Kilmar Abrego Garcia will have to wait in an El Salvador prison for the US Supreme Court to decide what to do with him

 

... Roberts issued a terse administrative order indefinitely lifting the deadline of 11:59 EDT to return Abrego Garcia set by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. The Trump administration had said that deadline was “impossible” to meet. ...

More.

The constitutional crisis that many feared from a vengeful, re-empowered Trump is here

 Congress is cowed; that’s one supposedly coequal branch of government down. But federal courts are proving more resistant to Donald Trump’s trampling of laws and the Constitution. Now, just two months in office, the president has all but crossed the red line — defying a judge’s order — that for more than two centuries has separated the rule of law in this country from its undoing. ... 

The chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr., schooled both the congressman and the president, issuing a rare statement of what should be obvious: “Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

But Trump won’t be educated. ...

In effect, and denials aside, Trump and his lieutenants defied the law ...

Jackie Calmes for The Los Angeles Times, here.

Chief Justice John Roberts intervenes in dispute between USAID and USAID recipients and Judge Amir Ali, pausing Ali's order to disperse USAID funds by midnight yesterday

 

. . . Roberts issued an interim order placing on hold Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s action that had imposed a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday night.

Roberts provided no rationale for the order, known as an administrative stay, which will give the court additional time to consider the administration’s more formal request to block Ali’s ruling.

Roberts asked for a response from the plaintiffs - organizations that contract with or receive grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department - by noon on Friday.

More here. 

The story posted at 10:14pm last night.

Supremes rule against racist admission policies at Harvard and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

 

Supreme Court rejects affirmative action at colleges, says schools can't consider race in admission...

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion, which all five of his fellow conservative justices joined in.

The Supremes still don't have the courage to void the tyrannical, unequal, racist, Northern neo-reconstructionism of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the American South

 The Supremes are not colorblind and are as reprehensible in this as any college or business using racial quotas to exclude whites and Asians in favor of less qualified people of color, and they know it.

American liberalism is nothing if not hypocritical.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined the court's three liberals in the majority.

In doing so, the court — which has a 6-3 conservative majority — turned away the state’s effort to make it harder to remedy concerns raised by civil rights advocates that the power of Black voters in states like Alabama is being diluted by dividing voters into districts where white voters dominate.

In Thursday’s ruling, Roberts, writing for the majority, said a lower court had correctly concluded that the congressional map violated the voting rights law.

He wrote that there are genuine fears that the Voting Rights Act “may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power” and that the Alabama ruling “does not diminish or disregard those concerns."

The court instead “simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here,” Roberts added.

As such, the court left open future challenges to the law, with Kavanaugh writing in a separate opinion that his vote did not rule out challenges to Section 2 based on whether there is a time at which the 1965 law's authorization of the consideration of race in redistricting is no longer justified.

More.

How Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, inadvertently proved that Eric Ciaramella is the whistleblower

It's hard up there for Roberts all alone without his law clerks to keep him out of trouble and make him look good.

Trump's Supreme Court advances offensive libertarianism, not conservatism

The decision was 6-3.

"Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor dissented."

Under my proposal Chief Justice John Roberts' appointment to the Supreme Court would have expired in 2017

Do you think Trump would have reappointed him to four more years?

Senator Chuck Grassley joins President Trump in piling on Bush's Chief Justice John Roberts over Obama's judges

The track record of presidents' judicial appointees is effulgent with political consequence, which is why liberals don't want you to think about the court that way and try to mask it with the myth of judicial independence.

Liberals impose their will by judicial fiat because they can't get their policies through the ordinary democratic way by winning elections.

Hurrah for Grassley! 

Chuck Grassley to Chief Justice John Roberts: You Rebuked Trump — but Sat Silent Through Obama’s Abuse

 

 

Supremes rule in favor of Trump in Trump v. Hawaii

Ha ha.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in favor of President Donald Trump in Trump v. Hawaii, the controversial case regarding Trump's September order to restrict travel to the U.S. for citizens of several majority Muslim countries. In the 5-4 opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court found that Trump's immigration restriction fell "squarely" within the president's authority. The court rejected claims that the ban was motivated by religious hostility.

