Tag Archives: SCOTUS

national news

Well … Justice Barrett?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You’re a newly minted, crisp-and-clean justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. You were confirmed after a nasty fight in the U.S. Senate.

You haven’t yet decided any major cases and then you might get a complaint from the president of the United States — the fellow who nominated you to the high court — alleging illegality in the vote-counting after an election he is likely to lose.

If you are Justice Amy Coney Barrett, do you really want to have your judicial legacy scarred forever by deciding that Donald Trump’s complaint actually has merit, when legal scholars on both sides of the divide suggest that his complaint is utterly preposterous?

Trump’s complaint might not even get that far. The high court might decide against even considering it. That is my hope. It’s not necessarily my expectation.

If it does go to the court, I cannot possibly believe a majority of the justices — and that includes Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, Trump’s other two appointees — would agree on a complaint that effectively overturns the results of a legitimate, free and fair election.

All of the justices pledge to “follow the law.” From my perch out here in Flyover Country, the ballots are being counted according to the law.

The U.S. Constitution is working.

national news

Don’t do it, Mr. POTUS

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I had hoped a good night’s sleep would refresh me this morning, giving me a chance to look back on what we witnessed last night with a fresh set of eyes and a fresh outlook.

I didn’t get that sleep-filled respite. I awoke this morning around 3; my wife had been up about an hour already.

We watched the presidential election  returns roll in Tuesday night, then went to bed thinking the worst was about to happen … that Donald J. Trump would squeak/slither his way to a second term.

I heard he declared “victory” about 2 a.m. I am glad I was dosing when he did that.

Then, lo and behold, after sitting up for a time during the wee hours with my wife and after going back to the rack for a couple of hours, I found out this morning that Joe Biden took the lead in Wisconsin, that his lead in Nevada was holding, that he then took the lead in Michigan.

If he wins those three states, he gets to 270 electoral votes. He is elected president. He can begin transitioning from private citizen to commander in chief and head of state.

Oh, but wait! Trump likely won’t allow that to happen. He’s going to take this matter to the highest court in the land, with its three justices whom Trump nominated and the Senate confirmed. What in the world is he going to challenge? That the vote counting was done illegally? That someone “rigged” the election to produce a Biden victory? That Martians landed on Earth overnight and voted illegally for the former vice president?

He hasn’t produced a shred of evidence of anything being done illegally.

That brings me to this point, which is that if the Supreme Court’s justices have any sense of honor they will toss whatever complaint Trump brings to them into the crapper and say the allegations are without merit and do not deserve to be heard.

I have this strange belief that the court would do the right thing.

With that I feel a good bit better than I did when I went to bed last night. I now must come to grips with how Donald Trump managed to make this election as close as it has turned out to be.

More on that later.

national news

It ain’t over

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well now. This is what serious political drama looks like.

Pundits are comparing this suspense to 2016, when Donald Trump shocked the civilized world by defeating Hillary Clinton to be elected president of the United States.

I liken what we’re going through to 2000, when George W. Bush was elected president through a 5 to 4 U.S. Supreme Court decision to stop the recount of votes in Florida; Bush held a 537-vote lead and then won the state’s electoral votes to become president.

Here’s what might play out as we await the last returns from the 2020 race: Joe Biden has 238 electoral votes in the bank; he needs 270 to win election. If he holds onto his slim leads in Nevada and Wisconsin and then manages to catch Donald Trump in Michigan (which is a distinct possibility), he gets to — drum roll — precisely 270 electoral votes.

Is that the end of it? Hah! Hardly! Trump will challenge the results. There might be a recount in, say, Michigan and Wisconsin. Does Trump ask the SCOTUS to stop the recount if Biden is still ahead?

Well, I harken back to what the great Winston Churchill once said about democracy, and I am paraphrasing it here. He called it the most inefficient, cumbersome system of government ever invented … but the best we could ever have. The democratic process is playing out in real time, folks.

legal news, national news

GOP wins SCOTUS battle; however …

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s done.

The U.S. Senate’s Republican majority had its way with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was confirmed in a 52-48 vote. Not a single Democratic senator voted “yes” on this travesty; one Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, voted “no.”

The GOP Senate majority can now look back on the hypocrisy it displayed in jamming this nomination through to confirmation. Many of the Senate Republicans who endorsed Barrett’s nomination said four years ago that no president should be allowed to fill a SCOTUS seat during an election year.

