gay, intolerant of Muslims,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt’s correct that the party’s problems are exacerbated by perceptions of intolerance and exclusivity, and this doesn’t just alienate Latinos, Asians, Muslims, and the LGBT community. It also has the effect of pushing away white mainstream voters who start to see Republicans as wildly out of step with a diverse, modern nation.
On Friday, for example, President Obama nominated Eric Fanning as the next Secretary of the Army. No one has questioned Fanning’s qualifications, but GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee condemned the nomination because Fanning is gay. “It’s clear President Obama is more interested in appeasing America’s homosexuals than honoring America’s heroes,” the Republican said, adding, “Homosexuality is not a job qualification. The U.S. military is designed to keep Americans safe and complete combat missions, not conduct social experiments.”
It’s an “Archie Bunker” posture in a “Modern Family” world.
Of course, the broader point is that the campaign to create a small-tent party isn’t limited to Huckabee. Ben Carson doesn’t think Muslims can be president. Donald Trump vowed last week that he’s “going to be looking into” non-existent Muslim “training camps.” Bobby Jindal said this morning that a Muslim could be president, but only if he or she took the oath of office on a Christian Bible.
It’s against this backdrop that many Republicans want to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood funding. And condemn the Black Lives Matter movement while ignoring the need for a Voting Rights Act repair. And push over-the-top talking points about “anchor babies” and mass deportations.
After the 2012 cycle, Republican officials concluded, “Our party is too small.” To which the GOP’s driving forces spent three years responding, “Let’s make it smaller and more reactionary.”
All of which brings us back to that Steve Schmidt quote: “Of course it’s worrisome if you have a party that’s perceived as anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-gay, intolerant of Muslims.”
The GOP presidential nominating process has several months to go. There’s every reason to believe the most “worrisome” developments are still to come.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 22, 2015
“Julian Bond R.I.P.”: A Voice Of Unflagging Witness For Peace And Human Dignity
It’s always a shock when someone who is an eternal symbol of precocity dies, especially when it’s at a not entirely inappropriate age. To most Americans Julian Bond, who died on Saturday at 75, was a civil rights leader known for his wit and urbanity, and for long service to the great cause of his generation. To Georgians who remember the 1960s, he was the preeminent figure who united the civil rights and antiwar causes, and black and white progressives, and invariably made his enemies look foolish and small.
A quick personal anecdote: my best friend in high school had her purse stolen when we were in downtown Atlanta participating in an antiwar protest. What upset her most was not the loss of money or ID, but the Julian Bond autograph she carried around with her.
His national celebrity was attributable to two events: first, the refusal of the Georgia House of Representatives to seat him upon his election to the body in 1965, allegedly on grounds of his sympathetic comments about draft resisters. The Georgia House was forced to accept Bond by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966, shortly before that chamber helped elect the ax-handle-wielding segregationist restauranteur Lester Maddox governor of the state.
But Bond’s second big national moment was even bigger: in the chaos of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, after he was seated as a delegate via a compromise with a slate chosen by Maddox, his name was placed into nomination for vice president by the McCarthy-supporting Wisconsin delegation.
During the vice presidential balloting won, of course, by the nominee Hubert Humprey’s choice Ed Muskie, Bond sheepishly withdrew his name on grounds that he was well short of the constitutional age for the office of 35.
Bond went on to serve for two decades in the Georgia legislature, which he left to pursue a seat in Congress in 1986. That led to the low point of his career, a bitter and unsuccessful campaign against his old SNCC colleague John Lewis. It’s likely that Lewis–who remains in the House nearly three decades after that campaign–was the only person who could have defeated Bond that year.
The two old friends soon reconciled, and Bond went on to become president of the NAACP for ten years. Throughout his later years, Bond became a familiar face on television talk shows, the college lecture circuit, and controversial topics. He was a very important figure in securing civil rights movement support for LGBT equality and marriage equality, and his final arrest at a protest occurred just over two years ago, when he joined a protest at the White House against the XL Keystone Pipeline.
We will miss his voice and his unflagging witness for peace and human dignity.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, August 17, 2015
“Ted Cruz Loves Freedom, Liberty, And Dictators”: Loving Freedom While Applauding Ruthless Dictatorship
Republican presidential candidate and coloring book star Ted Cruz loves Egyptian dictatorship almost as much as he loves freedom and Candy Crush.
At Thursday night’s WWE-style Republican debate, the junior senator from Texas took a moment to praise the leadership skills and “courage” of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
“We need a president that shows the courage that Egypt’s President al-Sisi, a Muslim, when he called out the radical Islamic terrorists who are threatening the world,” Cruz said to an applauding audience.
It’s not the first time he’s praised Sisi—it’s is a common conservative meme to compare President Obama’s alleged weakness to the supposed manliness of strongmen abroad. And Cruz is far from the only Republican lawmaker to join the Sisi fan club. (Fellow 2016 contenders Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush are pretty much on the same page.) But for all of Cruz’s talk about liberty and democratic freedoms at home, he is giving Our Man In Cairo a hell of a pass abroad.
Sisi—a strongman ruler practically minted in the U.S.A.—came to power in a 2013 coup that ousted the democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, a leading member in the Muslim Brotherhood. Sisi’s armed forces then began a trigger-happy crackdown on Brotherhood members and supporters, and commenced the typical authoritarian kick of going after the press and imprisoning the opposition. (Morsi himself is waiting to see if his execution is imminent.)
Additionally, in an apparent effort to prove that his regime is even more “Islamic” than the Islamists he deposed, Sisi has presided over a campaign of persecution, prosecution and public shaming of LGBT Egyptians. It’s yet another brutal crackdown that has made Sisi’s Egypt a worse environment for gays than Morsi’s Egypt ever was.
And for all the repression and human-rights violations, his government has not managed to make the Egyptian republic any safer. “Sisi came to power on a platform of security and stability and clearly he’s failing—by any measurable standard, Egypt is more vulnerable to insurgency today than it was two years ago,” Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Daily Beast last month.
So what’s not to love, Senator Cruz?
The Cruz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding how the senator squares loving freedom with applauding ruthless dictatorship.
By: Asawin Suebsaeng, The Daiyl Beast, August 7, 2015
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