Linda Greenhouse says that this week's decisions reveal the real John Roberts.
What became clear during the momentous term that ended Wednesday is that the real Chief Justice Roberts has been there all along, hiding in plain sight. We just needed to know where to look. ...
In its sweeping disregard of history, precedent and constitutional text, the chief justice’s 5-to-4 opinion in the voting rights case was startling for its naked activism, but no one watching the court over the past few years could have been surprised by the outcome. The court made clear in a 2009 decision that it had Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the “preclearance” provision, squarely in its sights. (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s devastating dissenting opinion last week read to me as if major portions had been written back in 2009, rendered unnecessary by the compromise outcome then, but saved for the day that she knew was coming.)
The chief justice’s antipathy toward the Voting Rights Act itself was well known, and was a significant reason that major civil rights groups opposed his confirmation to the court in 2005. Following his nomination, memos came to light that he had written more than 20 years earlier as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration. ...
If there is no mystery about the nature of the chief justice’s views, I remain baffled by their origin. Clearly, he doesn’t trust Congress; in describing conservative judges, that’s like observing that the sun rises in the east. But oddly for someone who earned his early stripes in the Justice Department and White House Counsel’s Office, he doesn’t like the executive branch any better.
Everyone was worrying that Bush was building the imperial presidency, but as it turned out, he appointed the imperial court.
Come in. Let's see what everyone else thinks.
Ross Douthat thinks Democrats should be sending kindly Justice Roberts a thank you card.
If you believe Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.’s more overheated liberal critics, last week’s Supreme Court decision invalidating a portion of the Voting Rights Act is designed to make sure African-American turnout never hits these highs again. The ruling will allow a number of (mostly Southern) states to change voting laws without the Justice Department’s pre-approval, which has liberals predicting a wave of Republican-led efforts to “suppress” minority votes — through voter ID laws, restrictions on early voting and other measures.
...a lengthy battle over voting rules and voting rights seems almost precision-designed to help the Obama-era Democratic majority endure once President Obama has left the Oval Office.
Why would anyone predict that conservatives would try to close off access to the polls? Maybe because it's exactly the kind of thing conservatives have been trying all along. Here's a hint, Ross. Democrats would much rather have minority voters actually
voting rather than fired up over their inability to vote.
The New York Times looks for a way to restore what Roberts wrecked.
What is needed now is a new coalition — as loud and as angry as the voices of 1965 — to demand that Republican lawmakers join Democrats in restoring fairness to the election system. Discrimination at the ballot box continues and is growing.
It comes in more forms than it did a half-century ago, but it is no less pernicious. Instead of literacy tests, we now have rigid identification requirements. Instead of poll taxes, we now have bans on early voting, cutbacks in the number of urban precincts, and groups that descend on minority districts to comb the registration rolls for spelling errors. ...
The most fundamental change Congress could make would be a law declaring a universal right to vote that could not be infringed by any level of government. The Voting Rights Act was aimed at combating discrimination “on account of race or color,” which was the urgent problem of the time. Discrimination has now broadened to encompass more groups of different kinds, and it is time for a broader law, especially given the Supreme Court’s clear intent to dismantle all racial protections.
Yes, there are other forms of discrimination at the ballot box, but I'd be happy if we could restore protection against racial discrimination before we try to solve all the rest.
Dana Milbank watches as a Darrell Issa "scandal" evaporates. Again.
This is how a scandal implodes:
First, the head of the investigation overpromises. “This was a targeting of the president’s political enemies, effectively, and lies about it during the election year so that it wasn’t discovered until afterwards,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House oversight committee, said in May of the IRS targeting scandal. He later declared President Obama’s press secretary a “paid liar” for stating otherwise.
Next, facts emerge to undermine the investigator’s presuppositions. Documents released by Ways and Means committee Democrats this week show that the IRS, in addition to targeting tea party groups, also had “Be on the Lookout” (BOLO) lists for groups using descriptors such as “progressive,” “health care legislation,” “medical marijuana,” “paying national debt” and “green energy.”
