Supreme Court Justice Alito Sending a Message?

post by Theodore Kettle of Newsmax

[Interesting article. I’m currently reading The Blueprint by Blackwell and Klukowski. I find it even more interesting. The points they make about our court system should be studied in every classroom in this free country. Supreme Court and federal justices are appointed, not voted in. Remember that. The puppet has had the chance to appoint 2 Supreme Court justices and will have a chance to appoint possibly 2 more. He also has the chance to appoint over 40 or more federal justices. If you were a Moslem and you were miraculously voted into the most powerful position in the world and had a take-over agenda, appointing heads of the most Christian country in the world’s justice system would be the most advantageous move you could possibly make. Wouldn’t you think? I find it odd that all of a sudden our Supreme Court and federal courts have such a vast number of openings. Seems odd to you, too, right? The job of the Judicial Branch of our government is to interpret the Constitution. Nothing more. Already, we have the courts over-stepping their role when they instruct jurors that they can’t talk to one another about a case, they can’t question any of the witnesses, and they can’t determine on their own if certain pieces of evidence is important or not to a case, or certain testimonies. A judge does not have that power. A juror has every legal right to hear all testimonies, they have the right to question who ever they want about the case and those who know the person on trial, they have every legal right to talk amongst themselves about everything the case is about, they even have the right to question the person on trial directly. Don’t take my word for it, read. When Congress approved a Supreme Court appointee after that person said they CAN change the law, then something is very wrong. Justice Alito is correct here. He stands for what our country was built upon. There shouldn’t be any other opinion other than this in a free country.]

Asked if he would attend the State of the Union address next year, after the TV cameras this year caught him objecting to the puppet’s denigration of the country’s highest court, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said, “I doubt that I will be there in January.”

Delivering the Manhattan Institute’s prestigious Wriston Lecture on Wednesday evening, Alito noted that other justices, like the recently retired John Paul Stevens and current Justice Antonin Scalia “stopped the practice of attending State of the Union addresses, because they have become very political.” Attendees of the black tie event in New York City told Newsmax that Alito complained of it being “very awkward” for the justices who attend the annual speech in the presence of the assembled members of both houses of Congress. “We have to sit there like the proverbial potted plant,” Alito said, and provoked howls of laughter from the crowd when he deadpanned that the justices who are “more disciplined refrain from manifesting any emotional opinion whatsoever.”

It was a self-deprecating remark. In January, as he sat near the podium during the puppet’s speech in the Capitol, Justice Alito was affronted by the the puppet’s charge that “the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.” Videotape of the event shows Alito wincing, then apparently saying, “That’s simply not true.” Directly behind Alito, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Senate Democratic Caucus vice chairman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the second and third ranking Democrats in the Senate, gleefully took to their feet and cheered as Alito and the five other justices in attendance remained seated, looking uncomfortably intimidated.

Alito also joked regarding State of the Union addresses that “presidents will fake you out. There are certain things that a president will say that everybody has to applaud” like, “‘Isn’t this the greatest country in the world?’… so you get up and you start to clap, and the puppet will say, ‘…because we are conducting the surge in Iraq.’”

Justice Alito’s speech was entitled Let Judges Be Judges and he used the occasion to warn that the nation’s most prestigious law schools are now dominated by judicial theorists who oppose judges applying the laws and the Constitution as written. “It’s critical for alternative voices to be heard in the law schools,” the justice said during the question-answer period. “The Federalist Society does a fantastic job of providing an alternative voice in law schools,” Alito said, referring to the 20,000-strong conservative legal society that believes the judiciary should “say what the law is, not what it should be….Asked whether a judge should apply the law as written or do what the judge thinks is fair and just, two thirds of those polled said ‘apply the law as written,’” Alito noted. Judges “have no warrant to pursue a reform agenda that is not grounded in the Constitution, and they should not aim to be theorists or crowd-pleasers,” he added. “Let judges be judges, for if they are not our legal system as we know it will fade away.”

