And there goes Kennedy

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy gave his retirement notice today, leaving Little Hitler to nominate another ultra conservative.

My dear Mr. President,

This letter is a respectful and formal notification of my decision, effective July 31 of this year, to end my regular active status as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, while continuing to serve in a senior status, as provided in 28 U.S.C 371 (b).

For a member of the legal profession it is the highest of honors to serve on this Court. Please permit me by this letter to express my profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret, and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises. Respectfully and sincerely,

Anthony Kennedy

  CNN

Why did Kennedy retire?

Trump told the Washington Times that he had “heard the same rumors that a lot of people have heard” about Kennedy [planning to retire], and Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blurted in April, “I would expect a resignation this summer,” then cited a “rumored” retirement. Sen. Ted Cruz made similar suggestions at CPAC, while Trump-whisperer Roger Stone has been promising that a resignation letter from Kennedy to Trump is “imminent.”

  Slate

What do they have on him?

It goes without saying that the bulk of these rumors seem to be fanned by conservative news outlets, eager to point out that Kennedy is both desperate to leave and also either unaware of or unbothered by the chaos Trump has unloosed upon the planet.

What do they have on him?

Kennedy isn’t talking, and your guess is as good as mine as to whether the court’s centrist Republican will be bothered by the prospect of leaving his seat in the hands of someone currently operating under the shadow of an FBI investigation.

Bothered or not, he retired.  What do they have on him?

On the one hand, we know Kennedy worries more about civility, decorum, and the rule of law than virtually anyone on the high court. On the other hand, we also know Kennedy shares a close relationship with the Trump family: His son Gregory worked with the Trump team around the inauguration, and Trump’s daughter and granddaughter had seats as Kennedy’s guests at an oral argument in February.

Like putting Vincenzo Pentangeli in the court audience to stop his brother Frank from testifying against Michael Corleone.

How close a relationship?

What do they have on him?  Ivanka?

Court watchers across the political spectrum seem to agree that Trump’s reckless disregard for the judicial branch and separation of powers will make it harder for the justice to leave his storied judicial legacy in the hands of a President Trump. This is, after all, the same president who just named Damien Schiff of the Pacific Legal Foundation to serve on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims—Schiff being the man who posted on his personal blog that “Justice Kennedy is (and please excuse the language) a judicial prostitute, ‘selling’ his vote as it were to four other Justices in exchange for the high that comes from aggrandizement of power and influence, and the blandishments of the fawning media and legal academy.”

And in the last several important cases, Kennedy has voted with the 4 conservatives on the bench. 

What do they have on him?

In a case heard only a few weeks ago, Kennedy appeared horrified at the prospect of a Justice Department lawyer asserting that the Trump administration had the right to revoke the citizenship of Americans who’d made inconsequential misstatements in their naturalization proceedings. “Your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship,” Kennedy told the DOJ lawyer. “You’re arguing for the government of the United States, talking about what citizenship is and ought to mean.” It’s hard to imagine that same Justice Kennedy sloughing off what looks to be open religious animus as trivial.

[...]

He knows exactly who he is and what he wants to be remembered for. He has now been invited, by dint of doctrine and history, to be an arbiter of whether the courts will stand as a bulwark against Donald Trump’s chaotic and disrespectful legal worldview. [...] It’s also hard to imagine that, faced with this monumental task, Justice Kennedy would be apt to walk away.

But he did worse. He voted to let the travel ban stand. If he'd retired before these last several cases, there would have been an unbreakable tie holding off the Trump Reich. What do they have on him?

Kennedy may well wish to depart the court before it gets locked in uglier battles that will further enmesh the courts in partisan politics, the diminution of norms, and the erosion of international regard for the rule of law in America.

He left because he's a coward? No. They have something on him.

Kennedy is a conservative. But on a number of issues — such as abortion, race, LGBT rights, criminal justice, and gerrymandering — he was a relative moderate compared to his fellow Republicans on the Supreme Court.

  Think Progress

So why did he just this week go along with the Muslim ban (all about race) and two cases that reversed lower court decisions: the Texas case permitting gerrymandering to stand and the California case that permitted "crisis pregnancy centers" to refuse to inform clients about abortion? What do they have on him?

The nomination battle will likely ignite a firestorm on Capitol Hill as it comes just a year after Republicans changed the rules of the Senate in order to push through the nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump's first nominee.

  CNN

Four years from now, Trump may be remembered as both a political accident and the man who inspired a broad coalition of voters to cast his unique brand of racist incompetence out of office. He owes his job to a constitutional relic that allows the loser of a presidential election to nonetheless take office, and Trump has thus far struggled to advance a legislative agenda through Congress.

And yet, if Kennedy does retire, Trump will be an extraordinarily consequential president.

  Think Progress

And it's now a done deal.

We are living in Back to the Future II.  and Trump is reprising Hitler's rise in record time.

And, no, finally, I don't think it's overreacting to start with the Hitler comparisons.  I may even be late to the game.