From The Colbert Report:

The cross has nothing to do with Christianity -- it's just the normal symbol of the resting place of the dead.

From The Colbert Report:

Jeffrey Toobin explains what will happen to elections if the Supreme Court decides in favor of corporations.

September 15, 2009 Comedy Central The Colbert Report

The Word - Let Freedom Ka-Ching

Corporations do everything people do except breathe, die and go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs in the Hudson River.

This is a pretty depressing saga unfolding right before our eyes and it's another reason why we need cameras in the Supreme Court so we can view the mockery Roberts is making out of the Third Branch of government. They are about to grant corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to attack political candidates right up until an election, which would make destroy the very fabric of our voting structure. Did you know that a corporation is an individual in Scalia's mind?

Dahlia Lithwick explains the horror that is unfolding over the hit job produced by Citizens United on Hillary Clinton.

When we first met this case, it involved a narrow question about whether a 90-minute documentary attacking Hillary Clinton could be regulated as an "electioneering communication" under McCain-Feingold. The relevant provision bars corporations and unions from using money from their general treasuries for "any broadcast, cable or satellite communications" that feature a candidate for federal election during specified times before a general election. A federal court of appeals agreed with the FEC that the movie could be regulated. Citizens United, the conservative, nonprofit advocacy group that produced the film, appealed. The issue last spring was whether a feature-length documentary movie was core political speech or a Swift Boat ad. But the court surprised everyone when it ordered the case reargued in September, this time tackling the constitutionality of McConnell and Austin.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas are already on record wanting to overturn these cases. Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts have been inclined to wait. The question today is whether we wait no more [...]

Solicitor General Kagan stands to defend the FEC, not in a frock coat but a tasteful blue pantsuit, and when Scalia pounces on her, two sentences into her opening, she scolds him as if he were an impudent 2-L: "I will repeat what I said, Justice Scalia: For 100 years this court, faced with many opportunities to do so, left standing the legislation that is at issue in this case." Kagan is so loose and relaxed, you'd think this was her 100th argument. Which allows Roberts to dispense with the kid gloves and accuse her, respectively of "giving up" an argument she made in her opening brief and "changing positions." When she is asked, in effect, if she wants to lose this case in a big way or a little way, Kagan is eventually forced to reply, "If you are asking me, Mr. Chief Justice, as to whether the government has a preference as to the way in which it loses if it has to lose, the answer is yes."

One of the ways the Roberts Court hopes to make all conflicting case law in the campaign finance realm disappear is to blame all prior bad case law on Kagan. When everyone is thoroughly confused about what rationale the government may advance in order to limit corporate spending, Roberts can gleefully conclude that all of Austin "is kind of up for play. …" Poof. And Austin is a problem no more...read on...

It truly is a depressing read, even though we it's an excellent piece and we need to read it. With cameras in the court, Americans would be able to watch how the Roberts Court will tilt the country away from the American people and into the hands of the corporate elite.

All a corporation would have to do is merely threaten a candidate that they'll make a movie or run a gazillion ads against them and that would be enough to "buy" their vote over anything that a corporation deems unprofitable. What's sad is that corporations already funnel millions of dollars through PACs already, but that's still not enough for the activist judges of the right.

Unfortunately, Scalia's right. According to the rule of after-discovered evidence (I became familiar with it when I was a reporter and covering a similar case), an innocent man can still be put to death if the evidence that could have exonerated him should have been brought forth during the original trial. There are exceptions, but that's the gist:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal trial court in Georgia to consider the case of Troy Davis, who is on death row in state prison there for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer. The case has attracted international attention, and 27 former prosecutors and judges had filed a brief supporting Mr. Davis.

Seven of the witnesses against Mr. Davis have recanted, and several people have implicated the prosecution’s main witness as the actual killer of the officer, Mark MacPhail.

The Supreme Court’s decision was unsigned, only a paragraph long and in a number of respects highly unusual. It instructed the trial court to “receive testimony and make findings of fact” about whether new evidence clearly established Mr. Davis’s innocence. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who joined the court this month, did not participate.