Justice Alito also used the occasion to deride the New York Times, charging that “the popular media, unfortunately, often obscures” the fundamental point that “the Constitution does not always mean what we would like it to mean,” and that “the statutes the Congress enacts do not always mean what we would like them to mean.” Alito alluded to a July New York Times article calling the Roberts Court “the most conservative in decades.” The online version featured an interactive quiz on how Times readers’ views align with those of the Roberts Court, including questions on highly-charged issues like banning partial-birth abortions. Justice Alito called it “fundamentally at odds with the traditional understanding of the judicial role.” The question at issue in the abortion case was not supporting or opposing partial-birth abortion, but “whether the federal statute violated the Constitution; the New York Times quiz question obscured this critical point.” And he added that “while the creator of the New York Times quiz may not appreciate the difference between what the Constitution means and what one might like it to mean, ordinary people still do get this critical distinction.”

Kagan To Remove U.S. Constitution

post by Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, P.O. Box 277, Maxwell, IA 50161 and P.O. Box 540774 . Orlando, FL 32854 .800-671-1776—Liberty Counsel, with offices in Florida, Virginia and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit litigation, education and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family.

[The Confederate States of America (CSA) values the family, would never heed to these measures. Christian values are respected here. This is a Northern cause!]

Elena Kagan’s successful twisting of expert testimony, causing the continuation of the horrific partial-birth abortion procedure, compels us to do everything we can to oppose her confirmation. We also strongly object to her stealth activities undermining the Defense of Marriage Act and the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Any abortion involves the killing of an unborn child, but the gruesome procedure called partial-birth abortion (PBA) is grotesquely inhumane. PBA is closely akin to infanticide. For several years, Supreme Court jurisprudence on partial birth abortion relied upon evidence that was manipulated by Elena Kagan in political service of the Clinton White House. It led the Court to strike down Nebraska’s ban on PBA in 2000 as being unconstitutional. From 2000 until 2007, PBA was legal in America until the Supreme Court eventually upheld the PBA ban in June 2007.

John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things.”

• Fact—Elena Kagan’s handwritten notes are proof of her manipulation of expert medical evidence submitted by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) to the Supreme Court.
• Fact—Her revised wording, which was quoted in the Court’s 2000 majority opinion, played a key role in the horrendous procedure continuing until President George W. Bush signed a new ban into law in November of 2003, which ban was later upheld in 2007.
• Fact—Kagan never divulged to the Court that she was the one who, in fact, had changed ACOG’s official statement.
• Fact—Kagan’s radical political activism drove her to manipulate expert testimony and to later avoid admitting the fact that she had done so.

The Washington Times says Kagan “may be more responsible than anyone for keeping partial-birth abortion legal for an extra decade.”

• Kagan and the puppet are academic elitists and ideological clones.

The more we learn about Elena Kagan and her pro-abortion, pro-infanticide, pro-homosexual, pro-the puppet activism, the more incensed we become that this radical activist could be confirmed to the highest court in the land. This nominee has been described as the puppet’s ideological clone—and fellow academic elitist. In any other period of American history, Kagan‘s hand-written memo would be the kiss of death for her confirmation! In the final analysis, Elena Kagan’s past actions show that she is a political operative who would use a seat on the Supreme Court to advance a radical political agenda.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is voting on Kagan‘s nomination on Tuesday, July 20th. This week thousands of Liberty Counsel supporters have scheduled their faxes to the Senate to be systematically delivered up until the vote. Over 50,000 citizen contacts will be made this week opposing the nomination of Elena Kagan, opposing her radical abortion views and calling for a full investigation into events that took place during her tenure in the Clinton White House.  We need even more faxes next Monday! This powerful effort is making a difference.  Senators are hesitant to announce their decisions. They know that their vote on her nomination is politically toxic—yet the Washington pressure cooker is fully engaged.  Senators’ constituents are telling them that Americans expect them to do the right thing and oppose Kagan’s confirmation regardless of their party affiliation.