Read the whole thing here.

Ted Cruz was all in for John Roberts in 2005, but Ann Coulter, who now supports Trump, wasn't. Any questions?

Ann Coulter, July 20, 2005, here:

But why on earth would Bush waste a nomination on a person who is a complete blank slate when we have a majority in the Senate! 

We also have a majority in the House, state legislatures, state governorships, and have won five of the last seven presidential elections -- seven of the last 10! 

We're the Harlem Globetrotters now. Why do we have to play like we're the Washington Generals every week? 

Conservatism is sweeping the nation, we have a fully functioning alternative media, we're ticked off and ready to avenge Robert Bork ... and Bush nominates a Rorschach blot. ...

Maybe Roberts will contravene the sordid history of "stealth nominees" and be the Scalia or Thomas that Bush promised us when he was asking for our votes. Or maybe he won't. The Supreme Court shouldn't be a game of Russian roulette. 

Trump was right: While solicitor general of Texas Ted Cruz wrote on behalf of John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court

You know, on behalf of the guy who TWICE had the chance to deep six Obamacare, but didn't.

Here, in National Review, July 20, 2005.

Look who's stupid now: Neither Rush Limbaugh nor his caller remember the chronology and politics of ObamaCare

It's been only four years and already the basic facts are forgotten.

The Supreme Court didn't even take the ObamaCare case until a year after the 2010 elections, in November of 2011, and ruled the mandate a constitutional tax on June 28, 2012. The Court had simply nothing to do with the 2010 landslide victory of the Republicans, but neither Rush's caller nor Rush remember that.

From today's transcript here:

CALLER:  Yes, Rush.  Thank you so much for taking my call.  I really appreciate it, and if you don't mind me taking the liberty, I'd like to give a shout out to James Marshall Timberlake, he's my first grandson born November 2nd.  But I thank you.  The reason I called is that I believe there's an American who has been vilified who really is a hero concerning Obamacare, and that is Chief Justice John Roberts.  Had he done what all of us expected him to do to find it unconstitutional, you would not have had the Republican landslide in 2010; you would not have had the Republican landslide in 2014; you would not be talking about Jonathan Gruber today. ...

RUSH:  I want to know where it started that the way we win is to have liberalism implemented so that everybody can learn how rotten it is.  When did that start?  "John Roberts did a great thing by letting this thing be proclaimed constitutional.  That way we've exposed these people for who they really are."  We didn't need this!  If Roberts had found this thing unconstitutional the 2010 elections would have been the same because Obama would have stayed the same.  He would have found a way to get this done some other way.  He wouldn't have just taken his chips and gone home and cried about it.

---------------------------------------------- 

Add two to Jonathan Gruber's pile of stupid American voters.

Is It A Coincidence John Roberts' Law Clerk Is A Utopian Progressive?

Birds of a feather flock together.

Joshua D. Hawley, here, clearly a friend of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic":

Christians’ purpose in politics should be to advance the kingdom of God—to make it more real, more tangible, more present. Or should I say, to immanentize the eschaton.

Should Chief Justice John Roberts Have Recused Himself On ACA Because Of Epilepsy?

Should Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts have recused himself from the ObamaCare case because he has epilepsy? He had a seizure as early as 1993, and another in 2007.

You know, a guy with a pre-existing condition like that may have felt compelled to help other people with pre-existing conditions by upholding ObamaCare. His own condition may have interfered with his judgment on the merits of the Affordable Care Act.

Striking it down would have meant that that provision of the Act guaranteeing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions such as his would have gone down with it.

Hillary, Holder and Shulman: Obama's Know-Nothing Government Zoo?

Hillary Holder and Shulman

Jonathan Turley in The Washington Post, here, warns about the growth of Leviathan, the administrative state, which makes monkeys out of its politically appointed overseers (or does it?):

There were times this past week when it seemed like the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party had returned to Washington. President Obama insisted he knew nothing about major decisions in the State Department, or the Justice Department, or the Internal Revenue Service. The heads of those agencies, in turn, insisted they knew nothing about major decisions by their subordinates. It was as if the government functioned by some hidden hand.

