Again. And you thought this was settled back in 1964. Nope. We’re still fighting for the right to vote thanks to the Conservative controlled Supreme Court.
President Barack Obama urged Congress to restore a key part of the Voting Rights Act, writing in a letter to the editor in The New York Times Magazine published Wednesday that voting rights for all Americans must be “vigorously defended.”
Obama referenced a piece from The New York Times Magazine published in late July by Jim Rutenberg that detailed the 50 years of efforts to roll back the protections established by 1965’s landmark Voting Rights Act.
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“These efforts are not a sign that we have moved past the shameful history that led to the Voting Rights Act. Too often, they are rooted in that history,” the president wrote. “They remind us that progress does not come easy, but that it must be vigorously defended and built upon for ourselves and future generations.”
Obama made specific mention to 94-year-old Rosanell Eaton, who is a plaintiff in the ongoing North Carolina case against voting restrictions implemented two years ago, arguing that the law was written to discriminate against black voters.
“I am where I am today only because men and women like Rosanell Eaton refused to accept anything less than a full measure of equality. Their efforts made our country a better place. It is now up to us to continue those efforts,” he wrote.
The Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the voting law in a 2013 decision that required states to receive federal approval before they change election laws.
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: U.S. President Barack Obama hugs Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as arrives to deliver the State of the Union address on January 20, 2015 in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Obama was expected to lay out a broad agenda to address income inequality, making it easier for Americans to afford college education, and child care. (Photo by Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images)
(Photo by Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images)
She is 82 years old, and considered one of the wisest and most vocal of all the justices on the Supreme Court. And President Obama honored Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a speech he gave at the White House.
Speaking at the White House Conference on Aging, Obama mentioned a number of Americans who show that senior citizens are able to live healthier, more productive lives than ever before.
“Arguably the toughest justice on the Supreme Court is the oldest, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” he said. “Also known as the Notorious RBG. She’s tough.”
Ginsburg’s fans gave her the nickname, a play on the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. It’s caught fire, appearing on a Tumblr site, t-shirts and even tattoos.
Obama’s praise for Ginsburg, 82, comes weeks after after the high court handed him a pair of victories.
A leader of the court’s liberal wing, Ginsburg sided with the majority to uphold a key provision of the president’s healthcare law and legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.
“Americans who once might have been dismissed as out of touch or past their primes are making vital contributions in every field.”
The president said the contributions of older Americans like Ginsburg sparks all Americans “to raise our ambitions about what we hope to achieve in our golden years.”
The same court that brought us corporations as people, unlimited political money, abortion restrictions, a step backwards in voting rights, and unequal pay has now thrown some serious bones to the left in the form of a stronger Affordable Care Act and a right to gay marriage. I’m sure that wherever they are, David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor are smiling just as broadly as President Obama and millions of formerly marginalized United States citizens are across this land.
It just goes to show you that handicapping Supreme Court decisions based on the justices’ questions and demeanor during oral arguments is a dangerous, unpredictable sport. Remember that the Chief Justice asked only one substantial question during the health care arguments, but he surprised almost everyone by writing a rather forceful decision upholding the law. Justice Kennedy was widely seen as the bellwether on marriage equality, and he provided the fifth vote to recognize that dignity comes in many forms.
The Originalist Triplets from Different Mothers–Scalia, Thomas and Alito–certainly didn’t disappoint their right wing adherents by pointing out to us that laws should be read as written and that if marriage was a right, then why didn’t the nation recognize it until now? Never mind that the country didn’t recognize civil rights for African-Americans for over 100 years after the Civil War, and that was with an amendment specifically crafted to remedy that injustice. Justice Thomas’s career-defining quote about how slaves did not lose their dignity because the government allowed them to be enslaved was not only a jaw-dropping bit of incongruity, but also a shocking misunderstanding of what the word means.
But this is the danger of the originalist doctrine. It presumes to know exactly what the Framers meant not only in their time, but in ours. I’m no legal expert, but I’ve committed my professional life to teaching history and my reading is that those men who gathered in Philadelphia were a bit more flexible on legal interpretations than the originalists give them credit for.