I hate to say I told you so, but... wait
no I don't.
George Takai on DOMA. Because resistance is futile.
Whenever one group discriminates against another — keeping its members out of a club, a public facility or an institution — it often boils down to a visceral, negative response to something unfamiliar. I call this the “ick.” Indeed, the “ick” is often at the base of the politics of exclusion. Just this March, for example, a young woman at an anti-same-sex-marriage rally in Washington was asked to write down, in her own words, why she was there. Her answer: “I can’t see myself being with a woman. Eww.”
Frankly, as a gay man, I can’t see myself being with one, either. But it’s usually not gays who write the laws. If this woman were in Congress, her personal discomfort might infect her thinking — and her lawmaking. Gays kissing? Ick.
David Cole on how the gay rights decisions lent an air of freedom to a Supreme Court session that was about anything but.
...the underlying theme of the Supreme Court’s term was not the recognition of rights, but their dilution. Time and again, in closely divided decisions on issues as disparate as antitrust law, privacy and discrimination, the court either watered down rights or made it difficult or impossible to enforce them effectively. (Unless, of course, you are a white college applicant challenging affirmative action.)
In two cases, the justices made it impossible for plaintiffs alleging serious violations of federal law even to have their claims heard. ... In three other closely divided decisions, the court’s conservative justices made equality rights decidedly harder to enforce. ... In a pair of less-noticed decisions released the day before Shelby County, the court, once again by 5 to 4votes, issued employer-friendly, worker-hostile interpretations of Title VII, the section of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in employment. ...
The larger pattern is clear: This term, the Roberts court regularly favored restricting people’s rights or, more insidiously, limiting their ability to enforce those rights.
Want to really understand what this session was about? This is your Read it All (and weep) pick of the week.
Michael Klarman has another view of the Robert's court that focuses on the switch hitter.
...these rulings confirm that much in today's world of constitutional law turns on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's inclinations. This should hardly surprise us. For the 25 years that he has been on the court, the majority of interesting and important constitutional rulings have divided the justices 5 to 4. Kennedy has been the decisive vote more often than not. On issues involving abortion, the death penalty, gay rights and the separation of church and state, he has often provided a dispositive fifth vote for the court's liberal wing. However, on issues involving campaign finance reform, race-based affirmative action, school desegregation and federalism, he has generally sided with the conservatives.
Kennedy was the only justice in the majority in both Windsor and Shelby County. In each, he voted as he generally does: conservatively on race issues and liberally on issues involving discrimination based on sexual orientation. Possibly no other justice in American history has ever exercised so much influence in shaping our constitutional law.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal reviews President Obama's speech on climate change.
President Barack Obama's speech last week on climate change was a welcome call to action on one of the great challenges of our time. If the science is right — and there is no reason to believe that it isn't — climate change is here and could have severe consequences for human health, the environment and the economy. Meeting the challenge will be difficult and costly but also affords opportunities, especially for job growth in green industries.
As the president said Tuesday, "the question is not whether we need to act."
The problem is that similar calls to action have been issued for decades and not much has been done to curb the belching of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Utilities such as We Energies, car manufacturers and some governments have taken important steps to reduce air pollution from a number of sources and have worked to reduce carbon emissions. They deserve credit for that.
But reductions of carbon dioxide significant enough to have an impact on climate change have remained elusive.
Social Psychological and Personality Science has a new study that looks at the difference between tweets made by Christians and Atheists.
Analyses reveal that Christians use more positive emotion words and less negative emotion words than atheists. Moreover, two independent paths predict differences in expressions of happiness: frequency of words related to an intuitive (vs. analytic) thinking style and frequency of words related to social relationships.
Christians are also "less analytical" than atheists, which might go a long way in explaining the "happier" bit.