The Week in Pictures -- Notorious Edition

From the guys at Powerline Blog:

The week in Pictures -- Brexit of Champions Edition

From the guys at Powerline Blog:

And one that should be added

Liberal SCOTUS voting block - Hypocrites!

This past monday, SCOTUS ruled on the Texas abortion law case, when they said that women's health was secondary to abortion access. Justice Breyer, writing for the majority (joined by Ginsburg, Kagan, Sotomayor, and the squish Kennedy) believes the additional requirements of the Texas law would not provide them protection from doctors like Kermit Gosnell. Breyer wrote:

Gosnell’s behavior was terribly wrong. But there is no reason to believe that an extra layer of regulation would have affected that behavior. Determined wrongdoers, already ignoring existing stat­utes and safety measures, are unlikely to be convinced to adopt safe practices by a new overlay of regulations.

Question?

Would any of the 5 members of the liberal voting block on SCOTUS (yes, including Kennedy) apply this logic to gun control?

The right to keep and bear arms is specifically enumerated in the Constitution, the 2Nnd Amendment.

The Right to Privacy was found based on the Due Process Clause of the 14th amendment.

Blocked -- Supreme Court halts Obama’s executive amnesty on divided 4-4 vote

From Hotair:

Why is the program blocked when the Court is split equally? Because the lower court, the Fifth Circuit, ruled against it, and when SCOTUS is deadlocked the lower court’s ruling stands.

Boom!

Supreme Court Delivers Huge Blow To EPA’s Ability To Control Private Property

From The Daily Caller:

The U.S. Supreme Court just made it easier for individuals and companies to challenge federal agencies’ authority to regulate private property under federal law — a decision with huge implications for a major Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation.

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with Hawkes Co., a family-owned business in North Dakota, that wanted to extract peat from wetlands they owned in northern Minnesota. The court said Hawkes could immediately challenge a federal agency’s decision to prevent them from using their private property.
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Hawkes Co., which provides peat for golf courses and sports fields, was prevented from harvesting peat from their property after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ruled the wetlands they wanted to harvest from were under federal control. That means Hawkes would need a special permit to harvest peat from their own property.

Wait, what! The owners of the land, were being forced to get a pernit to harvest from their own land.

WTF?

Federal Court Blocks Dem’s Attempt to Out Conservative Donors

From The Washington Free Beacon:

A federal court on Tuesday blocked efforts by officials in California to force a conservative group to hand over the names of its donors, saying the order could violate those donors’ First Amendment rights.

Kamala Harris, California’s attorney general and a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, demanded last year that the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) turn over its donor rolls. The court enjoined that demand pending the outcome of AFPF’s suit attempting to invalidate the order.

Another liberal violating black letter law and previous SCOTUS precedents to attack political rivals. She needs to be pay for all the legal bills of AFPF!

Another effort to dump the Constitution in favor of a Garland appointment

From Hot Air:

Barack Obama’s full court media press to try to force Merrick Garland onto the Supreme Court has gone essentially nowhere. The process doesn’t even shift into gear unless Chuck Grassley agrees to kick things off in his committee, and he came out as recently as Thursday saying that he would not flip-flop on his decision. But don’t expect the liberal pressure brigade to give up the fight so easily. The Washington Post had dredged up one legal expert, Gregory L. Diskant by name, who argues this week that the Constitution allows for Barack Obama to appoint Garland anyway, and he’s not talking about a recess appointment here. He argues that the wording of the Constitution should somehow allow the President to skip the confirmation process entirely and simply place Garland on the bench.

This is a sign of desperation by the liberals. Whne the situation is reversed ion the future, I hope some conservative pulls this article out and rubs someone like Chick Schumer's nose in it.

Notice Grassley’s Not Flinching on Supreme Court Nominee Hearings

From National Review:

(H)is willingness to take the criticism for this stance is worth noting for two reasons. First, there was a time when Grassley was more likely to be more conciliatory to President Obama, to be seen as “bipartisan” and so on. He was perceived as a “moderate,” voted to confirm Eric Holder, and was, for a while, trying to work out a compromise version of the Affordable Care Act. Years of Obama being Obama, trolling and mocking and ignoring Congress, have demonstrated to Grassley there’s no point in trying to appear “bipartisan” or conciliatory.

Second, if there were signs Grassley was willing to hold hearings or support an Obama nominee, the conservative grassroots would raise hell and support a primary challenger. So if there’s willingness to denounce and punish deviations from the conservative position, why isn’t there corresponding willingness to praise and support a lawmaker who takes the conservative position, particularly when it’s tough?

Well, that would require consistency from an unbiased media. So it's not gonna happen.

How Joe Biden Broke the Court

From Commentary via H/T at Instapundit:

In today’s New York Times Vice President Joe Biden lays out an argument for why Senate Republicans should surrender and let President Obama create a liberal majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. But in order to do that, he must explain why Americans should ignore a 1992 speech he made on the floor of the U.S. Senate in which he demanded that the first President Bush wait until after the next presidential election before nominating anyone for the court should an opening occur before November of that year. In other words, faced with almost exactly the same situation as we have now — with the White House and the Senate controlled by opposing parties — Biden thought that it would be wrong to drag the country through a divisive confirmation fight in the middle of a presidential election.