Rather than be shocked at what American society has become, I think they would be pleased, perhaps even giddy, at the idea that we’ve become as multicultural, open, democratic and accepting as we are now. I would be disappointed if Madison, Washington, Hamilton or any of the others came to our century and said that we had completely misread the meaning of their words. After all, they included both the elastic clause and the ability to amend the constitution.
Meanwhile, Scalia, Thomas and Alito (and sometimes Roberts) would roll back civil rights laws and would have us believe that the Fourteenth Amendment, the one that guarantees every citizen equal protection of the law, has nothing to say about guaranteeing LGBT Americans, well, the equal protection of the law. or that four words in the health care law were meant as grenades that would blow it up rather than mechanisms to guarantee that less-well-off Americans could get affordable health care. Scalia especially seems to believe that the only rights that Americans have are the ones granted in 1787. How thoroughly regressive.
It’s worth noting that another group, Confederates, also believed they knew the true meaning of the Republic. They wanted to live in a country that allowed states to decide almost all aspects of public policy, protect slavery and Jim Crow, and to nullify federal laws they didn’t agree with. That’s why they broke away and were almost successful in creating such a country. Their loss still resonates in the south and it’s time to bring that era to a close. We shouldn’t destroy every vestige of it, but it’s past time to take down the flags and statues (and put them in museums where they belong), and to rename some streets. We’ll be a better country for it.
What history will more likely remember is the rock-solid support for humanity and progress that the four liberals–Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg–continue to fight for. Their opinions were subsumed under Kennedy and Roberts, but they should rightly be proud, and thanked, for their steadfast support for the citizens of this country.
As we move forward from last week, we need to remember that many states will be required to recognize marriages, but off the alter those states can continue to discriminate based on sexual orientation and use religious belief as a hammer against full equality. I certainly support religious values, but it’s time to recognize that Biblical prohibitions that discriminate, marginalize and promote hate are…wrong.
Bu that’s a discussion for the future. Right now I’m going to buy some rainbow sherbet, kick back, and celebrate America.
Republicans are so thirsty for power that they are taking the people of Arizona all the way to the Supreme Court.
Arizona voters formed an independent commission to handle all the redistricting in the state. Their goal was to take the politics out of the process and have districts drawn in a more transparent manner.
But the Republican-led state legislature couldn’t allow the people to make that decision. Drawing districts in their favor is a great way for them to maintain control, so these Republicans took the people to court stating that according to the constitution, they are the ones to draw the maps.
The lawsuit was dismissed by the lower courts, but on Thursday, the Supreme Court said that it will look at the merits of the case.
If the power hungry Republicans in Arizona win their suit against the people of that state, it can set a precedent for other states with independent commissions to follow suit.
Suing the people who voted you into office? Yeah, you can’t get any more Republican than that.
When you’re so against providing contraceptive to your female employees that you take your case all the way to the Supreme Court, you better make sure your business dealings and squeaky clean and represent those strong beliefs. Hobby Lobby’s business dealings are not squeaky clean.
Claiming religious beliefs, Hobby Lobby took issues with the Obamacare provision requiring contraception be part of an employee’s health care package. They took their case all the way to the Supreme Court and earlier this week the Supreme Court agreed that, base on Hobby’s religious beliefs, the company did not have to provide contraception to its employees. But when Mother Jones did some digging a few months ago, they found out that Hobby Lobby is making millions of dollars from… get this… contraception!
Mother Jones found that Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan had more than $73 million invested in companies that produced emergency contraception pills. It was that same type of birth control that Hobby Lobby said it had an objection to when it took its case to the Supreme Court. CNN needed some answers and put Hobby Lobby and their hypocrisy on full blast!
Enter CNN host Ashleigh Banfield.
“The critics are calling Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) investments hypocrisy at its finest,” Banfield emphasized on Wednesday, adding that CNN had not gotten an explanation from the company after giving it “plenty of time” to respond.
