It's Sunday

In an excerpt from his new book OPUS: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church, author Gareth Gore examines the ties binding Supreme Court kingmaker Leonard Leo and Opus Dei, a radical organization on the fringes of the Catholic Church that is accused of serious abuses and dedicated to the complete “re-Christianization” of the world.

[...]

Leo clerked for a judge on the court of appeals and became close with another appellate judge who had recently been appointed to the D.C. circuit — a man from Georgia called Clarence Thomas, who had toyed with becoming a Catholic priest. [...] Leo was asked by the Federalist Society to become its first employee — although he delayed his start date so that he could help his good friend Thomas through his contentious confirmation process for the Supreme Court. Despite accusations of sexual harassment hanging over him, Thomas won Senate confirmation by a slim margin. It would be the first in a series of fights in which Leo would have to put aside the teachings of his Christian faith as he focused on the greater goal of pushing through a conservative revolution of the courts and of society at large.

  Rolling Stone

Putting aside teachings of their faith never seems to be a problem.

In 2005, the Federalist Society began openly advocating for John Roberts — a former member — to be nominated to fill a vacant seat at the Supreme Court, the first time it had campaigned publicly for a particular candidate. A few months later, its sway had grown so much that it torpedoed President George W. Bush’s own preferred candidate for another vacant seat on the Supreme Court — Harriet Miers, a judge and close friend of the president who wasn’t a member of the Federalist Society — and pressured him to nominate Samuel Alito, one of its members, in her place.

[...]

In 2011, Leo teamed up with Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni to co-found another nonprofit that successfully opposed an Islamic center being built near the site of the 9 ⁄11 attacks in New York, denigrated as the “Ground Zero Mosque.” A year later, he joined the board of the Catholic Association, another non-profit linked to the Corkerys, that funded campaigns to oppose same-sex marriage. For its part, the Catholic Information Center — despite in theory being apolitical — had also joined a suit against the Obama administration, challenging the requirement that employers provide and pay for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing drugs as part of employee health insurance plans.

[...]

The makeup of the [Catholic Information Center (CIC)] board was decidedly unpolitical — a mix of academics, lawyers, and volunteers who helped run the bookshop. Pat Cipollone, a lawyer who had been an assistant to Attorney General Bill Barr in the early nineties but who had since returned to the private sector, was the only board member who was remotely connected to the Washington political scene. But in 2014, all that changed. Alongside Leo, Bill Barr, the former attorney general, was also appointed.

Leo and his ilk would soon become a bridge connecting the prelature with important people on Capitol Hill — and the world of dark money populated by secretive billionaires with a deeply conservative agenda. Together, they would form a coalition — unified by their political connections, religious fervor, and money — that would reshape American society and destroy many hard-won civil rights.

[...]

The recruitment of Leonard Leo would cement ties between Opus Dei and the U.S. Supreme Court that had been developing for decades. [...] But with Leo and his network of dark money, Opus Dei’s penetration of Washington’s political and judicial worlds would now reach unprecedented levels.

[...]

As Leo’s access to the world of dark money grew, his Opus Dei friends the Corkerys became critical as a front for the tens of millions of dollars streaming through Leo’s hidden network of nonprofits. Neil and Ann had provided crucial cover for him during the campaign to secure the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito in 2005, hiding the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to influence public opinion. As more dark money poured in starting in 2010, they began to do the same again through various nonprofits such as the Wellspring Committee and the Judicial Crisis Network. Their importance only grew following Scalia’s death, as Leo pumped his network for ever larger sums. In the weeks after Scalia’s death, the Corkerys began opening the purse strings in what would eventually become a $17 million campaign to stop Obama from replacing Scalia and instead ensure a reliable conservative filled the vacancy. It was just the start. Over the next five years, Leo and the Corkerys would oversee the transfer of almost $600 million of dark money to right-wing causes. Their hidden ecosystem would eventually enable a conservative takeover of the Supreme Court that would disassemble hard-won civil rights and turn back the clock on issues close to their hearts — on abortion, on affirmative action, and on vast swathes of what they saw as a progressive agenda.

They also used the network to line their own pockets.

Continue reading.

It's Sunday

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 to visit with and entertain Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia.

[...]

Schenck’s organization, Faith and Action, became a part of Liberty Counsel in 2018 and is now known as Faith and Liberty. Its vice president, Peggy Nienaber, was quoted earlier this week as praying with Supreme Court justices in a recording posted on YouTube and reported by Rolling Stone magazine. Schenck told the magazine that he began the prayer sessions as a way of building rapport with conservative justices.

[...]

“The Supreme Court is the most insulated and isolated branch of the U.S. government,” Schenck told the magazine. “They do not interface with the public, so we’ve literally had to pray our way in there each step of the way.”

  Politico

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Willful Refusal to Act

Since the Constitution does not set the number of Supreme Court justices, it has changed over the years - for political expediency, of course.  As Herr Trump would say: It's rigged.

But, as long as the number is set at any figure - and it is set by Congress - then Congress should be required by law to act in a reasonable length of time when there is a vacancy.  If they can't confirm by a majority vote within that time, then the Court should lose that seat for a certain length of time.  No doubt there's a better way to do it, but simply refusing to consider a presidential nomination is BS.  But then, most of Congress these days is BS.

Did the President [...] miscalculate when he chose [63-year-old Appeals Court Judge Merrick] Garland [as his nominee for the Supreme Court in March]?

[...]

[Garland's] credentials are impeccable and he's a powerful thinker. His admirers are legion, and include conservatives like Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.

[...]

Obama admitted openly that Garland was a consensus candidate. The President wanted someone Senate Republicans couldn't refuse.