The decision set off a sharp debate between Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia about Supreme Court procedure, the reach of a federal law meant to limit death row appeals and the proper treatment of claims of innocence.

“The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death,” Justice Stevens wrote in a concurrence joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, “clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing.”

Justice Scalia, in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said the hearing would be “a fool’s errand,” because Mr. Davis’s factual claims were “a sure loser.”

He went on to say that the federal courts would be powerless to assist Mr. Davis even if he could categorically establish his innocence.

“This court has never held,” Justice Scalia wrote, “that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

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Judge Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as the 111th Justice of the Supreme Court at the Supreme Court of the United States. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the Judicial Oath in the East Conference Room before a small gathering of Judge Sotomayor’s family and friends.

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Pat Buchanan continues hurling insults from his racist screed at Human Events at Sonia Sotomayor, this time on PBS's The McLaughlin Group. At least Eleanor Clift was there to attempt to keep him in check. Here are Buchanan's remarks from the segment.

Oh no she did not. She has said this six or seven times. I take the woman at her word. I believe her. I don't know why she didn't come out and defend all the experience she had, she thinks the richness of her experience had, she thought she would be an even better judge. Instead John what she did is she sat there and gave this rehearsed, robotic performance, you know, not being engaged.

It was like a junior in college who just wants to get through the oral exams on a pass fail basis. He doesn't want to get high honors, and that's what she did and quite frankly I think she diminished herself as a figure because she's a very passionate and intense person. She does believe in race based and ethic based advancement and promotion for purposes of diversity. And she didn't come off that way. I think she came off basically as look, this is Mr. Obama's choice as a Justice, and if that's what you want fine. And here's a guy, Obama, who voted against John Roberts to the Supreme Court and appointed this lady who really does not look like she fits up to Roberts' standards.

[.....]

Well, here's the problem in my view with it, and where I think the Republicans did a good job in some cases. Her whole life, I mean she goes to Princeton, first thing she does she sends a letter to HEW that they don't have enough Hispanic professors. They bring her in affirmative action to Yale. You know, they attack the Yale administration. She denounces the Bakke decision with a group of students. Her whole life....according to the New York Times!!! (crosstalk) But is she going to rule that way on the Supreme Court?

[.....]

But Mort, she comes off as Sam Alito's little sister. A strict constructionist, and I'm you know, oh yeah this law and order type. That is not why she was picked. She's a passionate Latino woman who is a liberal and I think frankly I would like to see more of her be herself.

[.....]

She'll be good for Republicans on the court in this sense because I think she is really the other, the other Sotomayor, and not the one we saw there. I think she's going to be passionate, intense. I think she's going to come down hard on affirmative action. That's what we want. If you've got a liberal judge on the court let them be like Wild Bill Douglas.

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During CNN's State of the Union, Pat Leahy tells Jeff Sessions to stop the racial politics when he attacks Sonia Sotomayor's work for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Education Fund. Given Sessions' openly racist background, I'd say Leahy went easy on him.

KING: Senator Sessions, do you have any doubt if a Roe v. Wade- type case comes before the court that she is a vote for abortion rights?

SESSIONS: Well, it does seem that way. The organization she was involved with, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, had filed a number of very aggressive briefs in the case...

KING: Now, she says she was an advocate in those days and that was her job.

SESSIONS: Well, that's all right. But they -- I mean, she voluntarily joined and was on the board and her organization advocated that the federal Constitution required that it pay for abortions and the group also opposed any parental consent laws on abortions. So I would assume that that answer was where she will be.

KING: And...

LEAHY: You know...

KING: Go ahead.

LEAHY: ... first off, let me clear up one thing. No one in the White House suggested to me what questions I should ask or I shouldn't ask. And had they done that, I would have just hung up the phone.

I made it very clear in talking to my fellow Democrats on there, you ask any questions you want. We're not there -- it's not the White House conducting this nomination hearing, it's the United States Senate. So nobody had any restrictions on what to ask.

But I would hope that people would not think we picked a Supreme Court justice on just one issue, the issue of abortion. I voted for Supreme Court justices who I'm sure totally disagree with the idea of having abortion legal, just as I voted for some who disagree with the idea of making all abortions illegal. That should not be the issue.

