Brooklyn Mutt

“This was a train wreck for the Obama administration…This law looks like it’s going to be struck down. I’m telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong… if I had to bet today I would bet that this court is going to strike down the individual mandate.”

“There’s been some change in my views about the death penalty, but I think there’s more of a change in the jurisprudence of the Court that made me eventually reach the conclusion that the death penalty, as it is presently administered, is unconstitutional.”

“I do indeed like so-called ‘deep dish pizza.’ It’s very tasty. But it should not be called ‘pizza.’ It should be called ‘a tomato pie.’ Real pizza is Neapolitan. [from Naples, Italy] It is thin. It is chewy and crispy, OK?”

“Both Thomas and Scalia have produced what can only be described as a master class in human apathy. Their disregard for the facts of Thompson’s thrashed life and near-death emerges as a moral flat line. Scalia opens his concurrence with a swipe at Ginsburg’s “lengthy excavation of the trial record” and states that “the question presented for our review is whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors.” But only by willfully ignoring that entire trial record can he and Thomas reduce the entire constitutional question to a single misdeed by a single bad actor.”

“If lightning strikes, and it turns out that as many of us believe, the Supreme Court turns out to be a third political branch of government and they strike down the mandate — big deal,” Weiner said, expressing a ‘so what?!’ sentiment. “Big deal!”

“We pretty much see the direction the Supreme Court is going. The solution, if the mandate is struck down, is not that the bill falls like the house of cards … the solution is going to be offering something everyone agrees is constitutional and that’s the public option in the exchange.”

“The Supreme Court unfortunately is a corporate-dominated arm of the Republican Party right now,” Weiner said. “I put nothing past them. But they would have to take a Bush v. Gore like leap to strike down the constitutionality of the whole law. Even the mandate is a pretty thin reed.”

“Pew survey: 53% admit they can’t name chief justice of Supreme Court (can’t even guess)—only 28% know it’s Roberts.”

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Now that the sex lives of Supreme Court justices have become grist for commentators, we are finally free to discuss a question formerly only whispered about in the shadows: Why does Justice Antonin Scalia, by common consent the leading intellectual force on the Court, have nine children? Is this normal? Or should I say “normal,” as some people choose to define it? Can he represent the views of ordinary Americans when he practices such a minority lifestyle? After all, having nine children is far more unusual in this country than, say, being a lesbian.

Let me be clear: the issue is not the fact that Scalia has chosen to have nine children. That is his personal business. The question is whether he is an extremist advocate of the so-called “Nine Children Agenda.”

“Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and his conservative fellow-Justices, like their ideological kinsmen in the nineteen-thirties, are engaging in what’s known as judicial activism. A few weeks ago, on Air Force One, Obama, a former law professor, gave a useful definition of the term, saying that “an activist judge was somebody who ignored the will of Congress, ignored democratic processes, and tried to impose judicial solutions on problems instead of letting the process work itself through politically.” This is, indeed, what the Roberts Court is doing. Local elected officials in Seattle and Louisville created complex and nuanced strategies to achieve racial diversity in their schools; in 2007, in a decision written by Roberts, the Court overturned the plans. The elected city council of the District of Columbia passed a strict gun-control law; in 2008, in a decision by Antonin Scalia, the Court vetoed it. Most notoriously, Congress passed the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance bill, which President Bush signed into law; earlier this year, in a decision by Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court eviscerated that legislation and decreed that corporations have the right to spend unlimited funds to elect the candidates of their choice. In that case, known as Citizens United, the majority also reversed two recent Court decisions. Roberts and his allies, like the conservatives of seventy years ago, profess to believe in judicial restraint (the opposite of activism) and respect for precedent, but their actions belie their supposed values.”