“I don’t even know where to begin on this one,” the CNN host remarked. “I kept thinking to myself, this had to be an accident. But then I thought, it’s no accident when you are in the middle of the biggest political storm — all the way to the Supreme Court — and, yet, your guys aren’t aware of what your investments are in your very, very large 401(k)?”
CNN Business Correspondent Alison Kosik said that it was possible that Hobby Lobby’s investments in contraception makers could have initially been an oversight, but she noted that the company could ask its mutual fund manager to forbid investments in certain companies.
“It would mean that Hobby Lobby employees would most likely have higher fees,” Kosik pointed out. “But if you ask me, my thought is, if they’re that fervent about upholding their biblical principles, maybe that should include their investments to.”
“That’s putting their money where their mouth is,” she concluded.
People are upset, MAD I tells ya! This Hobby Lobby decision by the Supreme Court has people up in arms and they’re looking for a way to vent. So what better place to vent your displeasure than to attack @SCOTUSblog?
Well, I would attack too, except, @SCOTUSblog is not the blog for the Supreme Court. It is in no way affiliated with the United States Supreme Court Justices. @SCOTUSblog is just a blogsite dedicated to reporting on The Supreme Court’s decisions. The site is in no way responsible for the court, its failed justices or the court’s decision.
But don’t tell that to these angry Twitter users. They found the @SCOTUSblog twitter handle and they’re letting them know how disappointed and angry they are with the Hobby Lobby decision. And @SCOTUSblog is having some fun with it!
Now let’s watch you try MT @noahtron watching @SCOTUSblog spin trying to cover their asses after today’s ruling is unrepentant visible smarm
Thurs. No, wait—Fri MT @Closetrighty: @SCOTUSblog can you at least tell me when your agents will confiscating my gf’s birth control. — SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) July 1, 2014
Or when bloggers decide the law? MT @alyssaanton: @SCOTUSblog proves democracy cannot work when leaders are appointed instead of elected.
We prefer them as our editor & manager. RT @Allout1 I guess @SCOTUSblog wants women barefoot, pregnant and cooking dinner. — SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 30, 2014
A two-fer wrapped up with a bow in one single package. MT @CharlaneBrady: @SCOTUSblog You are an embarrassment and threat to human rights.
The Tea Party and most social conservatives can sleep easily throughout the summer now. The two Supreme Court decisions rendered on Monday should delight the right and make the inaction across the street in the Capitol seems like a mere distraction. Like a fly buzzing around the collective government heads. The conservative revolution has been won, and all it took was five justices and very little money.
In the Hobby Lobby case, the court affirmed that not only are corporations people, they also have religious rights that can be exercised on health care issues. Yes, Justice Samuel Alito did say that he didn’t expect the floodgates to open on religious issues, but just look at what the Court’s decision on marriage equality did to even conservative states. Lower courts have run riot over anti-gay marriage laws to the tune of 17 states, many of which are in the most conservative areas of the country. Does Justice Alito really think that lower courts will demure when it comes to challenges on religious grounds? I don’t.
But just as this Court has affirmed the highest aspirations of the conservative movement, and, I’m sure, cemented the idea that Madison, Adams, Jay and Hamilton would have agreed with them, they are just doing what the liberal courts did in the 1950s through 1970s. Remember that the court found a right to privacy in the 1968 Griswold case, and used that right, which appears nowhere in the Constitution, to decide Roe v. Wade. The Warren court did the same with Brown, basing it on previous, smaller cases that affirmed what the justices believed to be correct decisions.
Alito, clearly the more articulate conservative compared to Antonin Scalia, who just wants to rant, also wrote the majority opinion in Harris v. Quinn, the day’s other liberal-bashing case. Here, he and the conservative majority said that some public employees do not have to pay union fees even if they don’t want to actually join the union that represents their field. For example, in New Jersey, public school teachers who don’t join the teacher’s association still have to pay 85% of the association fees because the association represents and negotiates for these teachers. Alito created a new category of worker, a partial public employee who works for both the government and a private person who hired them, and said that this type of employee was exempt from representation fees.
