Some folks are born to wave the flag

Clarence Thomas, long a darling of the authoritarian right, has a new issue, and I think (& hope) that it gets really ugly really soon. From today's LATimes:

As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the "tea party" movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.

"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you," she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's "hard-left agenda."

But Thomas is no ordinary activist.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

Aside from the idiocy and hypocrisy of another well-funded astroturf "grass-roots" group, there is a real ethical problem brewing. The close of the article states it best:

But it would be up to Justice Thomas to decide whether to recuse himself. He could not be reached for comment.

As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Liberty Central can raise unlimited amounts of corporate money and largely avoid disclosing its donors.

Because of a recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the group may also spend corporate money freely to advocate for or against candidates for office.

Justice Thomas was part of the 5-4 majority in that case.

Of course he won't recuse himself. On ethical issues, his hypocrisy is legendary and consistent. Fully availing himself of Affirmative Action when it furthers his career, he now criticizes it as his Conservatarian posture demands. He will take any action that's in his best interest, with no regard to appearance, propriety, or ethics.

And please, don't bring up Ed Rendell & his wife, a Circuit Court judge who has sought ethics and recusal advice when it seemed warranted. No, Justice Thomas and his activist wife are entitled Conservatives. In her case, she seems honest in her beliefs, albeit misdirected. But in his case, as evidenced by his testimony during his confirmation hearings (see Anita Hill & Roe v. Wade), he does what is expedient and what fits his personal agenda best. Truth and justice are simply victims of his arrogance.

Heartless!

JustUs Scalia has stated that the state murdering innocent people is Constitutional:(warning PDF)

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent.

While no one is innocent, some folks are not guilty of the crimes they've been charged with. To date, 241 people have been exonerated and released.

I question whether someone who is innocent of the crime, but has been convicted and sentenced to DEATH, has had a 'full and fair trial.'

Now, for some brain bleach:

Hoist on his own retard

Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the man who wasn't confirmed as a Federal Judge due to his racist past, got pwned by a wise Latina.

From, of all places, the Wall Street Journal:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), seeking to discredit Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, cited her 2001 “wise Latina” speech, and contrasted the view that ethnicity and sex influence judging with that of Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, who “believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.”

“So I would just say to you, I believe in Judge Cedarbaum’s formulation,” Sessions told Sotomayor.

“My friend Judge Cedarbaum is here,” Sotomayor riposted, to Sessions’ apparent surprise. “We are good friends, and I believe that we both approach judging in the same way, which is looking at the facts of each individual case and applying the law to those facts.”

Cedarbaum agreed.

“I don’t believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no effect on her approach to judging,” she told Washington Wire. “We’d both like to see more women on the courts,” she added.

Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Do nine men interpret? Nine men, I nod.

Obama Picks Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court

Great news! She's qualified and she brings a new voice that reflects America to the Court.

Now countdown to repulicant hysteria. 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Media Matters has the quotes and the video:

In 2005, many Republican Senators went so far as to claim the filibuster of judicial nominees was unconstitutional. Now four years later, with President Obama's first Supreme Court appointment looming, will they remain consistent in their position or commit one of the most blatant acts of hypocrisy in the 220-year history of the United States Senate?

Simple answers to simple questions.

Of course they will.

BTW, there's a term for people who lack empathy, they're called psychopaths.

Should judges use their empathy, (assuming they have it), when deciding cases?

Of course. Not to ignore the law but to apply the law as "Justice tempered with mercy."

INAL, but I think 'intent' is one of the code words they use for such rulings. If the intent of a person flooded out for days with no rescue in sight, (e.g NOLA/Katrina), was to feed their family by breaking into an abandoned store one would hope that the JustUs system would have some empathy. If the said person's intent was to break into a bank for money, the empathy is still there, but probably not in the defendant's favor.

The law should not be black and white because people aren't and the real world isn't. And this is recognized in our adversarial system.

Jury/judge decide not just guilt but what measure of guilt. The prosecution generally levy the most charges possible and paint the defendant in the worst light. The defense generally try to show mitigation of the offenses, and occasionally actual innocence. That includes death row.

Obviously empathy occurs in the real world of American JustUs, because rich old white men judges go easier on rich old white men, out of empathy. (e.g. Enron execs, Maddow & Co., while white collar crimes ruin more lives than the mugger down the street. Yet who gets max time in prison and who gets a slap on the wrist in Club Fed?)

Judge Sotomayor was originally appointed by George Bush I.

The system sucks but I don't know a better one. It sure as heck won't be the end of the world if the US's first Hispanic member of the Supreme Court is also a woman and gets 1 out of nine votes, and an opinion to help decide law in the final chance we have in the JustUs system.

Hey, as the repulicants said:All of the president's nominees-both now and in the future-deserve a fair up or down vote



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

The tears of a clown

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Try to love one another right now

Just a few days ago I mentioned the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling here. And now it's suddenly back in the news in a frightening way. From Sunday's LATimes:

BROWN vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court's landmark declaration that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional, may be the court's only ruling in the last 200 years that virtually everyone today agrees was "rightly decided." It is simply unimaginable that a president would appoint, or that the Senate would confirm, a court nominee who failed to pay homage to the 1954 decision.

. . . Under Roberts' reinterpretation of Brown, the decision's central message is that government must be strictly "colorblind" because all racial classification is inherently pernicious. In this view, there is no legal or moral difference between a school assignment program (like those at issue in Brown) that enforces racial segregation and others (like Seattle's and Louisville's) that are designed to ensure some measure of integration.

WTF? First, read the whole article. Then worry, and weep. What is the real issue with Brown that would cause the hyper-reactionary Supreme Court to revisit it?

First, take a look at this map:

Yep. Segregation of races was required by law in 17 Red states. While it may have been unintentional for Wikipedia to use red for the rascist states, I really don't think so. Many of those states are still considered red today.

Sometimes the Supreme Court gets it wrong: Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Bush v. Gore. Breathtakingly, disastrously wrong. In re: Plessy, the SCOTUS reversed it's infamous decision with Brown. Separate But Equal was banished forever. Or not. Wikipedia goes on:

Brown is often referred to as Brown I, because the following year, 1955, the Court completed its ruling. In this second Brown decision, Brown II, the Warren Court ordered the states' compliance with Brown I "with all deliberate speed." Brown II was argued by Robert L. Carter, who had earlier initiated some of the cases consolidated at the Supreme Court into Brown I. Even so, formal compliance with the provisions of these two cases was not expedited, and in the South most public schools would not be desegregated until about 1970 under the Nixon administration. Nearly twenty years after Brown, school desegregation would come to the court's attention again in two cases involving the use of busing to integrate students across school districts: Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971) and Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974).

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and drop all the niceties and legal issues. Frame it all you want, Judge Roberts, the reason you want to re-visit Brown has nothing to do with how to implement programs that try to counter segregation and racism. The "colorblind" status you wish to confer to the law will ignore insults and inequities based on color.

Welcome to the world of Judge Roberts, where the law is a process, and people don't matter.

Bastard.