  CNN

Then he should have picked another Scalia.

Now, the Senate has simply refused to consider President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, dozens of nominations to federal judgeships and executive offices are pending before the Senate, many for more than a year. Our system prides itself on its checks and balances, but there seems to be no balance to the Senate’s refusal to perform its constitutional duty.

[...]

[The Constitution] provides that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States.” Note that the president has two powers: the power to “nominate” and the separate power to “appoint.”

  WaPo

I did note that, but I also noted that it says, "with the ... consent of the Senate."

What does that mean, and what happens when the Senate does nothing?

[...]

It is altogether proper to view a decision by the Senate not to act as a waiver of its right to provide advice and consent. A waiver is an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.

So the least the Senate could do is pretend to mull it over.  But that's not what they've done.  The minute Antonin Scalia died last February (praise be), Mitch McConnell announced there would be no consideration of any nominee until after the November election.

As the Supreme Court has said, “ ‘No procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right,’ or a right of any other sort, ‘may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it.’ ”

[...]

The president has nominated [Merrick] Garland and submitted his nomination to the Senate. The president should advise the Senate that he will deem its failure to act by a specified reasonable date in the future to constitute a deliberate waiver of its right to give advice and consent. What date?

Indeed. What date? Shouldn't he have already done that if he were going to? Was it okay for him to simply make vague threats about the downfall of democracy and wait to find out that Donald Trump would be the president, contrary to his expectation, before claiming the right to appoint without Senate approval?

The historical average between nomination and confirmation is 25 days; the longest wait has been 125 days. That suggests that 90 days is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for the Senate to consider Garland’s nomination. If the Senate fails to act by the assigned date, Obama could conclude that it has waived its right to participate in the process, and he could exercise his appointment power by naming Garland to the Supreme Court.

Ninety days? It's already been nine months.

I would be very surprised indeed if Obama bucked the GOP at this date. That would be a rare act on his part after eight years of appeasing them. But if he did, he should yank that nomination and put a young, ultra-liberal judge on the bench as an object lesson to them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

You Have to Admit, Though, It Was Appropriate

It's Sunday

Scalia is dead.

Twenty-four hours ago, Republicans were headed into what remains of the current Supreme Court term with a solid majority and a docket strewn with some of the most consequential cases in decades. Affirmative action, abortion, birth control, immigration, an effort to shift congressional power to Republicans — all of these issues are before the justices this term.

  Think Progress

God has spoken.

Fitting Epitaph for Scalia

"The Donald Trump of the Supreme Court"

If you want to understand how Donald Trump became the soul of the Republican Party, you need look no further than Antonin Scalia. Scalia is the id, ego, and super-ego of modern conservatism. He was as outrageous in his rhetoric (his unvarying response to any challenge to Bush v. Gore was “Get over it!”) as he was cruel in his comportment. Sandra Day O’Connor was the frequent object of his taunts. Hardly an opinion of hers would go by without Scalia calling it—and by implication, her—stupid. “Oh, that’s just Nino,” she’d sigh helplessly in response. Even Clarence Thomas was forced to note drily, “He loves killing unarmed animals.” He was a pig and a thug. [...] And he was obsessed, as his dissent in PGA Tour v. Casey Martin shows, with winners and losers. They were the alpha and omega of his social vision. He was the Donald Trump of the Supreme Court.

  Corey Robin

Ding Dong, Antonin Scalia Is Dead

Since I'm not supposed to speak ill of the dead...

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving person.

Okay, then.  One less chauvinist, hateful, pro-torture pig in the world.  How's that?

Okay, that's much wittier.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading conservative voice on the high court, has died at the age of 79, a government source and a family friend told CNN on Saturday.

His death set off an immediate debate about whether President Barack Obama should fill the seat in an election year, and sources told CNN Saturday night that the President plans to nominate a replacement. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Obama should wait until the next president comes into office.

  CNN

Why? Would a Republican president in this situation do that? I think not. In fact, I know not.

Well, there is that.  So perhaps it's a win-win situation.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with loathing [any] person with political influence and power based upon perceived bad acts, and that doesn't change simply because they die. If anything, it becomes more compelling to commemorate those bad acts upon death as the only antidote against a society erecting a false and jingoistically self-serving history.

  Glenn Greenwald on the death of Margaret Thatcher

A Little Universe Humor

Good One, Jeff

Saddled With Antonin "Fat Tony" Scalia

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia got an incredibly astute question from a law student Friday night that could have huge implications for the NSA's domestic surveillance programs.

The question came during a spirited Q&A curated by Brooklyn Law School's Judge Andrew Napolitano, who asked Scalia about the controversial subject of the NSA's surveillance of Americans.

Scalia made it clear the issue would likely come before the high court, and he hinted he would rule that "conversations" (i.e., the conversations the government might listen to) aren't protected by the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment, Scalia pointed out, prohibits the government from searching your "persons, houses, papers, and effects" without a warrant — not "conversations."

However, one student asked the justice whether data in a computer might be considered "effects" under the Fourth Amendment, an interpretation that would prohibit the NSA's capture of communications over the Internet.

Scalia, who's remarkably avuncular in person, was visibly pleased by the question but said he "better not answer that."

  Business Insider

While suggesting that the high court will take up NSA surveillance, Scalia expressed his opinion that judges should not be deciding matters of national security. "The Supreme Court doesn't know diddly about the nature and extent of the threat," Scalia said. Later on, he added, "It's truly stupid that my court is going to be the last word on it."

  Business Insider

I’m going to have to agree….it’s truly stupid that Scalia’s court would be the last word on anything.