But if Biden were really interested in the truth he would have to admit that the problem goes back further than 1992. It was, after all, Joe Biden who did as much as anyone to break the court and to ensure that all nominations will be bitter partisan fights.

Though the man sitting next to him in the photo atop Jonathan Tobin’s Commentary article deserves plenty of blame as well.

What, A hypocritical democrat!!! How can that be?!?!?!

At last! Senate GOP playing SCOTUS confirmation battle by Democrat rules

From Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker Blog:

Ever since the disgraceful treatment of Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court by Democrats, the GOP has played a sucker’s game. That has finally changed with the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The Senate Judiciary Committee is playing by Democrat rules:
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We have videotape of Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Barack Obama all taking the position that the Senate should not vote to confirm a Republican in the lame-duck era of a president’s term. They only convict themselves of hypocrisy with this stance. Read this Washington Examiner account of the ways in which the Dems have doomed themselves.

It's take 25 years for karma to boomerang back on Biden, Schumer, Obama, et al.

Biden 1992 redux -- I’d “highly recommend” not nominating a SCOTUS replacement in an election year

From Hot Air:

After video from 1992 emerged of Joe Biden demanding that George H. W. Bush refrain from filling any Supreme Court openings in an election year, the current VP insisted that critics took his remarks out of context. “One excerpt” from a lengthy Senate speech did not give “an accurate description of my views” on Supreme Court openings, noting that the speech also “urged the Senate and White House to work together to overcome partisan differences.” Biden somehow overlooked that his own suggestion at avoiding those partisan differences was to put off any nomination at all, but Biden and his defenders suggested that the whole idea was an off-the-cuff Biden riff on the Senate floor, not a real policy statement.

Perhaps they might have a little trouble with that argument after reading this interview Biden gave the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne in June 1992. Not only did Biden urge Bush not to send over a nominee, but as then-chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden said he would ask the Senate to sit on it until a new president took office:

This proves that Biden is an idiot or a liar.

Well, actually both.

10 Times Democrats Vowed To Block Republican Court Nominees

From The New Media Patriot via H/T at Instapundit: Sauce for the goose.

actually, paybacks a bitch.

Obama’s SCOTUS confirmation petard

From Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker Blog:

There’s a lot of hoisting ahead for President Obama, the Senate Democrats, and their media allies when they try to force confirmation of a justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia. Courtesy of Scott Ott, we have this video of Senator Barack Obama making the point that the Senate should examine more than the intellectual capability and moral character of a nominee. Examination of a judge’s philosophy, ideology, and record – that’s right: philosophy and ideology – is important for the Senate to apply.

Whoops! The Dear Leader has just given the Republicans the justification for doing the SAME thing to his appointments.

And now Jim Geraghty of National Review has dug up the New York Times’ editorial board arguing that when voters hand control of the Senate to an opposition party in a midterm election, they have every right to resist a presidential nomination to SCOTUS.

The President’s supporters insist vehemently that, having won the 1984 election, he has every right to try to change the Court’s direction. Yes, but the Democrats won the 1986 election, regaining control of the Senate, and they have every right to resist. This is not the same Senate that confirmed William Rehnquist as Chief Justice and Antonin Scalia as an associate justice last year.

As Geraghty dryly notes, “this is not the same Senate that confirmed Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan…”

Scalia restored right to bear arms

From USA Today:

Having shaped the theory itself, Scalia then employed it in one of the most important cases of our lifetime: the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller, which restored a previously lost clause of the Constitution: the Second Amendment. Since the 1960s, gun control advocates — who were rarely originalists themselves — had been contending that the right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment solely protected what they called a “collective right” of states to have a militia. And most lower federal courts of appeals then adopted this view when considering newly-enacted gun control measures. Then, starting in the 1980s, originalist scholars began pushing back with evidence that, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, the amendment protected the fundamental right of individuals to own, possess, carry and use firearms, subject to the reasonable regulation thereof.

When the District of Columbia’s ban on the private possession of handguns was declared unconstitutional by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — one of the few circuits that had not adopted the collective rights reading of the Amendment in the 60s and 70s — the issue of the Second Amendment’s meaning came squarely before the Supreme Court.
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In a sweeping and masterful opinion, Scalia systematically presented and analyzed the evidence that established — to my mind conclusively — that the “right to keep and bear arms” was an individual right that merited the same protection as the First Amendment’s freedoms of speech, press and assembly. It was not enough that the District of Columbia claimed its complete ban on handguns was “reasonable.” As with other fundamental constitutional rights, he concluded, that claim must be judicially scrutinized. And the district handgun ban failed that scrutiny.

Yep, Scalia re-enforced the idea of the individual right to bear arms.

Obama evolves on filibustering SCOTUS nominees

From The American Thinker: Yesterday, Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)'s conveniently contradictory positions on a lame duck president filling a Supreme Court vacancy, which depended on the party of the lame duck president, got some attention.

