Lots in this article worth highlighting, but at least it now mainstreams what the DFHs have known for at least 3 years since Roberts and Alito took the bench.
In its first five years, the Roberts court issued conservative decisions 58 percent of the time. And in the term ending a year ago, the rate rose to 65 percent, the highest number in any year since at least 1953.
The courts led by Chief Justices Warren E. Burger, from 1969 to 1986, and William H. Rehnquist, from 1986 to 2005, issued conservative decisions at an almost indistinguishable rate - 55 percent of the time.
They're using databases compiled by political scientists who assign decisions to a conservative-liberal rating system according to criteria like whether the court sided with the prosecutor (conservative outcome) or an individual against a corporation (liberal outcome). I think the acceleration is significant too, as Roberts and Alito grow into the jobs and hit their full stride, confident in their impunity.
This really says it all:
Four of the six most conservative justices of the 44 who have sat on the court since 1937 are serving now: Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Antonin Scalia and, most conservative of all, Clarence Thomas. (The other two were Chief Justices Burger and Rehnquist.) Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the swing justice on the current court, is in the top 10.
When the "swing" vote at the "center" of the court is actually in the top 10 of consevative justices since they started measuring these things, I think I feel safe saying "Yes Virginia, the Supreme Court is packed with conservative extremists."
Those who support Progressive causes are in an odd position these days: we're often in the majority on issues that matter; and we're seriously talking about how to turn what, just a few years ago, was a wish list...into a "reality list".
Staying in the majority, however, requires the assistance of centrist voters--and that means, from time to time, finding philosophical compromise with voters we'd like to keep "in the fold".
In years past, the issue of the death penalty has created a considerable chasm between Progressives and centrists; with the one side concerned about the misapplication of capital punishment, and the other convinced that, for the most heinous of crimes, the only way to achieve a truly just outcome is for the guilty party to face the most severe of punishments.
What if we could bridge that gap?
In today's discussion we propose to do exactly that: to create a death penalty process that only executes those who are truly guilty and excludes those who might not deserve to be put to death...in fact, those who might not be guilty of any crime at all.
A U.S. federal judge on Saturday ordered Vice-President Dick Cheney to preserve a wide range of records from his time in office.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is a setback for the Bush administration, which has been pushing for a narrow definition of materials that must be safeguarded under the Presidential Records Act.
Don't celebrate yet, but CREW (who are the plaintiffs) have won the first round in the battle to get the Judicial branch to agree that the Vice-President, is, in fact a member of the executive branch, which is actually what Cheney's defence hinges on here. However, the injunction is an extraordinary measure while the Court considers the matter. Kollar-Kotelly might end up ruling in Cheney's favour, but at least for the time being, Cheney can't fax his records to Shredderville quite so easily.
In a 5-4 en-banc ruling, the US 4th Circuit ruled that the President has authority to arrest and indefinitely detain US citizens, or whomever (s)he should designate as an "enemy combatant" even in US soil proper.
In a different 5-4 decision though (one judge flipped), they ruled the particular complainant had not been given an appropriate hearing in which to challenge his status as an "enemy combatant."
Before I analyze some aspects of this party line and fairly contemptible ruling, let me use this opportunity to visually remind everyone what is at stake with this election as this picture becomes ever more red:
Today's post is by DMI's Kia Franklin ofTortDeform.com What's the Fair Pay Act? It's no big deal, really. It could only reshape the entire legal terrain of employment discrimination and determine whether employers should be rewarded for successfully hiding discriminatory pay from their employees for at least 180 days. Anyway, why should women gripe about employers paying some employees differently for doing the same job just as well as others?
Okay, so there's the issue of pensions, social security, and other benefits that affect the rest of a person's life, even after a person retires; the need to provide for one's family; principles of fairness, equity, and non-discrimination. Whatever, yada yada yada...
Okay, now that we've had our daily dose of sarcasm, let's be clear: today the Senate is considering a tremendously important bill. We would all do well to pay attention to what happens today with the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act .