And the idea of trying to say, well, you know, she was on the Puerto Rican defense thing and so we have to ask some questions about that, I hope we don't go back to the day when we used to have African- Americans up for confirmation and say, yes, but you belong to the NAACP, so, you know, we're really suspicious of you.

Come on. Stop the racial politics. This is a person...

SESSIONS: Well, come on, Pat, you...

LEAHY: No, no, no, but...

SESSION: I want to disagree on that.

LEAHY: ... that's what it comes across. That's what it comes across. It comes across...

(CROSSTALK)

SESSIONS: Make them...

LEAHY: ... that if you belong to a group that tries to help Hispanics, help them in school, help them in other things, somehow you're suspicious. The same arguments were used against Thurgood Marshall and others. I think it's wrong.

The fact is, she has had more experience on the federal bench than any other nominee, and certainly, Jeff, since you and I have been...

(CROSSTALK) SESSIONS: But, Pat, I want to correct something. No Republican leader said she was a bigot. You've overstated that. There's nothing wrong with us asking about her...

LEAHY: I was talking about Newt Gingrich.

SESSIONS: Her (INAUDIBLE) views about positions -- legal positions that she took as a member of any organization. That's a normal thing to do. And I don't think that was unfair. She said that she thought she was fairly treated. Other commentators, objective leaders, civil rights leaders have said that.

We gave our absolute best to make sure this was a fair hearing, but it had to be vigorous. We had to ask about things that people cared about, her speeches, her prior pleadings that she did and some of her decisions, which are troubling.

But, Pat, you gave us a fair hearing. I appreciate that. A lot of people felt we were pretty tight on time, but you -- when the hearing came up, we had an opportunity. And I appreciate that.

KING: Gentlemen, we're about to run out of time.

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During what was at times a bit of a heated exchange, but way too chummy in general -- given the type of browbeating Pat Buchanan actually deserves for his continued racist remarks on MSNBC -- Rachel Maddow ends up telling Pat Buchanan to quit living in the 1950s, and that he's fanning the flames of racial hatred with his rhetoric. Before that, she gives him ample opportunity to put on full display, again, just how horribly he thinks the poor, downtrodden white man is being treated in America.

Some of Pat’s "finer" moments during the interview.

-- Comparing Sonia Sotomayor to Harriet Miers.

-- Calling her a purely affirmative action candidate by the President and completely dismissing her academic accomplishments.

-- Saying that “white folks” built this country.

-- Calling Bork and Scalia “real scholars” and "tremendous minds" and saying Sotomayor hasn’t risen to their level.

-- Saying the only reason she was appointed to the bench was because of affirmative action.

-- Complaining about Sotomayor getting a chance to go to the best schools and knocking out someone who might have gotten better grades than her. When has Pat Buchanan ever complained about the likes of George Bush and other legacy children being allowed into the best schools because of who their parents are, and knocking other kids out? I would guess he has not. I’ve certainly never heard him bring it up. Rachel should have called him on that one if he'd let her get a word in to do it.

When asked if she got the grades she did in college because of affirmative action, saying that in the Ivy League schools, half the kids graduate cum laude now. Really? So they're raising students' grade point averages in college now and no one told the rest of us about it? Then retreating to saying he bet he graduated higher in his high school class than she did, and going so far as to say he probably did better than she did in college as well, but he doesn't think he's qualified to be on the Supreme Court.

So being a judge for seventeen years doesn't count for anything in Pat's world. And Pat says he did better than she did in school, without backing that up with any specifics. If anyone knows just what his grade point averages were in high school and college, I'd like to find out.

He compared the track team at the Olympics potentially being all black or a hockey team being all white to the racial make up of the Supreme Court. Yeah, that's exactly the same thing, Pat. He seems to have forgotten that there was a time not all that long ago that blacks in America were not even allowed to play on the same team as white people.

And he refused to say there is anything wrong with the fact that the Supreme Court has been made up almost entirely of white men for all these years and might benefit from other races being represented. He dodged back opining over the firemen they trotted out there as a political game at the hearing rather than answer the question.