Digging a little further, it turns out that our self-described constitutional scholar president, Barack Hussein Obama (D), he who was editor of the supposedly prestigious Harvard Law Review, despite some mystery about his grades also has changed...er, evolved in his attitudes about filibustering and rejecting Supreme Court nominees.

Randy DeSoto at Western Journalism nicely sums up Obama's hypocrisy on I was for filibustering until I was against it as "poetic justice."

Back in 2006, while Obama, a newly elected senator from Illinois, was biding his time until he could secure the nomination for president, then-president George W. Bush (R) nominated Samuel Alito to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Speaking to George Stephanopoulos (formerly of the Clinton administration) on the Sunday morning program This Week, Obama stated that because Alito did not have the proper judicial philosophy – i.e., Obama's – Alito wouldn't be independent of the White House. Therefore, Obama would:

... be supporting the filibuster because I think Judge Alito, in fact, is somebody who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values, you know. When you look at his decisions in particular during times of war, we need a court that is independent and is going to provide some check on the executive branch, and he has not shown himself willing to do that repeatedly.

Pot calling the kettle black.

Hillary -- Doing What Obama Did To Alito To Obama's Nominee is Racist

From Ace of Spades HQ via H/T at Hot Air:

The thought leaders on the Left had no problem with Senate obstruction when it came to blocking Republican nominees to the Supreme Court, and not just in 2006. The New York Times editorial board thought that Senate midterms overrode deference to presidential prerogative in 1987. When the shoe was on the other foot in the final 18 months of the Ronald Reagan presidency, the Paper of Record made it clear that the voter mandate that counted when it came to Supreme Court nominations was the sixth-year midterm, not the fourth-year re-election. Guy Benson dug up this gem from the NYT archives:

The President’s supporters insist vehemently that, having won the 1984 election, he has every right to try to change the Court’s direction. Yes, but the Democrats won the 1986 election, regaining control of the Senate, and they have every right to resist. This is not the same Senate that confirmed William Rehnquist as Chief Justice and Antonin Scalia as an associate justice last year.

And now, this is not the same Senate that confirmed Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor earlier in Obama’s term. People elected a Republican majority in the Senate, and according to NYT’s standards in 1987, that gives Republicans every right to resist. Now, if Obama wants to consult with Senate Republicans and pick someone who passes muster with this Senate majority, perhaps that could be arranged. Otherwise, the GOP will just play by the rules set by the Left and four current and former members of the Obama administration.

Well of course it is, the shoe is on the other foot.

Schumer -- Don't use my 2007 speech to justify blocking Obama nominee

From The Washington Examiner via H/T at Instapundit:

The Senate's No. 3 Democrat said Tuesday that his 2007 promise to block a conservative Supreme Court nominee should not be used by the GOP to justify its own plan to ignore President Obama's choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said his pledge to stop a nomination by then-President George W. Bush is an "apples to oranges comparison" to the current vacancy because he would have at least entertained the nomination and voted on it.

What a fascinating insight into Schumer’s ego: it’s not about you, Chuck. It’s about doing what’s right, long-term for the country, given how Democrats have essentially abandoned democracy and handed major nation-changing decisions to nine “men in black,” as Mark Levin put it a decade ago.

Will there be any network reporter asking Chuck, "Why not?"

Your Rules, Democrats

From National Review:

The belief that the Constitution says whatever it is that Democrats want it to say at any given moment is illegitimate as a legal philosophy for Supreme Court justices. Democrats long ago established that ideological disagreement is a perfectly valid reason for blocking a Supreme Court appointee. Senator Schumer spelled out the political case for preventing a lame-duck president from filling a vacancy. Senator Obama demonstrated the technique.

Your rules, gentlemen. Your rules.

Gotta hate it when your own words are used against you.

The Supreme Court Controversy In One Sentence

From Powerline Blog:

MaI am sure when Democrats tanked Robert Bork in 1987 someone among them—probably even Biden—must have known that what goes around comes around.

Republicans have been waiting 30 years for payback for the shameful rejection of Bork; that day has arrived. Time to pay up, Dems. That’s the only sentence you really need to know. Everything else is mere rhetoric.

Video -- Chucky Schumer insists that lame-duck president should not get Supreme Court pick

From Hot Air:

Sounds like pretty good advice, huh? Thankfully, Chuck Schumer has gone on record on this issue, insisting to the American Constitution Society that the Senate not only has the right but the duty to block Supreme Court nominees from a lame-duck President. Only with an extraordinary nominee should the Senate confirm such an appointment, Schumer insists.

Of course Schumer aimed this at George W. Bush, but note that this speech took place in mid-2007, when Bush still had 18 months left in his presidency. That’s almost twice as much as Barack Obama has left in his own, and both presidents appointed two members to the court. Schumer complains about the supposed extremism of the two appointments, but Republicans can easily make the same complaint about both of Obama’s appointments. Gander, sauce … some assembly required.

The only differences between then and now are the party that controls the White House, and the small allowance Schumer holds out for potential cooperation. If an extraordinary candidate who could pass Democrats’ standards for “mainstream” came before the Senate for confirmation, then Schumer says they could consider approving him or her.

Whoops!