[Sounds like they are being threatened, doesn’t it?]

But they MUST hear from us if we are to have any hope that they will stand up to the  puppet/Reid arm twisting! Please consider participating (or, further participating) in our continuing fax barrage which will include your two Senators and selected committee members, other key leaders, and/or the entire Senate body.

Click here now to schedule your faxes! http://www.libertyaction.org/r.asp?U=29899&CID=312&RID=24042665

• Kagan undermines Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Reports are emerging that Elena Kagan has been working in the shadows to sabotage the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law and “The Defense of Marriage Act.” According to several sources, Solicitor General Kagan‘s signals that the government will not effectively defend DOMA made it possible for Judge Joseph L. Tauro to strike down parts of DOMA in Massachusetts earlier this month.

He deemed the State’s DOMA unconstitutional by ruling that the law, which defines marriage as one man and one woman for federal purposes, has no rational basis—solely because the Department of Justice refused to give one. The ruling initially only affects Massachusetts, but is considered to be a model ruling for other States.

[You’ve got to be kidding me! Marriage is one man and one woman! This is not a new concept. This is not unconstitutional. The Constitution has nothing to do with it. These hypocrites are constantly yelling that church has no place in government, yet, here they are placing church in government. They want government to step in on church rulings yet again! Marriage is to propagate. Two women and two men can’t propagate. And those who don’t know what that means—it means to have children! I find it the most hypocritical when I see two women calling themselves lesbians or two men calling themselves gay adopting children made by one woman and one man! He’s† watching…we don’t need to judge…that WILL come later!]

The president of the Massachusetts Family Institute said, “[The ruling is] another blatant example of a judge playing legislator!” [Which is very correct. A judge is only there it mediate the judicial procedings—to be sure that the laws and the Constitution is being interpreted correctly. At the Supreme level, interpretation only.] And Elena Kagan admitted in written responses to Senators’ questions that she personally participated in a meeting in which she compromised the United States’ position in a case against the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy (DADT) being brought by the Log Cabin Republicans. Elena Kagan’s actions as Solicitor General to undermine the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and The Defense of Marriage Act provide further evidence that she allows her ideological biases to trump her clear-cut duty!

[She should not even be a consideration in this matter of Supreme Court Justice. Why is she even being considered? Can’t Americans see that our United States Congress has been compromise? There is too much foul play here. This is treason against the American people, against the United States Constitution!]

Elena Kagan is just not experientially qualified or discerning enough in judgment to get past her own political views while rendering judgment as a Supreme Court Justice. That’s why I continue to ask every Liberty Counsel team member to press Senators to examine ALL the evidence that may weigh upon Kagan’s qualification for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

Please go here to initiate your faxes to your two Senators and other key Senators—
http://www.libertyaction.org/r.asp?U=29900&CID=312&RID=24042665

We have provided all the information you need here to reach Senators if you prefer to send your own faxes.
http://www.libertyaction.org/r.asp?U=29901&CID=312&RID=24042665

• Our special reports expose even more of Kagan’s positions.

In a special report from Liberty Counsel’s Washington, D.C., office, we reveal the true Elena Kagan, In Her Own Words. This is Elena Kagan, regarding precedence and the Constitution—“I think that there are some circumstances in which looking to the original intent is the determinative thing in a case and other circumstances in which it is likely not to be. And I think, in general, judges should look to a variety of sources when they interpret the Constitution, and which take precedence in a particular case is really a kind of case-by-case thing.”

[No, No, No…as a judge—any judge—the only means is the United States Constitution. There is NO other law of the land. No other means of interpretation. No other case-by-case, self-induced, self-determining I-know-better way. It’s the United States Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, or you are fired!—you are a traitor of the United States of America! and should be put to DEATH!]