Yet here we are today. Barrett will take her oath and join the court, delivering a solid right-wing conservative majority to the court possibly for decades. Then she well might get to decide whether this election should stand. Hmm. Imagine how she’s going to rule in a case involving the individual who nominated her to the nation’s highest court and who might challenge an election result that delivers a seeming victory to Joseph Biden.

The process that produced Justice Barrett simply stinks beyond measure.

It is known that “elections have consequences.” We have seen the consequence of electing one Donald J. Trump to the presidency, which is the confirmation of a third nominee to the highest court in America.

I do hope the next electoral consequence will be Donald Trump’s defeat next week.

national news

Would he dare challenge a landslide loss?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot yet buy into the notion that Donald J. Trump is going to mount a challenge to the presidential election result if it turns out that Joe Biden is elected in a landslide.

By every means possible I want him to realize the futility of such a challenge were it come to pass. I am not yet ready, either, to accept that Trump is going to lose his re-election bid by landslide proportions. Heck, I am not yet willing to shout “Game over!” for Trump, given the slippery nature of this individual’s escape ability.

He snatched victory from defeat’s jaws in 2016 and I am not yet ready to suggest that he cannot do the same thing again this time.

All of this is why it is imperative that Joe Biden win this election in a manner that plows asunder any notion that Trump might have that a challenge has a chance in hell of succeeding. He already has sown fear into the electoral process, which in itself is an astonishing thing coming from the president of the United States … the politician who took an oath to defend and protect the system that elected him.

I am acutely aware of what others have said about Trump’s aversion to losing, and how he would do anything to stay in power. I also have heard others call him a certifiable fraud and phony, pointing to the lying he has done about his business and academic success.

My head should tell me to heed those who fear Trump’s intense lust for power. My heart — and a small part of my head — also reminds me that Donald Trump is a blowhard and a coward who is afraid of mounting a challenge he well could lose.

I mean, he doesn’t want us to call him a “loser” or a “sucker.” Right?

national news

Litmus test, anyone?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I must have been dreaming it, but I always used to believe that politicians never admitted to requiring judges or judicial nominees to pass a “litmus test” to determine their fitness for a particular judgeship.

I suppose we can toss that truism out the window.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett is being grilled by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee over Donald Trump’s decision to nominate her to a spot on the Supreme Court.

She is known to be an avid anti-abortionist and a strong critic of the Affordable Care Act.

Trump has made it clear that he intended to nominate justices who were of that mind on both issues. He is now anti-choice on abortion after being pro-choice and he just cannot stomach having the ACA on the books because it comes from the president he detests with a passion, Barack Obama.

I am left now to ponder whether Trump asked Barrett — or two previous SCOTUS appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — questions related directly to those issues. I just wish I could have been a fly on the proverbial wall when he met with all three of them.

Trump’s lack of political savvy is well-known and well-chronicled at this point. A significant portion of me believes he likely asked them all directly: Will you rule against Roe v. Wade and against Obamacare? Just say “yes” and I’ll nominate you to the Supreme Court. Got it? Good!

It sickens me to believe this is possible. I fear that we’re now living in an era when the nation’s leading politician doesn’t give a damn about the appearance of litmus tests … other than to insist on applying them when they suit his political agenda.

 

legal news, national news

Merrick Garland haunts this hearing

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Merrick Garland is very much alive and well but his “ghost” floated throughout the hearing room today as a congressional hearing commenced on an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee welcomed another federal judge, Amy Coney Barrett, as she began her confirmation hearing to the U.S. Supreme Court. She would take the seat occupied by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September.

Garland’s role in this drama? Well, he once got nominated to the high court by President Barack Obama. Another justice, Antonin Scalia, died in February 2016 while on vacation in Texas. President Obama wanted to nominate a successor. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time in declaring his intention to block that effort. Why? Because the voters had a right to be heard before a SCOTUS nomination would be considered by the Senate.

We had a presidential election in 2016. Obama couldn’t run again. It turned out that Donald Trump would win the election. So, Trump got to select someone to succeed Scalia; he chose Neil Gorsuch.

The hypocrisy between then and now is stunning in its scope.

We were 10 months away from the previous election when a vacancy occurred. Now, we’re just 22 days before the next election. Don’t Americans have a right to have their voices heard before the Senate considers a nominee to succeed Ginsburg? Of course we do.

Except that Republicans who at the moment hold the majority of Senate seats are pushing full speed with the Barrett hearing.

