Monday, September 18, 2023

The illegitimate Supreme Court


We're covering the Supreme Court for this post.  Ian Millhiser (VOX) reports:

No matter how bad the Supreme Court gets, it can always get worse.

This reality will be on full display in a few weeks, when the justices return for the Court’s new term at the beginning of October. Indeed, on October 3, the second day of that term, the Court will hear a case where the far-right United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declared an entire federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unconstitutional.

In the unlikely event that the justices uphold this decision, a brief filed by the banking industry explains to the Supreme Court, the entire US mortgage market could seize up, as banks will have no idea what rules they need to comply with in order to issue loans. Worse, because home-building, home-resale, and related industries make an estimated 17 percent of the US gross domestic product, such a decision risks economic devastation unheard of since the Great Depression.

And this case, known as CFPB v. Community Financial Services Association, is one of at least six cases the Court will most likely decide this term where Fifth Circuit judges issued legally indefensible decisions that will have calamitous results if they are not reversed. That court, which is dominated by the most reactionary Trump appointees and similarly minded judges, has become the forum of choice for litigants pushing preposterous legal arguments that are unlikely to fly elsewhere, even in a very conservative judiciary.


[. . .]

And, on top of these three cases, which the Court has already agreed to hear in its upcoming term, it will also likely take up three other cases where the Fifth Circuit took leave of its senses. These include Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, which attempts to ban the abortion medication mifepristone; Doe v. Mckesson, which effectively strips political organizers of their First Amendment right to organize a protest; and NetChoice v. Paxton, which allows Texas’s GOP-controlled legislature to seize control of content moderation at social media sites like Twitter or YouTube.




They're destroying the country.  And it could get worse.  Much worse.  Walt Hickey (BUSINESS INSIDER) notes:



Earlier in his term, President Biden appointed then-51 year old Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill the seat previously held by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, who was then 83. The other liberal justices, Elena Kagan (63) and Sonia Sotomayor (68) were appointed by President Barack Obama. 

Already, this minority is being felt. The conservative wing of the court can pursue judgments sufficiently far to the right that they can lose one of their numbers and still pass 5-4. This was felt most acutely when the five most conservative justices — three of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump: one because the GOP-held Senate refused to consider an Obama appointee, and another because Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died — overturned Roe v. Wade.



We need to expand the Supreme Court.  It needs to happen.  We may not have the votes for it in the House but, if we have them after the 2024 election, it needs to happen right away.  Steve Lubut (THE HILL) writes:


Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito no doubt intended to shock the political world when he told interviewers for the Wall Street Journal that “No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”
Many observers dismissed his comment out of hand, noting the express language in Article III, establishing the court’s jurisdiction under “such regulations as the Congress shall make.” 

But Alito wasn’t bluffing. His recently issued statement, declining to recuse himself in a controversial case, was issued without a single citation or reference to the controlling federal statute. Nor did he mention or adhere to the test for recusal that other justices have acknowledged in similar circumstances. It was as though he declared himself above the law.  

Alito’s recusal was sought in an August letter from Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) to Chief Justice John Roberts. Durbin detailed the ethics problems raised by Alito’s two-part interview in the Wall Street Journal, which was conducted by journalist James Taranto and David Rivkin, a practicing lawyer.  

Rivkin happens to be counsel of record in Moore v. United States, a major case that was pending in the Supreme Court at the time of the interview and is now set for argument, which may determine the federal government’s authority ever to impose a tax on “unrealized gains” or wealth.  

In view of Alito’s favorable relationship to Rivkin — no justice has previously granted an interview to an advocate with an active case before the court — Durbin’s letter quite reasonably asked Roberts “to take appropriate steps to ensure that Justice Alito will recuse himself in . . . Moore v. United States.” The response came from Alito himself in the form of a four-page “statement”  explaining his rejection of the recusal request. 



This is so disgusting.  It is an illegitimate court.  

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Monday, September 18, 2023.  A woman returns from Iraq to Bahrain and is arrested, a delegation from Iraq is in the US for a UN meet-up, THE VANGUARD can't stop lying -- most recently claiming a man got married at the age of 15 (he was at least 29), a Seattle cop and his Guild advisor crack jokes about a woman the police officer just ran over and killed, hate merchant Lauren Boebert took time off from attacking LGBTQ+ people to go out on a date (before the divorce is final) in public while her date repeatedly grabbed her breasts in front of people and she kept massaging his crotch while people were all around them, and much more.


