Well…it is decision time at the supreme court and there have been a couple of notable ones that came out today…and they even decided them the right way….first, they struck down the law that the righties passed in Arizona that forced people to prove their citizenship before they could register to vote…one aimed at ensuring that the poor and those that normally vote for dems would be disproportionately affected and the court said no to this blatant voter suppression…good for them…second, they ruled that the practice where big pharma companies pay generic manufacturers to NOT make generic versions of their cash cow drugs when the patents expire…ensuring that the prices stay high are illegal….well, duh….I just don’t get why it takes the supremes so long to come to the obvious….well, at least they finally get some right…geez…
Tag Archives: Supreme court
The supreme court finally got one right…
Well…this morning the supreme court finally ruled on a case that I have been following with some interest, and they even got it right. Yep, burying the lead again…but you know I do that a lot…oh, back to the case…this one had to do with a patent that had been granted to a company that had isolated a human gene to use in breast cancer tests…something I never understood…and that had restricted vital research from any other university or company since this company, Myriad, had sued anyone trying to use this same gene. Today, though, the supremes got it right when they said that you can’t patent naturally occurring things and rescinded the patent…this will mean that much less expensive tests can be developed and Myriad will no longer be able to screw women by charging them up to 10,000 dollars for this test….it’s about time….geez…
I’m stunned…
Well…just got back from the beach to the stunner that the supreme court has upheld the healthcare law with the chief justice being the swing vote that joined the liberal side of the bench in a 5-4 decision. Needless to say, I am stunned by this event since all of the pundits have been saying that the individual mandate portion would be declared unconstitutional…but, I guess all of the so called experts can be wrong. I am a little relieved that the law stood since it will help me to be able to afford insurance in a couple of years…it is still scary to be aging without insurance. I think I have to go turn the news on and then come back later to add to this one….
Okay, I’m back but with little more clarity on this whole issue…no one has a clue to what it’s going to mean…some say it’s a win for Obama while others say that it gives the repubs and edge since people across the country are not enamored of it…one other thing…the repubs are showing their true colors today by holding the AG in contempt of congress for the fake reason that he won’t give them documents relating to the “fast and furious” debacle…what they are truly after is to intimidate Holder to stop pushing back against the voter supression that the repubs are using to try to steal this election…..and they have been caught on tape saying that the reason they are pushing these laws is to get Romney elected….what a bunch of thugs and liars…geez…
Impeach Scalia…
Well…if it wasn’t clear before that Antonin Scalia was abrogating his responsibilities as a supreme court justice with his naked partisanism and his constant ignoring of legal precedence to advance the conservative agenda, you only have to read excepts of the 22 page screed that he wrote in response to the majority opinion striking down most of Arizona’s draconian immigration law. In it, he breaks all judicial decorum and attacks a sitting president by name, blaming the lack of immigration reform on the Obama administration; never mind that administrations from Reagan on forward have all had the responsibility to act but no one has the political courage to do what’s right for the country and then goes on to laud Arizona for doing something…anything, on immigration even though the majority of the court ruled that what they did was illegal. He then goes on to excoriate the majority basically calling them idiots for the ruling. What stark raving hubris from this judge who is supposed to rule on the law, not on what his conservative friends want him to rule…and whose actions of the past years where he strategized with the far right on how to defeat Obama should have disqualified him from the bench. With this latest explosion of bad manners, he has shown he does not belong on the court…but the only way to remove him is to impeach him…which I wholeheartedly support….geez…
Two in a row on the courts…
Well…just a short one about the latest destruction of your personal freedoms by this radical supreme court…if you haven’t heard, the supreme court this week said it is perfectly okay for anyone that is arrested, or ticketed, or has any other interaction with the police to be strip searched if the officers think it’s okay to do it. This includes getting stopped for not wearing a seatbelt, for eating on a subway train, for spitting on the sidewalk…do I need to go on? This whole nonsense again reveals the need to elect Obama again and tip the scales in the supreme court back to common sense…back to the individual liberty that the right reveres above else (or so they say) back to the ability of citizens of the country to be let alone…to have the police work for us and not assume that all of us are hardened criminals and get treated like one….I, for one, will be writing to my congresspeople to have this travesty rectified by a law that specifically prohibits this abhorrent practice and I hope you will to….this is a hell of lot worse than being required to buy health insurance…but we’ll see that struck down as being a threat to liberty…..how much more crazy can this court get? It’s time to impeach at least two of these idiots and restore the integrity of the court….