Most astonishing of all is the comment that Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham made in 2018. He said then that if an opening occurs during Donald Trump’s term as president and the “primary season has begun,” the Senate should hold off until after the election before considering a possible replacement.

Graham said we could hold his words against him. Fine. Many of us are doing that, Mr. Chairman.

Amy Coney Barrett wouldn’t be my choice to join the court. I much prefer a jurist in the Merrick Garland mold: moderate, center-left in philosophical judicial outlook. Garland, though, never got the courtesy of a hearing, let alone a Senate vote, that appears to be in store for Judge Barrett.

It’s all because the Senate GOP majority played politics with the judicial nomination process in 2016 … and is doing so once again right now.

Shameful.

legal news

Answer the question, Joe

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic ticket seeking to defeat Donald Trump and Mike Pence, are performing a clumsy dodge when it comes to a simple, straightforward question.

It is this: Do you endorse a plan to add members to the U.S. Supreme Court in the event Judge Amy Coney Barrett gets confirmed to the seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Many progressives are alarmed at the addition of another conservative to the high court and they want to add at least two seats to the nine-member bench presumably with progressives/liberals to, um, provide some ideological balance.

The move might pick up steam if Democrats gain control of the U.S. Senate, which is looking more plausible each day we draw closer to the election.

Biden and Harris have danced all around the question about whether they back such an idea. For the record, I happen to oppose it. The court has been a nine-member body for more than 150 years and it should remain that way. Even the late Justice Ginsburg opposed the idea of “packing” the court.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence are raising a ruckus over Biden and Harris’s refusal to answer the question. To be candid, they do have a point. Biden said he will make that decision public “after the election.” Harris, when asked during her VP debate with Pence this past week, turned the discussion instead to the “packing” being done by Republicans who are filling lower-court bench seats.

Biden and Harris need not provide the Trumpkins with ammunition to fire at them down the stretch of this campaign.

Just answer the question. No matter what they decide, rest assured that the Democratic Party presidential ticket will continue to have my support. Honest. Really and truly.

national news

Consequential? Yep!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Oh, how I hate saying this, but I must say it.

Donald Trump is facing the prospect of losing bigly in his bid for re-election to a second term as president. But — and we all know what happens when we say “but” — he might get the last laugh on all of us.

Even if Joe Biden beats Trump on Nov. 3, Donald Trump is likely to have been able to place three justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Their decisions fueled by right-wing ideology is going to shape many aspects of public policy even as Trump empties the drawers in the Oval Office and skedaddles back to Mar-a-Lago.

That’s what I call a “consequential” president.

I surely do not want him re-elected. I oppose his selection of Amy Coney Barrett to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the high court. I dislike Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, two previous Trump SCOTUS selections.

But it has been a good while any president has nominated more than two justices in his initial term. The last one was President Nixon. Of course, Nixon’s presidency crashed and burned too, but only after he was re-elected in a smashing landslide in 1972.

My hope is that Trump’s presidency ends after a single term. That would be very good news.

The bad news, though, is that he will have been able to nominate three justices to the Supreme Court. They’re all right-wingers and the latest nominee — Barrett — appears poised to undo many of the rights championed by the jurist she would succeed.

That is quite a consequence.

national news

‘People’s voice’ is being ignored

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Senate Republicans argued four years ago when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to join the Supreme Court that the “people need to have a say” in who should join the court.

That was then. These days, Senate Republicans are saying something so very different. The people’s voice? The upcoming presidential election just 40 days from now? Pffftt!

Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated by Donald Trump to join the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died fewer than 50 days prior to the next presidential election; Antonin Scalia died in February 2016 several months before that year’s election.

We were going to get a new president in 2016, given that Obama couldn’t run for a third term. We well might get a new president this year. Do “the people” this time still deserve to have a say in who joins the high court? Of course we do!

That won’t happen, apparently.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is set to convene a hearing on Oct. 12. Barrett will sit before the committee and dodge question after question from senators. The committee will vote and likely will recommend she gets confirmed; it will be a partisan vote, with Republicans holding a majority of the committee.

Then the full Senate will vote. The entire body’s vote likely is going to be on a partisan basis as well. Barrett will be confirmed and will take her seat on the court.

What about the people’s voice? What in the name of fairness happened to that fervent call four years ago to give voters a say in who joins the court for the rest of his or her life?

It has been trampled by raw, rank and reprehensible political hypocrisy, led by the hypocrite in chief, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

We are living in a dangerous, perilous time.