Starting with news of an arrest in Bahrain.  THE INTERNATIONAL QURAN NEWS AGENCY reports:

According to a report by the Iraqi al-Ghadeer TV television network, the activist, identified as Sheikha al-Majid, was detained following her return from the holy Iraqi city of Karbala to the Bahraini capital of Manama.

She was charged with “sectarianism” due to broadcasting live images while standing in the vicinity of the shrine of Imam Hussein (AS), the report added.

Al-Ghadeer TV noted that Bahraini opposition groups and human rights organizations have condemned Majid’s arrest and demanded her immediate release.

Meanwhile, Karim Alivi al-Mohammadavi, a member of the Foreign Relations Commission of the Iraqi Parliament, denounced Majid’s arrest as a direct assault by Bahrain’s ruling Al Khalifa dynasty on Shia Muslims.

Mohammadavi said the move conveys the message that the Manama regime does not seek civil peace and spares no effort to create internal chaos and division in any way.

The Iraqi legislator slammed the move as “irresponsible,” calling upon Bahraini authorities to reconsider the Shia activist’s detention and put an end to all heavy-handed measures against members of the majority religious community.





Okay before we go further . . .   A column has been e-mailed into the public e-mail (common_ills@yahoo.com) by three different people -- plus the author itself.  As I replied in a dictated e-mail to the author last Thursday, I'm not interested.

It's a so-so column on a serious issue.  I'm not interested.  You're over the age of 70 and that's old enough to come out of the closet.  Your parents have both passed away.  You should be out of the closet.  The 'alternative' media has allowed you to be closeted this whole time.  I'm not interested in that lie.  I'm also aware that you have never written on LGBTQ+ issues -- that's how deep in the closet you are.  In the 90s, I met you and knew the minute we met that you were gay.  I asked _____ who published your work, "He's out right -- at least to people he knows?"  No.  And you're over 70 -- you are well over 70 now -- I'm not interested in your 'truth.'  

I have no idea who you think is being helped by you pretending to be straight but I've lost the ability to care about you or whatever topic you want to half-ass write about this month.  So not interested.  So not interested.  

The LGBTQ+ community is under attack.  I don't know how you can hide in the closet during these attacks.  So, no, I'm not interested in your bad writing.

Something else I'm avoiding?  The new Russell Brand controversy.  I don't like Russell.  I don't like Katy Perry.  I didn't like them as a couple when they dashed over to meet me.  Anything I'd write about Russell's current scandal would probably fall under "malice" on my part.  So I have nothing to say.  Except maybe, Katy, your battle with that veteran over the house will not end good for you.  You've been lucky that there have been so many celebrity scandals and that you are so untalented and unwanted that people aren't really paying attention to you.  But you need to settle that for your own future.

When Joni made Alanis cry, I didn't understand it.  Then one day Russell and Katy came up to me (which means it was a long while ago because they've been divorced for some time) and started gushing, I got it.  Some people you just don't want in your fan base.  

I was asked about THE VANGUARD.  I actually did catch some of their crap yesterday.  "Once you know what you know about Woody Allen," the always laughable Zac wanted to say.  What is that?  What do you think you know?  That despite Dylan's claims of being molested, the only two investigations found that she wasn't?  That Dylan could have done a civil suit on Woody long ago but doesn't want to make claims in court?  That Moses and Soon-Yi refute Dylan's claims?  

I'm not really sure what you think you know.


Then you wanted to pull in Luc Besson. What do you think you know there?  The rape charges?  The ones that were dismissed twice in court and the ones he was then cleared of?  I don't understand what you think you know beyond whispers.  

But I don't understand what you think you know period.  You two do sit in front of computers, right?  While you're doing your awful podcast? So you can actually take a moment to fact check?

THE VANGUARD doesn't just act like they believe that they're immune to fact checks, they act like they're allergic to them. 