Clearly, there was a degree of willful blindness in these claims. However, the suggestion that someone, even the president, is in control of today’s government may be an illusion. ...

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies. ...

[T]he Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that agencies are entitled to heavy deference in their interpretations of laws. The court went even further this past week, ruling that agencies should get the same heavy deference in determining their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned: "It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

-----------------------------------------------------------

Doesn't this line of argument smell just a little like a pre-emptive defense of the bad monkeys who were actually up to no good? Perhaps a diversionary tactic? Throughout the article, Turley constantly refers to the untouchable agencies as "the fourth branch" of the government. Isn't this a deliberate rhetorical shift? The fourth estate, the press, has been the traditional conception from the time of Carlyle. The fourth branch appears to be a recent innovation, a neologism originating in a leftist critique of the media when captured by the elected, usually Republican, government (as fine a description of the current Obama regime as any, which might be a reason Turley seeks to redeploy the term for what conservatives have long termed the managerial state to keep the focus off the compromised media--it's more prudent for a liberal to change the subject from media complicity when it's media complicity with liberalism we're talking about).

It's also suspicious when liberals start talking like conservatives just when their side starts getting its feet held to the fire. And isn't it also a little rich to hear John Roberts warning about the growing power of the administrative state when on behalf of the third branch of government he basically shoved ObamaCare down the throats of the American people against their will? Or is Leviathan so irresistable that the judiciary follows the legislative in ceding its own power to the faceless bureaucracy?

It would probably behoove the cause of liberty more to forego a special prosecutor in the IRS scandal at this time simply in order to keep televised hearings before the eyeballs of all. Educating the people about the malfeasance of the so-called fourth branch under Obama is job one in order to pierce the fourth estate's media halo around their hero Obama.

Blame Utopianism On Christians Like Joshua D. Hawley

Blame utopianism on Christians like Joshua D. Hawley.

He's an example of a contemporary who understands full well the implications of the broad expanse of Christian teaching as understood from "Scripture", namely an ideological view of reality wholly in keeping with secularized ideologies like Marxism. The key similarity is the denial of reality and the assertion of an alternate one.

Christians of a prior age in America were not "enthusiasts" like this guy who, ominously, clerked for John Roberts (all italics are the author's own):

Isn’t immanentizing the eschaton precisely what Christians citizens should be doing? ... The New Testament teaches that this long-looked-for kingdom has dawned now, in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Christ has become king and, as Scripture says, presently rules over the world and over earthly government. That last point is central. Scripture teaches that political government is mandated by God for his service and is one means by which the enthroned Christ carries out his rule.

Ongoing suffering, death and injustice mean nothing to such people. Those things are inconvenient truths incapable of penetrating the ideological mind. To call it the fanatical mind in a political age is to short-change it because so many no longer have such religious understanding. For religious ideologues unjust government must be endured or ignored, but always obeyed.

People who think such things would never oppose kings like George III, let alone totalitarian dictators, with force of arms. Europe would still be in the grip of Hitlers and Stalins, and so might we, had American Christians had such scruples in 1776 and 1941, or British Christians in 1939.

There is no such thing as immanentizing the eschaton, only instantiating the fall. If it were otherwise, there would be no such thing as a Christian cemetary.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Irwin Stelzer Wonders Why Romney Isn't Attacking Democrat Crony Capitalism

Maybe because Romney isn't the right candidate?

It's a pretty good piece on American-style fascism by Irwin Stelzer for The Weekly Standard here, but I couldn't help but notice once again how even very smart people pour their ideas into and project their hopes onto candidates even though there isn't the slightest bit of evidence to justify it. Consider all these phrases from the article, which on every issue Stelzer recommends as conservative reveal that Romney is already NOT on board:

... doesn’t mean that Romney should refuse ...

And where is Mitt Romney ...

Alas, that statement came not from Romney ...