Kagan‘s calculated answers during her hearings were a masterful performance of avoiding clear statements about her true positions. Yet, the hearings revealed enough of her political leanings, activist views and questionable judicial philosophies for our Washington office to produce a five-page summary written largely in Kagan’s own words. This document is a must-read for all Liberty Counsel team members who are standing in the gap opposing the nomination of Elena Kagan. We have been told that many of our supporters are printing multiple copies and passing it out in civic groups and other places.

Click here to download your free special report—”Elena Kagan, In Her Own Words“—
http://www.libertyaction.org/r.asp?U=29902&CID=312&RID=24042665

• Stand in determined opposition to Kagan’s confirmation.

There is STILL TIME for all of us to make our voices heard by those on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senators uncommitted in their votes, and your own two Senators. Your faxes will barrage the Senate between now and next Tuesday.

• God† is never outnumbered!

Elena Kagan’s confirmation is far from being a done deal, contrary to what you hear in the mainstream media (and even from some conservative sources). We can still stop this dangerous nominee from being seated on the Supreme Court! With God†, all things are possible. I also ask for your continued prayers in this matter. Thank you and God† bless you! The facts are clear. Elena Kagan’s radical views on abortion, the family and homosexual rights do not belong in our Supreme Court. We must continue doing everything we can to stand against this unqualified nominee’s confirmation! Now is NOT the time to give up!

[Update: Kagan was confirmed. This is now sitting on the highest court in the United States of America thanks to Congress!]

Supreme Court vs. Puppet

post by David A. Patten on NewsMax, July 6, 2010

The Battle Lines Are Drawn—The puppet appears set on a collision course with the conservative-leaning Supreme Court over the constitutionality of his administration’s transformative legislative agenda, legal scholars say. Partisan battles over the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan, combined with the administration’s proposals to change established policy dramatically in fields ranging from health care to financial regulation to energy and immigration, make it likely that the puppet and the court’s conservative majority increasingly will be at loggerheads, these experts say.

“I was struck by the coordinated attacks on the Supreme Court by liberals on the Judiciary Committee,” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative Judicial Watch organization, tells Newsmax. “I cannot recall any similar, sustained attacks on the high court in all my years in Washington. It is likely discomforting to all the Supreme Court justices. The puppet and his liberal allies are trying to politicize the Supreme Court in a way not seen since FDR’s attempt to pack it with extra appointees.”

One thing appears certain—Supreme Court Justice John Roberts isn’t likely to back down to the puppet. Roberts reportedly still is angry over the puppet’s decision to use the State of the Union address to scold the justices for their Citizens United v. FEC ruling, which rejected limitations on corporate and nonprofit electioneering. When the puppet said during the State of the Union address that the ruling would open the floodgates to donations by foreign companies and other special interests to influence U.S. elections, Justice Samuel Alito mouthed the words Not true.

Politifact, the independent fact-checking organization, agreed with Alito. It rated the puppet’s statement barely true, calling it an exaggeration. In their majority opinion, the justices specifically stated that their decision would not overturn the longstanding prohibition in 2 U.S.C. 441e(b)(3) against any foreign-based organization directly or indirectly spending money to influence the outcome of any U.S. election. The puppet’s decision to use his bully pulpit to frame the ruling’s political impact incorrectly may have caused lasting damage to his relationship with the judiciary. The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday that “Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. is still angered by what he saw as a highly partisan insult to the independent judiciary.” Simon Lazarus, counsel for the National Senior Citizens Law Center, told the Times that the Citizens United ruling came as a “real shock” to the administration, which “saw this new activist thrust among the conservatives as a direct threat to their legislative agenda.”

Ever since the puppet’s State of the Union remarks, Democrats and the White House have moved aggressively to legislate a way around the Citizens United ruling. The Disclose Act legislation that the House recently passed, which conservative critics say is a thinly veiled attempt to regulate corporate First Amendment speech so heavily that it becomes impractical, is unlikely to enhance the court’s rapport with the administration. That the battle lines have been drawn is clear. During the Kagan confirmation hearings, for example, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., warned of “the danger of judicial activism,” in reference to “the recent behavior of the court, particularly the five Republican appointees who’ve steered it so hard to the right.”