I really don't understand why Rachel felt the need to bring him on if she was going to let him lie and talk over her for the better part of the interview. She's just not aggressive enough to deal with the likes of this bully, and he knows it. MSNBC has allowed Buchanan to become a racist sideshow on their network. As Media Matters has wondered: What would Pat Buchanan have to say to get himself fired from MSNBC?

From The Daily Show:

Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation hearings are no snoozefest, as Republicans call her "racist" and Chuck Schumer cries.

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Exhibit A on how the GOP is hanging themselves out to dry with their blatant racism during the Sotomayor hearings. Rick Sanchez talks to his mom, and four other "wise Latina women" as he puts it, and asks them how they feel about the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

WHITFIELD: Rick Sanchez, you're wondering, where is he? Well, he decided to go back home to Miami to find some wise Latina women. There he is, Rick Sanchez.

And I know, in the forefront of the wise Latina women, su madre. In fat you even slept at her home last night, right?

SANCHEZ: That's the way it works. You have to come back sometime.

You know, it's funny. Now she spends most of her time, my mom, asking me not about me or anything else other than just my kids. I guess that's the role of a grandmother.

WHITFIELD: You have taken the back seat to the kids.

SANCHEZ: Yes, yes, pretty much so.

You know, it's interesting that we would try and stretch our coverage, because we have heard a lot from pundits, and we have certainly heard a lot from legal analysts, and we've heard a lot of politicians and newscasters, and they all have something to say that's very much an important part of this story about Sonia Sotomayor and her candidacy, her nomination for the Supreme Court of the United States.

It's historic, but we haven't maybe spent as much time as we possibly could going around the country and getting a perspective from other people, from regular people who live other there, and especially the people who have now become part of this nomenclature, this wise Latina woman.

So I wanted to do was to come to south Florida and find four wise Latina women, women who have been former federal prosecutors, women who have gone to Ivy League schools, who fought the fight and made it and are extremely successful.

And I think I found them. And I am going to sit down and tell you what they have to say about what it is like, their perspective. It is really unique, all right, Fredericka? You probably know a little bit about this.

For example, what it's like to be a female federal prosecutor, and with all that that brings, and still you walk into a courtroom, as they tell me, and guess what, a lot of people say, oh, you must be the court reporter, or are you the attorney's wife?

That's the reality of the legal system, which they tell me is still very male-dominated. And that's an important point.

But before we even get started with them, I decided to talk to the wisest of the Latina women, as you mentioned, my mama. Usually, Mom and I don't talk politics. Dad and I talk politics, my brothers and I talk politics, but usually, Mom and I don't talk politics. We talk about the kids and other stuff.

Well, I asked her about Sonia Sotomayor, and I found out that my mother, like many Hispanic-Americans, has a lot to say about this. Take a listen.

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Sen. Orrin Hatch doggedly pursued Sonia Sotomayor today on a series of questions about the Second Amendment, since the matter of gun rights -- especially the evil President Obama Secret Plan to Take Your Guns Away -- is probably the biggest legal issue on the minds of most Utahns.

As you can perhaps see from the excerpts, Sotomayor handled them all ably (one of the rulings Hatch raised, she pointed out, was a very narrow case involving nunchucks and not guns). At one point, she had to point out that Hatch essentially wanted her to issue a ruling on cases that she might actually have before her on the Supreme Court, so she couldn't answer those.

Nonetheless, you can rest assured that the National Rifle Association and the various gun fetishists out there -- convinced that their gun rights actually are what keep us safe from government tyranny -- will find whatever she says unconvincing and denounce her anyway.

Last night, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA was on Glenn Beck's show, and he made it abundantly plain that they were going to go through the pretense of listening to Sotomayor patiently before they denounced her.

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Essentially, the NRA is demanding that Sotomayor prejudge all her Second Amendment cases and pay fealty to their often cockamamie legal positions, or else they will denounce her.

Count on more of the same from the Senators they have in their pocket. Orrin Hatch being one of the more prominent.

The only thing amusing about it is realizing just utterly impotent they all really are.