Even their president Macron was like 15 when he married his wife, who was his teacher, who was like in her 30s at the time and they're all like 'what a beautiful romantic story' and completely ignoring the inappropriate clear grooming that occured in that dynamic.

That's from the idiot Gavin. 

There was no reason for them to discuss Macron.  Nor was there reason to do a bad French accent.  But there they are doing another fact-free podcast. 

In 2021, the age of consent became 15 in France.  Prior to that?  It really didn't exist.  If you could prove coercion in the sex involved between a teenager and an adult, you could prosecute for rape but otherwise no.  Their age of consent is 15 now.  Even if you want to go back to when Macron had his affair and impose the 2021 law, the relationship was still legal.  

You don't like it?  Then don't go to France and have a relationship with a teenager.  But stop your damn lying.

They did not get married when he was 15 and a basic trip to WIKIPEDIA would have corrected your lies:


Macron is married to Brigitte Trogneux,[477] 24 years his senior,[478] and his former La Providence high school teacher in Amiens.[479][480] They met during a theatre workshop that she was giving when he was a 15-year-old student and she was a 39-year-old teacher, but they only became a couple once he was 18.[481][482] His parents initially attempted to separate the couple by sending him away to Paris to finish the final year of his schooling, as they felt his youth made this relationship inappropriate.[14][482] However, the couple reunited after Macron graduated, and were married in 2007.[482] She has three children from a previous marriage; he has no children of his own.[483][unreliable source?] Trogneux's role in Macron's 2017 presidential campaign has been considered pivotal, with close Macron allies stating that Trogneux helped Macron to develop skills like public speaking.[484]


Emmanuel was 29 or 30 when they were married.  Not 15.  But, hey, just make up whatever s**t you want, just keep doing that and see how many more people walk away from your bad program.  

Macron has many policies and actions to slam.  Sixteen years married to the same partner?  I don't really think that falls under something to be slammed for.  Or, for that matter, something to lie about.

While THE VANGUARD was making up s**t and broadcasting it as truth, Dan Conway (WSWS) reported on something real and actually disgusting:


On Tuesday, body camera footage taken by Seattle Police Officer Daniel Auderer was released to the public as a result of an internal department investigation. Auderer, also vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, inadvertently took the footage in response to a January 23 incident involving fellow officer Kevin Dave, who struck and killed 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in the middle of a crosswalk in Seattle, Washington.

Dave had been responding to a drug overdose call when he barreled through the intersection at 74 miles (119 kilometers) per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone, killing Kandula, a graduate student in Information Sciences at Northeastern University in Seattle. In addition to her schoolwork, Kandula had also been working part time to help support her mother in Andhra Pradesh in India.

A statement from the family read, “Jaahnavi’s tragic and untimely death has left her family and community with a huge hole in their hearts that will never be repaired. In spite of earning less than $200 per month, her mother educated Jaahnavi and encouraged her to travel to the United States hoping Jaahnavi would have a better future and better life abroad.”

Dave, 35, is a former US Marine hired by the Seattle Police Department as part of a mass hiring initiative in 2019. The officer, while having no significant disciplinary history with the SPD prior to the January incident, did have a previous Arizona driver’s license suspended in 2018 for unpaid traffic tickets and failure to appear in court. Dave’s driving record also includes a 2018 traffic ticket for running a red light in Washington state.

The leaked body camera footage in question shows Auderer in his patrol car speaking over the phone to a man later identified as guild president Mike Solan a day after the January accident. Auderer is heard assuring Solan the incident would not be the subject of a criminal investigation and stated that driving 50 miles per hour through a 25 mile per hour intersection—not the actual 74 miles per hour—was “not reckless for a trained driver.”

Auderer then gave Solan his own interpretation of witness testimony regarding the incident. “I think she [Kandula] went up on the hood, hit the windshield, then when he [Dave] hit the brakes, flew off the car.” He then told Solan, “but she is dead” and then proceeded to laugh out loud. In a subsequent statement dripping with horrifying contempt for the working class student, Auderer tells Solan, “It’s a regular person. Yeah, just write a check. $11,000.” Auderer then states, mistaking Kandula’s age, “She was 26 anyway. She had limited value.”


