It has come to light that DoJ prosecutors convened a grand jury and got subpoenas with which to investigate then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R) and a number of Republican Committee staffers during Nunes’ Committee investigations into what are now known to be Progressive-Democratic Party collusion with DoJ to create a false narrative of Republican collusion with Russia.
In Moore v Harper, the Supreme Court is being called on to decide whether State courts can rearrange State elections laws—in particular, write their own Congressional district maps—as these pertain to how a State runs Federal-level elections.
It shouldn’t even be a question. Our Constitution is quite clear on the matter of who is responsible for setting the rules for Federal elections. Here’s Article I, Section 4:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof….
Last Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, a case centered on Web Page designer Lorie Smith and her First Amendment right to not put messages on her designs that conflict with her religious beliefs.
In the course of those arguments, there occurred this exchange (audio is at the first link above) between newly confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Kristen Kellie Waggoner, CEO, President, and General Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Smith in this case:
Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board wrote about so many former-President Donald Trump (R) judicial appointees ruling against Trump on a number of cases.
What really jumped out to me, though, was this brief bit, almost tossed off as an aside to the main thrust of the piece.
The chief distinction of Trump appointees, [The Alliance for Justice] said, is “absolute adherence to right-wing ideology.”
How about adherence to the law and respect for the separation of powers?
Imagine that—”right-wing ideology” is centered on actual adherence to law and respect for separation of powers in our Federal government.
Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled at the end of the summer that the Obamacare requirement that health coverage providers must provide coverage for particular aspects of health care—and do so at no cost to the individual being covered—was unconstitutional. He’s currently considering whether to make his ruling permanent and if so, whether to make his ruling applicable only to the litigants in the particular case or to make it nationwide. (As an aside, I have trouble seeing how a ruling of unconstitutionality can have any range less than national.)
In a letter in Thursday’s Letters section of The Wall Street Journal, Walter Smith claims to have argu[ed] several cases personally before the Supreme Court (“claims,” because unlike many Letter writers, his signature block makes no mention of his status as a lawyer, past or present), and he expressed considerable dismay over the basis of Court decisions and subsequent Court “legitimacy.”
The court’s majority has made clear that it doesn’t care about public opinion or many of the harmful consequences of its decisions.
The Wisconsin Election Commission had issued guidance that voters who cast primary election ballots and who had voted for candidates subsequently dropped from the election campaign, but too late for them to be removed from the ballots, could “spoil” their ballots, get a replacement ballot, and vote again.
This guidance is illegal: under Wisconsin law, a voter can do that only before he’s cast his ballot—casting it is final and irrevocable. A Wisconsin judge recognized that, and said, “No.”
The Supreme Court is hearing a case, Merrill v Milligan, that concerns whether Congressional districts will be drawn in accordance with census outcomes concerning the distribution of American citizens in a State, or whether they will (continue to) be drawn to favor race in a State.
Alabama, the State in question in Merrill, redrew its Congressional districts as a result of the 2020 census outcome and kept substantially the same districts with substantially the same population distributions as the prior district map, making tweaks at district boundaries to account for minor population moves. The plaintiffs in the case, though,
In a Wednesday Letter, University of Maryland School of Law Professor Robert Percival wrote in defense of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s move to politicize the Supreme Court—a move which he denies.
But what drew my attention was this statement regarding Roe v Wade and his concept of constitutional rights:
Justice White opposed creating new constitutional rights, but he didn’t think the court should take back rights once they were well-established.
What Percival has chosen to ignore here is the distinction between “well-established” and “long extant.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland (D) has filed his appeal (to the 11th Circuit) of the Federal district judge’s order blocking the DoJ from using certain documents seized in the DoJ’s Mar-a-Lago raid in its criminal investigation. That order parallels the judge’s appointment of a Special Master to oversee and sort through all of the seized documents. Garland’s appeal reads, in pertinent part,
Although the government believes the district court fundamentally erred in appointing a special master and granting injunctive relief, the government seeks to stay only the portions of the order causing the most serious and immediate harm to the government and the public by (1) restricting the government’s review and use of records bearing classification markings and (2) requiring the government to disclose those records for a special-master review process[.]