I always try to be conservative in all things.

Nice to have the more restrained Laggy back!

Lagtight that was his name. It had been bothering me for a few days. Used to have a really tilting avatar too

Quite so. I have a "face made for radio", as the sayin' goes.

Thanks!

I'm avoiding posting anything controversial of the sort that got me in trouble last time around.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-...otus-rcna57362

That's a lot of "likely's" "suggestions", and "almost certainly's".

It has become a game for the SC where after lower courts rule that 'yes this is illegal gerrymandering' they say 'looks that way but there is not enough time to fix it, so it will have to be fixed AFTER the election', meaning they let it stand such that the GOP gains power making it likely to be cemented after the fact in a way that cannot be challenged.

In one of these cases, the SC made zero sense, as their logic of 'too late to change and would cause havoc' was dealt with in the lower courts as the order was simply to revert to the prior districting maps, which were already in place, which was LESS work, than the SC allowing the new gerrymandered map, which then would have to be implemented and voters notified of the changes. And yet the SC stuck to the 'too late to change it, would cause problems' logic to allow it to stand.

There is a growing body of fact showing this SC often starts with a premise or 'decision' in mind and then won't allow any fact or reason deter them from working their opinion to get to that. Even if they, the SC Justice have to tell clear lies in their decision to justify it as Alito was busted doing in the 'Coach prayer on the sidelines and changeroom, Church and State' case. It was one of his fellow Justices who busted him for the bare faced lie he needed to tell, with video, to rationalize his decision.

absolutely shocked that Alito was prob the leaker. Yhtsi

Not suprising, two days before Cupid blessed us with his poorly paraphrased opinion, the attached opinion piece appeared on Think NBC. I will let you judge whether he properly cited to this article when he suddenly wanted in inform us of his opinion on this issue. It is also not a shock that Cupid shows he truly does not comprehend the matters he loves to fight with attorneys about in here, he just simply does not understand them and cannot be taken seriously in a debate about the merits.

POLITICS & POLICY
Trump's subpoena stalling highlights the growing hubris of America's judges
What business do the courts have in the dispute between the Jan. 6 committee and Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters from the Ellipse near the White House in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021.Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images file
Oct. 29, 2022, 8:00 AM EDT

By Allen Sumrall, Ph.D. student in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin and Josh Chafetz, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center
On Oct. 21, the House issued a subpoena to former President Donald Trump requiring him to testify before the Jan. 6 committee and to produce documents about his role in the Capitol attack. The House of Representatives serves, as the common 18th-century phrase had it, as the “grand inquest of the nation,” a representative body charged with looking into abuses of the public trust, publicizing its findings and contemplating remedies. It is hard to imagine anything more central to the House’s constitutional role than thoroughly investigating an attempt to overthrow the government by force. The Trump subpoena clearly aids that function.
That defiance will set up a dispute between Congress and a former president. But why is everyone talking about the judiciary?
There is little doubt that Trump will attempt to defy the subpoena, just as he consistently has done his best to frustrate all attempts to oversee his conduct in office. That defiance will set up a dispute between Congress and a former president. But why is everyone talking about the judiciary? Why, for example, does this New York Times story come with a headline reading “Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Trump, Setting Up Legal Battle over Testimony”?
The fact that, in this conflict between Congress and a former president, political observers’ thoughts immediately turn to the courts illustrates just how central the judiciary has become to American politics. Rather than simply defy the subpoena and see what the House does next, Trump is likely to sue and ask a court to quash it. Even if he loses, as he probably will, the dispute will take many months if not years to resolve. If Democrats lose control of the House before a court enters final judgment, a new Republican majority almost certainly will withdraw the subpoena. In other words, simply by going to court, Trump can most likely ensure that he never has to comply. Congress's legitimate demands for information about a matter of the utmost national significance will be frustrated.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Why should the courts be open to a lawsuit like Trump’s in the first place? When courts issue subpoenas (as many have to Trump and his businesses over the years), no one thinks that the subpoenaed party can run to the legislature asking it to intervene and quash the subpoena. Here, a duly authorized subpoena has been issued; Trump has a duty to respond to it. If he thinks he has a legal privilege not to disclose some of the subpoenaed information, he can raise that with the House, just as a party responding to a court-issued subpoena can challenge the scope of the subpoena before the court. There is no need for another institution to poke its nose into the matter.