Romney must know better than anyone ...

Why does Romney not agree with ...

Romney can propose a simple rule ...

Romney can propose eliminating ...

Finally, where is Romney every time . . ..

If Gov. Romney isn't already showing a firm grasp of free-market conservatism as defined by the neoconservative Weekly Standard, what is he on board with?

Don't we already know that Romney thinks ObamaCare is nothing to get angry about?

Or how about out-of-control government spending (is there any other kind?), the cri de coeur of the Tea Party movement? Romney has explicitly stated that he will not slash spending as president, even though it's the very ground cronyism walks on. His answer for that? Because cutting government spending in a slow-growth environment would throw America into a depression.

This tells you that Romney is no different than Obama in one very important respect: he's cool, in the deceitful sense that he allows supporters to think he shares their passions when he doesn't. Just as Obama has deeply disappointed the American far left, a president Romney will do the same to the right on every issue dear to them.

The caution and calculation of such cool cats often gives the first impression of ulterior motives. Alternatively, however, the coolness may simply be a mask for an underlying mediocrity, or even stupidity.

For example, the single stupidest thing that Obama and the Democrats have done to date was to insist that they prevented a depression and bailed-out everybody to do it. Arguably what they should have done is embraced the depression which did in fact occur in 2008-2009 and blamed it on Bush. They also should have let the depression happen big-time, cleansing the debt-overhang for the good of the country and punishing their enemies in the process. Republicans would have been finished for decades to come, just like in 1932.

And you thought Obama was the smartest president ever.

Can Romney be far behind him? At this juncture in the campaign you would think a smarter candidate would be consistently avoiding everything which depresses the mood of the base of his party. If the neocons aren't happy with Romney, who is?

Not that it really matters much what Romney says or doesn't say about this, that or the other thing when it comes to actual governing. After all, the president proposes, but it is the Congress which disposes. (Unless, of course, you're Obama, who disposes of the Congress fairly routinely, whether on war powers in Libya, recess appointments or immigration.) America's problem with crony capitalism can indeed be made much worse by a president like Obama for whom it becomes his motto, no doubt about it. An awful lot of money has been wasted on failed green energy schemes.

But cronyism in America is really the specialty of our ever more remote representatives to the US House and Senate. Our nearly intractable problems of waste, corruption, and deceit which they are responsible for have taken over ninety years to develop, and they won't go away in an instant. What we most certainly need is to destroy the concentration of spending power in the hands of a few powerful men and women in the House and Senate.

One way to do that is to restore representation numbers to the constitutional ratio of 1 to 30,000, the number one answer to the constitution's number one perceived deficiency during the ratification process over two centuries ago. The immediate effect of installing thousands of new Congressmen today would be to dilute the power of the existing cabal of skilled cronies. It is true that as happened in the 1920s there seems to be nothing that would again prevent Congress from flouting that provision of the constitution even if we restore representation to the status quo ante. The last thing we need is 10,267 corrupt representatives instead of the 435 we've already got. Still, short of revolution in the streets, it's probably the best and most constructive alternative we have presently available, and probably a more certain guarantee of keeping things like ObamaCare from happening in future than mere reliance on one political party controlling the levers of a government distant from the people.

Another way which would help is to repeal the 17th Amendment, and return election of senators to the States and take it away from the globalized monied interests. That is no guarantee against cronyism, to be sure, but at least States would have actual representation in Washington again as the Founders intended. As it is, the only representation they have is before the bar of justice, if it agrees to hear the case at all. Ask the 26 States who lost in front of John Roberts how good they're feeling about that today. ObamaCare, after all, originated in the Senate. All things being equal, senators from those 26 States would not have voted for it and we wouldn't be having this enormous controversy.

These sorts of returns to originalism might actually make a difference going forward, but all the evidence we have right now is that Romney has as little interest in them as he does in the issues animating the base of his party.

A Romney in the White House will most likely mean just another dutiful tax collector for the crony welfare state, like the rest of them.

