supreme injustices
Bill Scher at Campaign for America’s Future discusses the specter of Conservative Activism that is haunting our judiciary, as evidenced by several atrocious rulings earlier this week. As he puts it:
Way too many folks rolled over when John Roberts and Sam Alito were nominated for the Supreme Court. And now we're seeing the consequences.[…]
The conservative activists on the Supreme Court decreed in a series of 5-4 decisions:
* Individuals, who believe their tax dollars are being unconstitutionally misused by the White House to promote religious beliefs, aren't allowed to enter a courthouse to make their case.
* The Environmental Protection Agency can avoid its responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act, even though it's a law reflecting the public will as passed by the democratically-elected Congress.
* Corporations can once again use their checkbooks to flood the public airwaves with political ads during election season, again overruling Congress.
FFRF comments on the Hein case here:
"This means we have a constitutional separation between church and state, but no way to enforce it if the executive branch chooses to violate it with 'discretionary' actions," added Dan Barker, a plaintiff and Foundation co-president. The Foundation is the largest association of atheists and agnostics in the U.S., whose 10,000 members work to keep church and state separate.[…]
The Supreme Court in effect ruled that the Bush Administration may use taxpayer money to support religion without complaint by taxpayers. The decision makes the violation impervious to court review, since no one besides taxpayers could have standing to challenge the appropriations.
"The only remedy left, since individual Americans are being barred from challenging this violation, is for Congress to defund the Office of Faith-based Initiatives at the White House and Cabinets," said Barker. "Let Congress provide the oversight that the Court is refusing to give!"
Mkfox from Progressive Historians has comments from Justice Stevens on the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case:
"In my judgment, the First Amendment protects student speech if the message itself neither violates a permissible rule nor expressly advocates conduct that is illegal and harmful to students. This nonsense banner does neither, and the Court does serious violence to the First Amendment in upholding - indeed, lauding - a school's decision to punish Frederick for expressing a view with which it disagreed." [emphasis added]
This skewed-right judiciary is another of the Bushian catastrophes that will take years—if not decades—to rectify. Anyone who still claims that there is no substantive difference between Republicans and Democrats needs to pay closer attention to SCOTUS decisions.