Closing in on Trump? Criminal probes intensify amid historic subpoena
What would this look like in practice? When Trump runs to the courts, they should say that this is a nonjusticiable political question, meaning that it is not suitable for judicial resolution. They should toss the case on that ground, decline to opine on the merits of the House’s subpoena, and refuse to enjoin enforcement of the subpoena while Trump appeals. If Trump wants to defy the subpoena, he should have to do so in contempt of Congress, at his own peril.
If the House does hold Trump in contempt, it could use its sergeant-at-arms to arrest him itself. Alternatively, it could refer him to the Justice Department for prosecution under the contempt of Congress statute (yes, the same one that Steve Bannon was convicted under). At that point, Trump undoubtedly would argue that the subpoenas are invalid, but note how different the setting would be: When a judge rightly rejects his argument, Trump would be convicted of a crime carrying jail time. Rather than using the courts to delay compliance at no cost to himself, Trump instead would have to open himself to criminal liability, which he could escape only by convincing a judge he had the better legal argument about whether he violated the contempt of Congress statute. A judiciary that took congressional power seriously would force Trump to go that route.
Alas, that is not the judiciary that we have. As we have both written, the judiciary repeatedly has used cases arising out of congressional oversight disputes as opportunities to aggrandize itself at Congress's expense. And now we can already see that dynamic beginning to play out again.
Courts are not designed to play such a central function in American constitutional politics. The Constitution does not condition Congress’s power to investigate on getting a court’s permission. Courts are not the only, or even the best, remedy to congressional overreach, when it exists. Yet, because of the courts’ continued project of self-aggrandizement, the federal judiciary occupies a privileged position in the American constitutional system. By embracing the idea that they are the ultimate arbiter of political disputes, courts and judges position themselves as standing above separation-of-powers disputes—that is, they claim to be neutral arbiters setting the ground rules for other governing institutions. But this is a decidedly non-neutral posture: it empowers the courts themselves and consistently disempowers Congress.
Not every aspect of constitutional politics creates an actionable question for a court. Courts are designed to be a co-equal branch with Congress and the Executive branch, not the institution that decides when other institutions may govern. Congress — the first branch of government — has taken the extraordinary step of exercising its broad investigatory powers and sending a subpoena to a former president to determine his role in a violent insurrection that tried to prevent a peaceful transition of power. If Trump is allowed to sue to quash the subpoena, the courts in effect substitute their judgment for Congress's. That is not their constitutional role. The courts should sit this one out.

Never seen that article before now.

Funny that you think it is the only opinion piece and thus my opinion MUST come from one article when I have prior cited that most of my legal opinions come from a group of legal podcasts I listen to each and every day in the background during my workday and while out walking my 1-2 hours each evening.


I have about 12 legal expert podcasts I listen to and this is just a sample of them:

- LAWYER 2 LAWYER

- The Lawyerist

- Bloomberg Law

- Amicus

- Stay Tuned with Preet

- Strict Scrutiny

- Sisters In Law

And since I know (we all know) what jjjou will do next to flex his idiocy, I will cite it.

In very uke like fashion he will insist his opinion which is wrong above, and that he has cited as if fact is correct and that he knows better than I do, that I am wrong. He will be confused by him having a strongly held opinion, and thinking that then makes it equivalent to fact (which I am the only that has here) and thus he will continue this pointless line.

And when I argue on, as I also do with uke, you guys will see this as something I should not do. That when OTHERS tell me what i did wrongly, I should just leave it sit as if correct and fact, and no one will ever call out the persons like jjjou making such idiotic pronouncements of fact, when they hold no facts.

/Carlin Meme
/jjjou mocking Carlin meme as not having any meaning despite continually tripping in to it

/Cuepee being maybe the only P&S reg who doesn't understand the Carlin meme.

You respond with an appeal to authority resulting from your podcast education after railing Rococo for allegedly doing the same a few pages back? Lol.

Who knew that Cupid would claim he just happens to have the same opinion following the same factual analysis as a PhD and a law professor not before, but two days after, they publish the same.

Cuepee gonna cuepee. Damn, he must think we are gullible.

Boy you have to be one of the dumbest posters on this site. You do not even understand the Appeal to Authority which requires me say 'I am right because I am citing these experts' when what i said was 'these experts are what I listen to that inform my OPINION'.