ObamaCare Taxes Are In Fact New Income Taxes

The Wall Street Journal here agrees that the ObamaCare ruling has simply and incorrectly shifted government's drive for unlimited power over the people under a different part of the constitution, the taxing power, than the court had heretofore been accustomed to use, namely the commerce clause:

[Roberts'] gambit substitutes one unconstitutional expansion of government power for another and rearranges the constitutional architecture of the U.S. political system. ...

The rest of the column is a very useful and informative discussion of indirect vs. direct taxation, but it does not really make the proper equation demanded by the reasoning of the John Roberts' opinion. Since the tax penalty only arises when one fails to pay for health insurance, there is effectively no difference between the tax penalty which will have to be paid by those going without coverage and the premiums paid by those who have coverage.

Going forward under ObamaCare, if the refusal to buy health insurance results in a tax (which is in reality an unconstitutional police-power-type penalty, or fine), then the purchase of health insurance must be understood as a tax, too (penalty, fine). When the IRS comes calling, those who "gave at the office" are generally going to be treated as having already paid.

I don't think the editorial is correct to say this is somehow a new kind of tax which is really neither an income nor an excise. I think it's pretty clear that ObamaCare is a form of (increased) income taxation.

The tax penalty paid for not having insurance will be based on income. Government subsidy to purchase insurance will be based on income. Affordability of plans offered by employers will be scrutinized based on income paid to employees, and on and on. The IRS' new, main, and very intrusive interest will be in determining household income for purposes of ObamaCare compliance and participation. So it looks to me like it's all about income and comes under the income taxation umbrella, however tortured it may at first appear.

There is a longish discussion of this from the income angle by Liz MacDonald here which makes it pretty clear how everything in ObamaCare hangs on income, including this:


The percentage of income penalty rises at a lower rate than the fixed dollar amount, from 1% in 2014, to 2% in 2015, and to 2.5% in 2016 and after, and then is capped at the national average premium for what’s called “bronze” coverage, which provides the least amount of coverage under the new law, 60% before the patient must chip in for co-insurance, deductibles and co-payments.


Capping the penalty at the national average premium level for basic coverage means you're paying the basic premium. So the premium becomes a tax becomes a premium. It's all designed to fund the system, which is what taxes do. Penalties punish people for breaking the law. But lawbreakers under ObamaCare will be punished with Bronze Level Healthcare, which is why Roberts had to rewrite the law from the bench, construing the penalties as taxes, in order to save ObamaCare.

That was a political act, as The Wall Street Journal rightly goes on to say:


If this understanding is correct, then Chief Justice Roberts behaved like a politician, which is more corrosive to the rule of law and the Court's legitimacy than any abuse it would have taken from a ruling that President Obama disliked. The irony is that the Chief Justice's cheering section is praising his political skills, not his reasoning. Judges are not supposed to invent political compromises.

If anything good comes of this, maybe a new interest will develop out there to repeal the income tax once and for all as a way of getting rid of this new, very expensive and unconstitutional, monstrosity called ObamaCare.

Supremes Uphold ObamaCare 5-4. George Bush's Liberalism Carries The Day.

George W. Bush's appointee to the Supreme Court, John Roberts, voted with the liberals 5-4, redefining the mandate as a tax, which the Democrats denied it was to get it passed, but argued it was to get it upheld. He agreed.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

This just proves once again how unreliable are the appointees to the courts by Republican presidents. Conservatives they rarely are. But, of course, as we've said before, Ronald Reagan wasn't a conservative. He was a Democrat in recovery. George W. Bush was just in recovery.

So the Supremes have put the stink of raising your taxes on the Democrats, where it belongs. But just as the Democrats rammed the bill down our throats, the Supremes have just shoved it up your ass.

Was it good for you, baby?

Will someone now challenge this on tax grounds? If everyone must have health insurance, isn't it a poll tax which must be equally shared by every man, woman and child? To be constitutional, it must be apportioned according to population, which it will not be.

By the way, anyone remember Roberts defending Kagan's integrity, leaving it to her to decide whether she should recuse herself from this case?

Boy, was that ever a clue.