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Sen. Jeff Sessions attacked People for the American Way on Face the Nation Sunday morning because they are exposing the right wing attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor by calling into question Frank Ricci's litigious nature.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just bring up something about the firefighters'case. This was the case where she ruled against the firefighters who claimed they were discriminated against because they didn't get a
promotion up here in Connecticut because minorities did not score high enough on the same test and the whole test was thrown out. Now the Supreme Court reversed her on that case. But People For The American Way, which is a liberal group that supports Sonia Sotomayor, is calling attention to what they call Frank Ricci. He's the central character in this, his litigious and background. And they say, they point out that that he has been fired from another fire department,that he claimed discrimination because he was dyslexic. Did they have a point here?

SESSIONS: No. That's just typical of the personal attacks of People For The American Way and the hard left that is supporting this nomination. These were 18 firefighters who filed this lawsuit, not just Frank Ricci, his name was the first one on the case but 18 of
them.

And when you show empathy for one party, Bob, you unnecessarily show a bias against another group. And this is the thing -- I just want to say I think Pat and I would agree on this. We need to think through how we handle these cases today. And do it in a way that is effective legally and her opinion was rejected by the Supreme Court. It was a very important opinion.

Exposing pertinent information about a man that is going in front of Congress to testify against Sonia is not a personal attack. It's called due diligence. Maybe he should read Dahlia Lithwick's piece on Mr. Ricci: The New Haven firefighter is no stranger to employment disputes.

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(Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes - Senator Alben W. Barkley - Message bearers)

1937 was the year President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a bill which would raise the number of Justices sitting on the Supreme Court bench from 9 to 15. He also added mandatory retirement at 70. Since many of the sitting Justices were at or beyond that age, Roosevelt foresaw a wholesale revamping of the court. Critics (among whom were former President Herbert Hoover) were hostile to the bill and its ramifications, calling it "Court Packing" and claiming it would would give FDR limitless power to enact more New Deal legislation.

Nonetheless, FDR set out to establish a series of "Townhalls" which were set up all over the country to get public support of his plan. Cabinet and Senate members who were loyal supporters of FDR and judicial revamping put forth the Presidents case for the bill.

Ickes: “ What have the President’s opponents been able to say to you? The Chief Justice and two other justices, the three averaging the age of 78, have told you that a court of nine judges is more efficient than a court of more than nine judges. But at the same time they serve notice that they would refuse to answer questions which might reveal whether a court of nine judges efficient in torturing the Constitution, might possibly be less desirable to the people of America than a court of more than nine willing to give men, women, children and democracy a chance to live.”

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Attempting the political equivalent of relaunching the Hindenburg, soon-to-be former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin hosted ABC, Fox News, CNN, Time, the AP and other media outlets while fishing Tuesday. But even as she proclaimed of her abrupt resignation, "politically speaking, if I die, I die," Palin reminded Americans once again why she so deserves that fate.

By claiming the nonexistent "Department of Law" in Washington would protect her from the kind of ethics woes she encountered in Alaska, Palin demonstrated her continuing ignorance of American government and public policy alike. Of course, it's far from the first time.

Here, then, is a look back at Sarah Palin's Greatest Hits:

"I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out." (July 7, 2009.)

"It's all for Alaska." (Asked by Time why she resigned, July 7, 2009).

"In what respect, Charlie?" (Asked by ABC's Charles Gibson if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine, September 11, 2008.)

"Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy..." (Misunderstanding Alaska's 3.5% share of U.S. domestic energy production, September 11, 2008.)

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America." (October 16, 2008.)

"A task that is from God." (On the war in Iraq, June 8, 2008.)

"I think God's will has to be done, in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that." (June 8, 2008.)

"To me, it motivates us, makes us work that much harder. And it also strengthens my faith, because I'm going to know, at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, that the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4. So I'm not discouraged at all." (Asked if she was discouraged by polls showing the McCain-Palin ticket trailing, October 22, 2008.)

"As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?" (August 1, 2008.)

"That's something that Piper would ask me!...[T]hey're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom." (asked by third grader Brandon Garcia what the Vice President does, October 20, 2008.)

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