No surprise at all from this Supreme Court!
When corporate interests more or less run the country, there’s little prospect for justice or against discrimination. Walmart can continue paying people nothing, providing no benefits, discriminating against women, and trying to destroy unions.
Gorilla says: “Message: don’t worry, litigate!”
Yep, here’s what Reuters says about the Chief Justice’s questioning at today’s Wal-Mart hearing before the Supremes:
“Chief Justice John Roberts cited Wal-Mart’s policy against discrimination and asked whether its pay disparity between men and women was less than the U.S. average.”
Gorilla says: “When neanderthal misogynists make the law, nobody is safe!”
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito: “Well, a chemical weapon is a weapon that includes toxic chemicals. And a toxic chemical is a chemical that can cause death to animals. And pouring vinegar in a goldfish bowl, I believe, will cause death to the goldfish, so that’s a chemical weapon.”
Gorilla translates: “I’d send this case over to our Long Dong viewer, but we haven’t heard from him in years!!!”
Back in the 80s, the fear among liberals was that if Reagan was elected/re-elected, it might mean a very conservative Supreme Court taking on the right to abortion.
Turns out, it took another 30 years for this fear to be realized. We now have a Supreme Court subservient entirely to the interests of big business, and entirely subservient to the gun lobby.
Gorilla says: “The same five clowns hopefully will be shot out of a cannon one day!”
The Supremes love the rights of corporations to spend money buying whoever they like, but they’re not so keen on individual Americans using their right to free speech to lawfully assist those classified as “terrorist’ organizations.
It’s a page right out of the McCarthyite playbook, and not terribly surprising given that the Court is dominated by 5 very right wing, very misogynistic, and very hateful men.
Gorilla says: “We can only express the hope that these guys grow old quickly!”
Another day, another completely idiotic and illogical decision from the Supreme Court!
It now seems that the right to remain silent isn’t a right unless a person says: “I want to remain silent”.
As Justice Sotomayor observed, not without irony: “Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent – which counterintuitively, requires them to speak”.
In other words, you’re assumed to be waiving your rights unless you say you aren’t!!!
Gorilla says: “I can’t remain silent so long as these right-wing crazies ruin the Supreme Court!”
Whatever happened to equal justice under the law?
Don’t ask the Supreme Court, which decided today as follows:
1) Unless you’re convicted of murder, as a juvenile you can’t be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
2) If you’re a convicted juvenile sex offender, the state can keep you in prison for as long as it likes.
Gorilla says: “The message seems to be: Kids, don’t rape! Choose murder and you’ll choose life!”
First wrong: Euroland leaders have indeed bet it all on saving the currency regime.
A trillion dollars will go a long way towards addressing the immediate problem: the end of credit facilities for the so-called PIIGS. It does not deal with the underlying problem: the PIIGS will have to accept a decade or more of brutal, deflationary downturn in order to remain solvent. A better solution, namely throwing some or all of them out of the euro regime and allowing the PIIGS to grow their way out via currency devaluation, is not in the cards, but it may very well be revisited in a year or two.
Fundamentally, the insolvency remains on the books and, as in the US, the hope of central bankers is that a return to economic growth will allow extend and pretend to work. Whether this is a forlorn hope remains to be seen, but the evidence so far is not encouraging.
Gorilla says: “We can now conclude that the world’s political leaders have about as much control over the world’s financial system as they do over the world’s terrorist system.”
Second wrong: Elena Kagan will be the next Supreme Court justice.
Another triumph of political pragmatism and mediocrity. Kagan’s record as Solicitor General is very uninspiring, but it’s good to have another woman on board what is a very far-right court.
Gorilla says: “We still must root for a contagion that will put Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito into retirement at the earliest possible opportunity!”
“A Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “Here, a Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten.”
Gorilla says: “Guess Justice Kennedy forgot all about those non-Christian and non-believing Americans who died in the same battles, defending a Constitution they thought guaranteed the separation of church and state”.