I do not say with any authority my opinion is right. I argue why I believe it is correct which is what EVERYONE does. We all utilize the various sources of information we access to inform our view.

That you think if someone says they were informed with regards to their opinion because 'it was taught by a Prof', 'it was said by a historian on a podcast', 'it was a discussion between legal experts', and you think someone citing those sources equals an Appeal to Authority, just shows the depths of dumb of the people I ended up ensnared in arguments with.


It is FACT that i find legal debates and issues fascinating. I listen to more podcasts in that area than anything else. I head experts argue all sides, including sides Rococo often sides with. I am well aware of the arguments. MOst of these issues are not clear cut nor litigated to a conclusion. And from that I draw my opinion. SOmetimes it agrees with Rococo and the lawyers that side with his view, and other times on the side of the experts who disagree with his view.

The issue we have on this forum is once one of the 'Two Plus Two Lawyers' stakes out a position, none of the other lawyers will disagree, due to sides. It has NEVER happened because there is a feeling that sticking together lends them authority to say stuff like 'well now you are disagreeing with ALL of us, the lawyers'. That IS an Appeal to Authority and a bad use of it, just so you know in future.

Yes because that is all original PHD work in which no other legal experts on the planet, paid to discuss these issues 24/7 on podcasts would have also have come to.

In your view, these authors are the only ones on the planet to come up with this PHD thesis material, so unique that no one else touched it thus it had to be the only this article that could be the source despite the FACT this specific topic was being discussed on Podcasts between legal experts constantly at that period of time.


Everyone stay tuned for jjjou next stunning insight where he finds out I referenced something that he sees similarly explained on MSNBC about the Special Counsel appointment by Garland. His sleuthing skills will inform him that what I am saying seems to be drawn from the MSNBC segment and thus it HAS to be from there. Meanwhile he does not know that PBS, CNN, and about a dozen other outlets did the same analysis and held similar discussion.

NOPE. Has to the be the singular one he saw. Solved it.

You jjou are uniquely too stupid to argue with and are at Washoe levels. There is just no point as there is nothing to argue in you saying 'you got that from MSNBC...I figured it out... har har har I got you QP...'. I am good with any raucous debate, but the depths of your stupidity leave nothing to debate. Welcome to my ignore. Take a seat over there with Washoe.

Lol, the parrot is mad this morning! So many words to say absolutely nothing of value simply because he is caught in another set of lies.

Again, why the SC would benefit from being packed so they can create a separate category under their Original Jurisdiction to hear cases like this directly to avoid the ridiculous type delays that powerful people like Trump will take advantage of to use TIME to make the law an ass.



The above should not celebrate as the House Committee is about to lose its mandate to the GOP who will simply shut this down. There is talk now that the Senate Committee, that has the same authority to ask for tax Returns would demand them ('Shall') but that means Trump would just start the lawsuit process all over again from the lowest court and appeal it all the way back up adding again another 1300+ days to any justice on this.

I do not give Trump much credit but he is the worlds greatest master of using TIME to thwart the legal system.

America has the best Justice System that money can buy.

I've spoken upthread how this Supreme Court has been 'Captured' by the right and evangelicals. SCOTUS members doing joint prayer sessions with activist lobbyists evangelical groups, etc.


Well it gets much worse than that.

I want to say listening to this podcast is shocking, but it just is not any more. It lends far more ammo to the position that Alito was the one who leaked the Roe V Wade, theory as a way to polarize things to the extreme and force Kavanaugh into a box, when many speculate he was thinking about joining Roberts. The leak, and the subsequent furor that it caused, and more the vast anger it would have got from elements in the right, to then hear it got changed when Kavanaugh changed to the Roberts side would have made Kavanaugh and his family enemy #1 on the extreme right. And since Kavanaugh has no real friends on the left it would have truly isolated him. Checkmated by Alito.

In this podcast I learned that the Supreme Court has a real fan club. A citizen group of Supreme Court supporters who on occasion get invited to events where the SC members will be attending and with access to hobnob and shoot the ****. The fan group was always thought of as apolitical. That changed decades ago when one of the countries most influential abortion groups targeted that Fan group for infiltration hand picking key wealthy, married couple donors to evangelical causes. One such couple became a darling with the Conservative Justices with Thomas and his wife and Alito and his often dining, vacationing and otherwise socializing with them. This wealthy donor couple would loan the Justices their vacation properties and were being coached by the Evangelical groups on how to manipulate the Justices into a belief there was a silent majority who WANTED them to take the country back more right.

