Why John Robert’s Rebuke Rings Hollow.…


In what many main­stream pub­li­ca­tions are label­ing a (RARE REBUKE), Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts blast­ed as inap­pro­pri­ate & dan­ger­ous, com­ments made by Senate Minority Leader NY US Senator Charles Schumer. Really now, where has John Roberts been over the last three years of the Trump régime?
Is Roberts seri­ous, or is it that he mere­ly wants to demon­strate his feal­ty to Trump?
Senator Schumer was speak­ing at a demon­stra­tion out­side the capi­tol build­ing on Wednesday.
In ref­er­ence to Republicans con­sis­tent assault on a wom­an’s right to chose, Senator Schumer said “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirl­wind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer said at a ral­ly out­side the court. “You won’t know what hit you if you go for­ward with these awful deci­sions.

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John Roberts

Roberts fired off a response to the senior Senator imme­di­ate­ly. “Justices know that crit­i­cism comes with the ter­ri­to­ry, but threat­en­ing state­ments of this sort from the high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment are not only inap­pro­pri­ate, but they are also dan­ger­ous,” Roberts said in a state­ment. “All Members of the Court will con­tin­ue to do their job, with­out fear or favor, from what­ev­er quar­ter.“

Anyone pay­ing atten­tion knows that this is a bunch of malarkey, that by this out­bursts the chief jus­tice has exposed him­self fur­ther, as just anoth­er shill for Trump.
In a point­ed response to Roberts, Senator Schumer’s offi­cer dou­bled down,
“For Justice Roberts to fol­low the right wing’s delib­er­ate mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what Sen. Schumer said, while remain­ing silent when Donald Trump attacked Justices [Sonia] Sotomayor and [Ruth Bader] Ginsberg [sic] last week, shows Justice Roberts does not just call balls and strikes.” 

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Neil Gorsuch

True !!!
He must real­ly believe that peo­ple are not pay­ing atten­tion, or maybe he believes that they are just plain stu­pid.
The Roberts court to those pay­ing atten­tion has become noth­ing but a rub­ber stamp for right-wing poli­cies pushed by the ultra-right-wing Republican Party.
John Roberts loves to push the idea that the court calls balls and strikes, but the game is rigged, lit­er­al­ly every deci­sion that comes out of the Roberts court has been 5 – 4 deci­sions, in favor of the Republicans who have a major­i­ty 5 – 4 appoint­ment on the court.
One could make the argu­ment that the lib­er­al mem­bers vote togeth­er as well, but the major­i­ty in this coun­try owes them a debt of grat­i­tude that they are at least stand­ing firm on the con­sti­tu­tion, even if in dis­sent.
The Roberts courts have become so par­ti­san that it evoked a blis­ter­ing bar­rage of crit­i­cisms from asso­ciate jus­tice Sonia Sotomayor weeks ago.
It is not often that a sit­ting mem­ber of the court steps out­side the veil of pro­pri­ety which has char­ac­ter­ized past courts.
Just last week the court ruled that American Border Patrol agents who fired into the Sovereign nation of Mexico and kill inno­cent unarmed Mexicans can­not be held account­able in American courts.

The string of 5 – 4 deci­sions is extreme­ly con­se­quen­tial to tens of mil­lions of Americans, usu­al­ly the poor­est most mar­gin­al­ized are the ones most severe­ly affect­ed by those rul­ings.
None more con­se­quen­tial, than the 2013 deci­sion of the court to strike down (for absolute­ly no prac­ti­cal rea­sons), key ele­ments of the Voting Rights Act. The Shelby V. Holder decision,(named after for­mer Attorney General Eric Holder) was a major blow to bal­lot access experts argued.
It paved the way for sys­tem­at­ic statewide efforts to reduce the num­ber of polling places in places like Texas, which has cut some 750 of its vot­ing sites.

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Brett Kavanaugh

Shelby County V Holder was June 25, 2013, Supreme Court deci­sion that struck down the for­mu­la used in Section (4) of the Voting Rights Act as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.
”The con­di­tions that orig­i­nal­ly jus­ti­fied these mea­sures no longer char­ac­ter­ize vot­ing in the cov­ered juris­dic­tions,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the major­i­ty opin­ion in Shelby.
Interestingly, the opin­ion gave the Voting Rights Act (VRA) itself, cred­it for the sta­tus of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in vot­ing, not­ing, “these improve­ments are in large part because of the Voting Rights Act.”