I guess covering actual news isn't as fun for Zac and Gavin as making crap up and trying to be the Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons of the 21st century but it would be more honest and more helpful if the two men could be introduced to the truth.

RUDAW notes, " Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein late Friday arrived in New York to attend the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly in the coming days. The Iraqi prime minister is expected to attend the session as well." IRAQI NEWS reports that Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is en route to New York. 




Ashesh Mallick (INDIA TV) reports, "The Security Council on Friday (September 15) voted unanimously to end the UN probe, a year from now, into activities of Islamic State extremists in Iraq.  The voting was made at the request of the Iraqi government." ASHARQ AL AWSAT adds,  "The UK-sponsored resolution noted that Baghdad also asked that UN investigators hand over evidence they have gathered so far to the government, so that Iraqi authorities can pursue ISIS members’ accountability, as well as that of those who assisted and financed 'this terrorist organization'."  That should be large amount of evidence since the investigation since you're looking at investigation that's gone on for over five years now.  SHIA WAVES notes, "The resolution asks Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to submit a report by Jan. 15 on recommendations to implement Iraq’s request for evidence obtained by the U.N. team."  In related news, RUDAW reports:

Six years after the liberation of Mosul from the brutal clutches of the Islamic State (ISIS), the search continues for the dead who lie under piles of rubble on the western bank of the city that bore the brunt of nine months of destructive war.

Search and rescue teams say they find seven to eight bodies every week.
[. . .]
Since 2017, a total of 6,044 bodies have been recovered. Of them, 3,749 have been identified. The remaining 2,295 unidentified includes 800 children.

The city buries the unknown bodies if they are not claimed by family within two months.

"Following measures and inspections being carried out for the dead bodies, we will place the dead bodies in refrigerators at the Mosul morgue for a legal timeframe of 60 days. Upon instruction from the court, we will bury them in coordination with the Mosul municipality," Shahd Arif, head of the Mosul forensic department, told Rudaw.

Despite the smell of death that haunts parts of the city, health authorities have not registered any diseases as a result of the bodies lying under the rubble.




In news of more recent violence, AL MAYADEEN reports:

Turkish airstrikes targeted on Saturday a number of regions in Dohuk province, located in northern Iraq, claiming they were targeting positions affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara designates as a "terrorist organization".

According to a security source, Turkish helicopters conducted aerial raids on areas within the Amadiya district, north of Dohuk province.

Providing further insight, the source told news outlets that areas falling within the same province were also subjected to shelling. 


Turkey has been terrorizing Iraq for years.  And the area that they targeted on Saturday? It was the third time in a week that they attacked it.  






Turning to the US, Alex Bollinger (LGBTQ NATION) reports:

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) denounced the state of Massachusetts for allegedly taking a step towards jailing parents for not supporting their transgender children, even though that didn’t happen at all. Her statements were part of a larger myth on the right that Democrats and other liberal people want to take people’s children away and force them to transition to another gender.

“A commission in Massachusetts just said that child-abuse laws should include withholding ‘gender-affirming care,'” she tweeted last week. “So, if I don’t want my eleven year old to get his body mutilated, I should be sent to jail for child abuse.”


Really?  The whore said that.  Because whore is the only word for her.  She's wrong  ("First, 'mutilation' does not describe gender-affirming care. Also, 11-year-old trans kids don’t get gender-affirming genital surgery because it is not performed on transgender minors, much less pre-teens.") but that doesn't stop the whore does it.  She has condemned gay people, trans people, drag artists and everyone else as a threat to the public.  But it was still-married Lauren Boebert, the whore, who went to a performance of BEETLJUICE with her new male partner -- again, she's not yet divorced -- and chose, in full view of others, to let him grope her breasts, while she repeated grabbed his crotch. 


See for yourself in the video below.




She wants to talk about what others do in public?   Then let's talk about the sitting whore in Congress who went to a  musical and put on a sex show.


She's still married to another man and she acts like that in public?  She can't even claim they were parked on a dark road and so she thought no one would see.  This was in public with people seated on all sides of them.  And she wants to lecture others?  This is how a member of Congress behaves -- a married member of Congress behaves with someone who is not her spouse -- in public?  And she has the nerve to attack anyone else?



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