More partisan nonsense from a right wing judge…
Well…I really didn’t plan on writing a second day about the courts but the actions of the judges appointed by repubs have gotten to the point where someone has to say something….after Obama a went on record saying he believed that the ACA should and would be upheld and if the supreme court struck it down it would need a very good reason…and not the “broccoli” defense that Scalia put forth in oral arguments…a republican appointed appeals court judge, Jerry Smith, had the gall to demand that the justice department and by extension, Obama, explain his comments in a written response to the judge…nevermind that the president gets to express his opinion about the political ramifications of court cases….this judge doesn’t have the power to request anything from the executive branch. I just marvel at the audacity of the repubs these days who spent the last 3 years decrying the “overreach” of the courts, and then cheer when one of their own vastly oversteps his power to score political points with the fox news talking points of the day. This just shows the rot that has permeated the “modern” repub party where the traditions of the separate branches of government and the checks and balances that are outlined in the constitution are just to be ignored when they sense a political advantage can be gained….and this rot has reached all the way to the supreme court and the right wing judges who are poised to impose their warped view of justice on the American people….geez…
Activist judges and the right…
Well…I find it funny how things flip and flop in the political arena, especially when it comes to “activist judges” that the right seems to decry until the judges are the conservative bloc on the supreme court. I don’t even know why the right calls themselves conservatives anymore…that used to mean a reverence for the institutions and traditions of the country including hundreds of years of legal precedence know as “stare decisis” that they now want ignored by the court to further their radical right wing agenda. That is not conservatism, it is radicalism cloaked in the robes of Scalia, Roberts, and the others that blatantly lied about their reverence for the traditional role of judges…to find the facts in relation to the law leaving politics outside of the courtroom….but these “justices” see their roles as co-equal legislatively to the congress and are ready to ignore the constitution to further the goals of the tea party whose rise has done more to coarsen the political discourse and ruin the art of compromise on which democracies function. I hope the Roberts court does throw out the ACA….then we can get to where we need to be in healthcare…poised to go to a single payer system whose purpose will be to provide affordable care for all Americans…not profit for a few…geez…
It’s about the social contract…not healthcare…
Well…just another short one on the arguments that happened on the ACA in the Supreme Court and the fact that I think that people are missing the point of the whole thing….I can understand why some on the right don’t want to be “forced” to buy healthcare under the new law…but, how many of them are already forced to by the fear that a health problem will bankrupt them? What’s the difference between the two? How many of them have ever canceled their insurance in the name of freedom? You can probably count them on one hand. But, this whole argument has never been about healthcare to me….it is whether or not we we still have a social contract where we work for the common good of the society and where, sometimes, in that society we have to make compromises that will benefit the whole while placing a small burden on each of us as individuals. That is what the individual mandate is…a small burden for the majority of us that will help the 50 million people who can’t afford the peace of mind that comes with being insured….but, those on the right, including the debate audience that when asked about an uninsured person needing care to save his life and chorus sung out “let him die” are actively tearing down the social contract that has served this nation so well over the past 200 plus years….what kind of a country will we have left when those on the right get what they want…back to the days of “I’ve got mine, everyone else can go to hell” that prevailed in the early 20th century….I’m glad I’m getting older and won’t be around to see it if the right wins…geez…
The law and ACA…
Well…don’t know how long this one is going to be but I did want to comment on the supreme court and the ACA…aka Obamacare and the arguments that have been going on this week….one of the things that strikes me is how the conservatives have strayed from the traditional role of the court; deciding on whether a law is constitutional or not…with the questions that have come back from Alito et al…I can see the worst kind of judicial activism at work…where they are trying to set policy and write law when that is not their job, and I can see the ignorance of the roles of the three branches government that these conservative justices are showing. It is not their job to look at policy and implementation of laws and the effect of those policies, but that is what those on the right on the court have been doing during the arguments, usurping the traditional role of the legislative branch to write laws and placing themselves as equals to that lawmaking. We can see from the decisions that this court has made in Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, and now the ACA that the conservative justices feel they are only there to further the right-wing conservative agenda…ignoring precedent that reaches back to the founding of this nation for crass political advantage….now that we have seen this worst kind of judicial activism, it should make you realize that the court needs to be reformed…and the only way to do that is to re-elect Obama and hope that just one of the conservatives leaves the court so a justice who has respect for the law can replace him…geez…
Who cares what the supreme court does on healthcare?
Well…I have been kind of interested in the implementation of the new healthcare law since it would allow me to buy insurance again that I can’t afford now…but, that’s not I want to talk about right now…I really want to talk about the political implications of the supreme court taking up the case for the individual mandate before the fall elections. Some of the pundits on the right think that no matter what the decision is, they have a winning issue for the general….but I see it differently…let’s take the either/or of the decision and see where that will take us. So, if the court rules against the individual mandate, I see the immediate result that the dems will be able to use the decision to connect it to the conservative debacle of Citizens United and say that this is an activist court that is not in the mainstream of American life…on the other hand, if the court upholds the law…the dems can say “see, I told you the law was legal” and hammer the repubs on their ignorance of the law and then start to shift the conversation back to the benefits of the law that the people will like once it is implemented….if a political novice like me can come up this off the top of my head…I’m sure we’re going to be able to deflate this issue quite easily in the fall…