Let me break down for you what the esteemed and learned Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said was the court’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for strik­ing down Section 4 of the Act.
(a) Sure there was racism against African-Americans which jus­ti­fied sec­tion (4) I. e. cer­tain juris­dic­tions with a his­to­ry of dis­crim­i­na­tion to sub­mit any pro­posed changes in vot­ing pro­ce­dures to the U.S. Department of Justice or a fed­er­al dis­trict court in D.C. – before it goes into effect – to ensure the change would not harm minor­i­ty vot­ers. 
Roberts con­cedes that the dis­crim­i­na­tion exist­ed, not that it required Robert’s acqui­es­cence, African-Americans have a 400-year his­to­ry in America to show that it exists.
(b) JohnRoberts then went on to say quote: ”The con­di­tions that orig­i­nal­ly jus­ti­fied these mea­sures no longer char­ac­ter­ize vot­ing in the cov­ered juris­dic­tions.”
In oth­er words, the per­va­sive racism which neces­si­tat­ed the fol­low­ing, no longer exists. Violence. Ballot stuff­ing. Poll tax Forcing blacks to guess how many jelly­beans were in a jar filled with jelly­beans. Literacy-Testing, Forcing poten­tial black vot­ers to answer ques­tions the ques­tion­ers did not know the answer to. Gerrymandering. Ridiculous Registration Practices. Demands for vot­er ID(does this one ring a bell)? Redistricting.

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Samuel Alito


These are the con­di­tions John Roberts wrote no longer exist, even though we know that the strat­e­gy once employed to stop blacks from vot­ing has been char­ac­ter­ized by the mot­to; “if at first, you don’t suc­ceed, try and try and try again”.
Even though Black Voters are no longer required to guess how many jelly­beans are in a jar, oth­er vot­er sup­pres­sion tac­tics have been placed on steroids in Republican-run states.
The inces­sant demand for spe­cif­ic types of Identifications. Long lines as a result of the clo­sure of vot­ing sites, ger­ry­man­der­ing, threats of vio­lence from white mili­tias, all con­tin­ue to be explic­it tac­tics of vot­er sup­pres­sion employed by Republicans.
What sit­u­a­tion was John Roberts look­ing at that would [reasonably]cause him, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas to arrive at that conclusion?

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Assc. Justice Sonia Sotomayor

On February 28 writ­ing for Vox Elie Mystal wrote: The case, Wolf v. Cook County, might have made news on its own: the Trump admin­is­tra­tion knows that beat­ing up on pow­er­less and des­per­ate peo­ple excites the sick xeno­phobes who still call them­selves “Republican.” It also pre­sent­ed yet anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty for cen­trist talk­ing heads to chas­tise lib­er­als who defend brown immi­grants who need food.
In a sting­ing rebuke of the Roberts court, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused Republicans on the court of “putting their thumbs on the scale” for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, and crit­i­cized them for rush­ing to hear emer­gency appeal case from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, when they so reg­u­lar­ly admon­ish inmates who are about to be put to lit­er­al death, for fail­ing to file their appeals in a time­ly man­ner.
Mystal went on” When a jus­tice of the Supreme Court warns that the court has ceased act­ing as an inde­pen­dent check on the admin­is­tra­tion, that should sound a loud, eardrum-bust­ing alarm.”

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Clarence Thomas

John Roberts the sup­posed Constitutional schol­ar, has no prob­lem with Trump tear­ing down the foun­da­tion of the rule of law. His con­cern is that any­one should call out him and his cohorts on the court for val­i­dat­ing the destruc­tion.
John Roberts’ response to a senior leg­isla­tive leader is the thing that should cause blar­ing alarm, that an unelect­ed jus­tice would come out guns blaz­ing against a senior leader elect­ed by the peo­ple is a break-glass moment.
John Roberts’s response is as faux as Bill Bar’s com­ments that Trump’s tweets make it dif­fi­cult for him to do his job.
John Roberts has no real con­cerns about Senator Schumer’s com­ments per se, like Barr does not care that Donald Trump tweets, just the atten­tion it brings to his activ­i­ties. John Roberts is only mad at the fact that Schumer is bring­ing atten­tion to what the court bear­ings name is doing to the constitution.

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Voting lines in Houston Texas on Super Tuesday

John Roberts does not care about the almost forty-five mil­lion African- Americans who are in places find­ing it incred­i­bly hard to vote. Neither does he care about the fifty nine mil­lion Hispanics who are also like­wise affect­ed. The fact that the National Congress of American Indians research found that Native peo­ple liv­ing in the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada, are forced to dri­ve 163 miles to the near­est polling sta­tion, is of no con­cern to the Chief Justice.
What he cares about is that his extreme­ly shel­tered and pow­er­ful white male col­leagues on the court and the [coon] are allowed to rule with­out question.