Chicago strikes back at SCOTUS, passes landmark gun law
From the Associated Press, news that the Roberts Court can’t just roll over Chicago… Read more
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Obama’s krafty little Kagan pick
Hard to hit: Obama's SCOTUS pick, Elena Kagan.
Put me down as not jumping up and down with excitement about Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I would have loved to see the president make a more in-your-face liberal pick (or perhaps a Black woman, just to make Clarence Thomas’ head explode.) But that doesn’t mean picking Kagan wasn’t a smart move. Read more
Morning clicks: Kagan’s the pick, You’ve got Meekmail, Sink speaks up
Happy post-Betty White day! Miss Betty rocked SNL this weekend, and garnered the show’s highest ratings since the weekend before the 2008 election. Not bad for an octogenarian comedienne who said she didn’t know what Facebook was before a runaway Facebook fan page got her booked on the show.
Meanwhile, who peed in this TV reviewer‘s breakfast cereal? Betty killed, dude. Deal with it. The show was actually funny from start to finish, which you usually can’t say for SNL, unfortunately.
But the big news this morning: the White House has decided to play it safe with its SCOTUS nomination, picking Elena Kagan. … (oh, sorry, I fell asleep there for a moment, because the pick is so dull.) No paper trail? Check. Woman? Check. Not terribly controversial? With the exception of the Harvard ROTC thing (which she was wrong about, IMHO)? Check, check and check.
Perhaps the one person who was excited about the Kagan pick was Kendrick Meek, whose team blasted out an email within like three microseconds of the news leak. In their email, Team Meek pointed out that of Kendrick, Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist, only one of them supported the president’s previous pick, Sonia Sotomayor (hint: it wasn’t Charlie Crist or Marco Rubio.)
Why the need for speed? Meek is taking the biggest hit from Indie Charlie’s presence in the race, as Crist swipes Democrats out from under him. Kendrick’s people insist Charlie can’t hold Democrats going into the election, but Kendrick is fighting a two-front war, against Crist, and unlimited funds Jeff Greene, which has at least some Dems worried.
And they could get more worried still if this item in the Crowly Political Report is even close to true … Read more
The SCOTUS Five: making the world safe for corruption?
Three of the court's conservatives, Scalia (left) Chief Justice Roberts (center) and Alito (right)
Apparently, public corruption is NOT like pornography. Tony Scalia doesn’t know it when he sees it. And that’s not just because Supreme Court justices live sheltered, sexless lives (had a Coke lately, Clarence…?) No, it’s because like corporations, including multinationals with substantial foreign ownership, investing unlimited sums in American elections, politicians should be allowed to trade their votes for money from time to time. Read more
You’re welcome: SCOTUS decision lets foreign companies buy U.S. elections
Scalia and the other conservative justices give new meaning to the term "activist judge."
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which, as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick put it, the John Roberts “Pinnochio project” turned a corporation into a real boy, is bad on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. But one area in which the decision is particularly bad is the potential the decision has to give foreign nationals, and maybe even foreign governments, enormous influence over American politics. Until Roberts, Scalia and company discover some other hidden intent of the founders, foreign nationals are still prohibited from giving money directly to U.S. political campaigns. But the new corporate superman that the court created in Citizens, has the distinction of being not just an American “person,” but a citizen of the world (something Republicans normally hate, but in the in the case of corporate superman, it’s all good.) In short: nothing in the SCOTUS decision prevents multinational, or even foreign, corporations from spending unlimited sums to effect the election or defeat of American politicians, up to and including the president of the United States.
UPDATE: Slate’s Explainer explains where this dreadful idea of corporate “personhood” came from.
Read more
A ruling only a Republican could love
Chief Justice John Roberts, corporate and Republican activist
The SCOTUS ruling in Citizens United vs. the FEC was a breathtaking feat of judicial activism that the New York Times editorial board this morning rightly called a “shameful book-end to Bush v. Gore, ” in which a slightly different conservative 5-4 majority “stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. … Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.” Viewed that way, the decision was actually worse than judicial activism — it was political activism being practiced by the judiciary, something the founders of this country surely never intended. Read more
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