Curt Levey, executive director of The Committee for Justice, a conservative organization that has expressed serious doubts about Kagan’s ability to put the law above politics, tells Newsmax that allegations of judicial activism by conservatives are purely political. “Democratic senators’ charges of activism by the Roberts Court were remarkably free of any legal rationale and amounted to little more than complaining about outcomes they don’t like—that is, decisions that don’t show favoritism for the little guy. Now that judicial activism has gotten a well-earned bad name, such that Democrats can no longer openly defend it, they are reduced to saying you do it, too, as we saw at the Kagan hearings.”

The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that a number of legal scholars now consider a clash between the expansive pro-government plans of the puppet administration and the Roberts court to be inevitable. On health care, for example, GOP leaders in 20 states have filed suit to block the imposition of federal legislation that appears to give short shrift to the States’ role in providing health care. “Presidents with active agendas for change almost always encounter resistance in the courts,” Stanford University law professor Michael W. McConnell, a former appellate court judge, told the Times. “It happened to [Franklin D.] Roosevelt and it happened to Reagan. It will likely happen to the puppet, too.”

The puppet administration has already run into a brick wall in various court venues regarding its policies. Its setbacks, beyond the Citizens United case, include—

• The administration’s six-month moratorium on offshore drilling was blocked by a federal judge who wrote that “the plaintiffs have established a likelihood of showing that the administration acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the moratorium.” When the administration tried to get a stay of that judge’s order, that pleading also was rejected.
  
  • [Trying to destroy the South!]
• In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court struck down by a 5-4 margin the ban on guns in Washington, D.C. As solicitor general, Kagan had argued that the D.C. gun ban should continue.
• In June, by another 5-4 vote, the court expanded the protections in Heller to residents of all States, striking down a gun ban in Chicago as a violation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
  • [At least someone is reading the Constitution.]
• The administration is soon expected to go to court to try to block the Arizona law that aims to enforce the federal prohibitions on illegal immigration. There has been speculation the delay in the administration’s lawsuit stems from its uncertainty over how to attack a law that is largely patterned after existing regulations that the federal government has declined to enforce.

In part, the impending clash as the administration pushes its agenda forward appears to reflect the nation’s growing partisan divide. In last week’s confirmation hearings, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, pushed Kagan to identify any area of economic activity that the federal government, under the U.S. Constitution, is not permitted to regulate. Kagan declined, saying, “I wouldn’t try to.”

“It is not surprising that Kagan was reluctant to provide an example of an economic activity that Congress can’t regulate under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause,” Levey tells Newsmax. “To some degree, this reflects the sorry state of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, in which the Supreme Court has refused to enforce any meaningful limits on Congress’s enumerated powers. “But Kagan also had something more specific in mind,” Levey says. “She was clearly trying to keep her options open for stretching the Commerce Clause wide enough to allow her to uphold Obamacare’s individual insurance mandate.”

High Court’s Big Gun Rights Ruling

post by Lee Ross on Fox News June 28, 2010

[All this in Chicago of course. They are trying to get our GUNS! Anyone, now, going to start thinking about what the Constitution says about over throwing a dictatorial government.]

In its second major ruling on gun rights in three years, the Supreme Court Monday extended the federally protected right to keep and bear arms to all 50 States. The decision will be hailed by gun rights advocates and comes over the opposition of gun control groups, the city of Chicago and four justices. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the five justice majority saying “the right to keep and bear arms must be regarded as a substantive guarantee, not a prohibition that could be ignored so long as the States legislated in an evenhanded manner.”