This decision is not major in the sense that it covered a great deal of people, but it does open up the gates to further challenges to unions and laws that require people to pay a representation fee. The next case could give the conservatives an opening to expand the definition to part-timers or support staff or, to be honest, any other public worker. Alito doesn’t like unions. It’s not just the law; it’s personal.
While President Obama and the right wing Republicans duke it out over language and politics, the Supreme Court is moving full steam ahead to craft a country that looks more like 1814 than 2014. The biggest problem, though, is that the former generation had Chielf Justice John Marshall to guide it. We get Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas.
John Hagee’s son Matthew sent out the special alert bulletin yesterday on “The Hagee Hotline” show, calling all Christians to become more “spiritually violent” in fighting against things like gay marriage and abortion because secularists who support such things have “become violent with people of faith.”
Citing the Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding sectarian prayer at government meetings, Hagee said that he would have rejoiced if the ruling has been 8-1 “because then we would know that we have one liberal judge that we needed to get rid of.” But the actual 5-4 ruling is cause for alarm because it means that prayer is just one vote away from being entirely eliminated from public life, Hagee warned, and that “ought to be something that causes us to be chilled to the bone.”
It’s absolute nonsense for us to be debating the value of prayer,” Hagee said, just as it is “absolute nonsense” to even be having debates over issues like gay marriage and abortion.
The reason such debates are happening, he said, is because Christians are not being “intrusive enough to make sure that our faith is established in our culture.” As a result, secularists have “become violent with people of faith” and Christians need to fight back.
“There is a value in spiritual violence,” Hagee declared, “and it is time that you considered the role that you are playing or not playing and whether or not it’s time for you to become more aggressive in your beliefs.”
To hell with the Supreme Court and their interpretation that the Affordable Care Act better known as Obamacare was constitutional. What do they know anyway. If you really want to know if the healthcare law is constitutional, just ask George Will – a Fox News contributor whose opinion apparently matters to those at Fox.
On Sunday, Mr. Will once again offered his opinion and guess what? The Fox News regular disagrees with the Supreme Court and has determined that Obamacare is in fact, unconstitutional.
Sidenote: It can be argued that opposition to Obamacare is all one needs to be a contributor on the Fox “News” Network. Mr. Will fits this description perfectly.
Now back to your regularly scheduled Fox News Obamacare bashing…
Mr. Will continues… “On May 8, here in the second-most important court in the land — the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — there will be an argument that this is objectively a revenue measure,” Mr. Will said. “The Supreme Court said as much, a tax measure.”
“It did not originate in the House. And under the standards of origination, the whole thing is unconstitutional, so this argument, again, is far from over.”
Thanks to the Conservative controlled Supreme Court, some southern states can now legally take away the voting rights of some of their residents.
The Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act on Tuesday, the provision of the landmark civil rights law that designates which parts of the country must have changes to their voting laws cleared by the federal government or in federal court.
The 5-4 ruling, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, found that “things have changed dramatically” in the south nearly 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was signed.
“There is no doubt that these improvements are in large part because of the Voting Rights Act,” the court ruled. “The Act has proved immensely successful at redressing racial discrimination and integrating the voting process.”
“Section 4 and 5 were intended to be temporary, they were set to expire after five years,” the justices added.
Consider this two steps forward, three steps back.
The Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health care law today in a splintered, complex opinion that gives Obama a major election-year victory.
Basically, a bare majority of the justices said that the individual mandate — the requirement that most Americans buy health insurance or pay a fine — is constitutional as a tax.
“Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in an opinion that reflected a 5-4 vote on on the question.
Roberts — a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush — provided a key vote to preserve the landmark health care law, which figures to be a major issue in Obama’s re-election bid against Republican opponent Mitt Romney.
The Supreme Court is about to deliver their decision on whether President Obama’s Health Care Law, also called ObamaCare, is Constitutional. Republicans have accused Democrats and the President of forcing Americans to purchase a product through what they said was an “individual mandate.” This mandate they claimed, was unconstitutional and they fought the law through the lower courts all the way to the Supreme Court.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court will deliver its decision. But will the Health Care Law be invalidated by the Supreme Court if an individual mandate does not exist?
Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC’s The Last Word explains;
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