I think that last point is key as they talk about decades prior how Conservatives were being convinced their positions were not desired and not even to be spoken about in public. It was shameful to be anti gay, anti abortion and many of the other positions and that had cowed many into silence, who like the donors actually very much supported those positions. that in over turning Roe V Wade, etc, they would see the silent majority regain their voice and how much real support there is. The evangelic goal and these rich donor couples goal was to push the SC Justices to 'stiffen their spine and reject compromise positions' such as the ones they knew Roberts would push in RvW and almost got Kavanaugh over to.

There is now convincing evidence that Alito leaked at least one ruling (Hobby Lobby) to the couple who then shared it with the Evangelic Group to utilize in advance of its disclosure. A clear set of text submitted that show discussions between the evangelicals and certain others that they had gained this info from the Wealthy couple, and while Alito and the Wealthy couple have admitted the meetings and diners at question, they deny he told them the info in the text. Info then they could only really get from another leaker around the Justices, a very far stretch.

This is what the long game on the Right looks like. Decades long

This what a 'Captured Court' looks like.


A Secret Campaign to Influence the Supreme Court


(it is a 40 minute long podcast that I think everyone should listen to in the US. But the first 10 minutes set the stage well if you only have that much time)

I do really struggle with the people who view the above and think 'yeah that is horrible' but then say 'oh well, there is nothing we can really do to change the court' meaning leave everything status quo and just hope the current judges disengage from the politics and conflicts.

I think the above text messages exposure, shows that Alito is working an active campaign,hand in hand with the Evangelic and consulting and taking view points if not guidance and then letting them know how much success of not he is having in moving to their key desired positions.

Packing the Court, could absolutely give Roberts the tools to push this coordinated consolidated effort back. The SC has 9 Justices now because there are 9 Circuit courts. The logic was there should be one SC Justice presiding over each circuit court, such as Roberts does over DC (even if JJJou will claim he does not) and the number of Justices historically rose as the Circuit Courts increased. Today there are 12 circuit courts and so it would be absolutely to precedent for Biden to add 3 more SC Justices, which would give Roberts a more balances court.


I really struggle to see why that gets such push back by people who seem to understand the nefarious actions of Mitch McConnell and how he packed the Court first, and that in this last push, it is clear political operative judges that were installed. I struggle with the 'oh well, yes it sucks, but there really is nothing that can be done' position.

@Rococo if you care to comment, I would be interested to know how much attention you, the broader legal community, is paying to stuff like this? Do you see that profession really cares beyond and personal 'oh I don't like that' type sentiment?

In my view, all the aspect of the legal framework, the various Bar Associations, the DOJ, and other should be writing briefs to Congress, to adopt more oversight and impose the ethics guidelines that the rest of the judiciary is subjected to on to the SC since it is clear they will do everything and anything that other judges would be prevented from doing and breaking laws in doing, simply because they have no framework that prevents them doing so. This current SC is taking the Trump view that if it is not specifically forbidden and just a Norm, then it does not need to be followed.

Justice Roberts when confronted with the evidence that Alito was sitting with wealthy evangelic agenda driven donors at their home and using their vacation homes around the world, and that a series of texts strongly indicating he was leaking key deliberations to them merely replied "we have no proof that Alito told them'. When the follow up question was asked 'was proof sought. An investigation engaged', he did not reply.

Easy to say 'we have no proof' and thus nothing wrong was done, if you refuse to look for proof.

It was pointed out that Roberts has done nothing to show that an investigation into the RvW leak happened or what the results were either.

Congress, imo needs to act as the Court cannot be trusted to.

So it's not the Supreme Court.
The nyc conman will have to find another way to delay/deny justice.

"Appeals court halts special master review of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago in major defeat for Trump."

The three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed US District Judge Aileen Cannon's order appointing a so-called special master to sort through thousands of documents found at Trump's home .

The opinion was issued jointly by the three-judge panel made up of all GOP appointees.

https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_c1...cc7cedf30be925

Reaction is pretty much what you would expect. Liberal minded lawyers are horrified. Conservative-minded lawyers think it is no big deal. I am not close enough to ABA activity, state bar association activity or whatever to know whether they have taken a position. In general, the SCOTUS dgaf about state bar associations or the ABA.