The ruling builds upon the Court’s 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller that invalidated the handgun ban in the nation’s capital. More importantly, that decision held that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was a right the Founders specifically delegated to individuals. The justices affirmed that decision and extended its reach to the 50 States. Today’s ruling also invalidates Chicago’s handgun ban.

Backgrounder—Washington—The Supreme Court appears poised to issue a ruling that will expand to the States the high court’s historic 2008 ruling that individuals have a federally protected right to keep and bear arms, following an hour-long argument Tuesday. If so, the decision would mark another hallmark victory for gun rights advocates and likely strike down Chicago’s handgun ban that is similar to the Washington D.C. law already invalidated by the justices.

Tuesday’s lively arguments featured lawyer Alan Gura, the same man who argued and won D.C. v. Heller in 2008. He now represents Otis McDonald who believes Chicago’s handgun ban doesn’t allow him to adequately protect himself. Gura argued the Heller decision which only applied to Washington D.C. and other areas of federal control should equally apply to Chicago and the rest of the country. “In 1868, our nation made a promise to the McDonald family that they and their descendants would henceforth be American citizens, and with American citizenship came the guarantee enshrined in our Constitution that no State could make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of American citizenship,” Gura told the Court. He argued the language of the Constitution‘s 14th Amendment forces the States to protect the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The Bill of Rights, which was adopted in the late 18th Century, was then commonly viewed as only offering protections from the federal government.

It wasn’t until after the Civil War that the Supreme Court in a piecemeal fashion began to apply—or incorporate—parts of the Bill of Rights to the States. It has used the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause to incorporate most of the Constitution‘s first amendments but has not yet done so for the Second Amendment. Gura argued that another part of the 14th Amendment would be a better vehicle for the justices to make their ruling but there didn’t appear to be enough support from the bench on that front.

Chief Justice John Roberts was the most vocal advocate of using the Due Process Clause to extend the Second Amendment rights to the states. “I don’t see how you can read—I don’t see how you can read Heller and not take away from it the notion that the Second Amendment…was extremely important to the framers in their view of what liberty meant.” The discussion over liberty was a major philosophical theme of the arguments. Gura and National Rifle Association lawyer Paul Clement argued that the rights articulated in the Second Amendment are fundamental freedoms and would exist to all Americans even if there was no law specifically saying so.

James Feldman, lawyer for the City of Chicago, defended his city’s handgun ban and argued why the Heller decision’s Second Amendment guarantee doesn’t comport with the view that it represents a vital protection of liberty that needs to be expanded to the States. “[T]he right it protects is not implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” Feldman said. “States and local governments have been the primary locus of firearms regulation in this country for the last 220 years. Firearms unlike anything else that is the subject of a provision of the Bill of Rights are designed to injure and kill.”

[What an idiot! It’s not the guns that kill and injure. It’s those who improperly use them that kill and injure. Someone please educate this man. Where did he get his law degree? Through the mail!]

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in Heller and wondered why the right to bear arms was necessary to extend to the States. “[I]f the notion is that these are principles that any free society would adopt, well, a lot of free societies have rejected the right to keep and bear arms.” Later in the arguments Roberts disputed that notion. “I do think the focus is our system of ordered liberty, not any abstract system of ordered liberty. You can say Japan is a free country, but it doesn’t have the right to trial by—by jury.”

[This one is on OUR Supreme Court. These people are not there to make laws, they are there to enforce the laws handed down by our founding fathers. Who gives this person the right to decide that she will now make laws and decide what liberties free societies enjoy and what liberties we can’t? I’m warning you—we have to get rid of every single person in this government and start over or we are no longer free!]

Roberts was part of the five member majority in Heller and there’s a good chance Tuesday’s case will result in a similar 5-4 outcome. All of the members of the Heller majority are still on the Court and at least one of them would have to rule against extending the Second Amendment protection in order for the opposing side to prevail.

[These votes are wrong. They should not be so split like this when coming to our Bill of Rights! When are we going to act?]