The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would restore the spirit of those laws we often cite to as markers of America's progress, civil rights laws that prohibit employment discrimination.
This includes Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans wtih Disabilities Act, among others. The law would clarify that each time an employer issues a paycheck that undercompensates a person because of the person's race, gender, age, or disability status, the time window the employee has for filing a discrimination claim starts anew.
(by Kia Franklin of DMI's TortDeform.com, cross-posted from Keystone Politics) Progressive voters have been persistently challenging the Presidential candidates and other political leaders on the issues we care about most this election year. As just one example, we saw the power of mobilization when we organized our outrage over the FISA debacle and demanded that the candidates resist the Bush Administration's attempts to grant blind amnesty to corporations that violated our Constitutional rights. Our coordinated efforts around the FISA issue reminded Congress that progressives care about holding corporations accountable, and will hold representatives accountable too.
But the corporate lobby is busy sending out a message of its own. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said the Chamber will "build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed," to oppose "anti-corporate and populist rhetoric from candidates for the presidency." The corporate lobby wants progressive leadership "gone from power for at least 40 years," and are aggressively lobbying around a key set of issues, including so-called tort "reforms" to accomplish this.
Tort "reforms"-a misnomer since they actually deform our legal rights-are anti-populist policiesthat take away our Constitutional right to take big corporations to court when they've injured us through negligence or reckless business practices. These "reforms" include: setting arbitrary limits on how much malpractice victims can recover for their injuries; eliminating consumer state claims against companies that sell harmful pharmaceuticals, contaminated foods, and other dangerous products; and appointing judges with a pro-corporate bias to the bench. They are pointedly asking the candidates of all parties whether they are for or against this corporate agenda.
With the corporate right-wing working tirelessly on its agenda, mission critical for the progressive community is to engage all the candidates about the competing people-centered interests that affect our daily lives, economic security, health, and safety. Our economy's precarious condition is one of the highest and most obvious priorities right now. This is true for Americans who face foreclosure from the sub-prime lending mess. It is also true for those of us who will ever pump gas; who care about home property values in increasingly abandoned and neglected neighborhoods; who want healthy and affordable choices as consumers; who want legal protections regarding our employment and health care; and who generally feel that the government is more concerned with bailing out big corporations than with protecting hardworking Americans against victimization by corporate greed.
Now, that laundry list of frustrations seems like a lot to talk about. But it can pretty much be boiled down to one simple question to ask each and every candidate: What specific policies will you support to curb rampantly expanding corporate power, which has left regular Americans economically vulnerable, deprived of adequate legal protections, and wary about our government's ability to protect the public's health and welfare?
And if they need a little nudging, here are six more specific questions to ask the candidates, which are in part derived from a report we released about what isn't being talked about in Election '08:
2. Corporations can force individuals to take disputes against them to a private proceeding that is not a real court and does not provide the protections of real courts. Corporations sneak arbitration "agreements" into consumer and employment contracts because they know these private arbitrators are tied to corporate purse strings. Will you help Americans hold negligent or fraudulent corporations accountable by removing this loophole?
3. How will you crack down on federal agencies that, with courts' approval, protect corporations from strong state consumer protection laws through weak federal regulations? (For example our High Court's ruling in Riegel v. Medtronic allowed a defective device maker regulated by the FDA to avoid state claims).
Good leaders will follow, and Senators Clinton and Obama have both recognized that our country's leadership needs to be listening to regular Americans and not just the corporations that pour big money into lobbying Congress. So progressive voters have a special opportunity here to shape election dialogue around the agenda that we feel is most important to us. In this opportune moment we have the great responsibility to make sure that issues the candidates haven't been discussing, but which urgently require national attention, get discussed.
By asking our own questions and articulating our own vision for how we want our government to function, what we want to do about corporate power in our lives, and what sorts of legal protections we value for ourselves, we can also parse out just how well the candidates' populist sentiments translate into practical, common sense policies to fulfill that vision. I wish New Yorkers could have organized effectively to do this in time for our primary. But thankfully, Pennsylvanians still have the chance to do this service to the progressive voting public.
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