Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

So many bastards, so little time.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / The nerve. The audacity. The unmitigated gall.

The nerve. The audacity. The unmitigated gall.

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Speaking at an event sponsored by a University of Louisville center named for the corrupt old ghoul who made up a rule to steal a SCOTUS seat from President Obama and then violated that same rule to steal the seat she occupies, Amy Coney Barrett expressed concern that the public sees the U.S. Supreme Court as a partisan institution. [ABC News]

Justices must be “hyper vigilant to make sure they’re not letting personal biases creep into their decisions, since judges are people, too,” Barrett said…

Barrett said the media’s reporting of opinions doesn’t capture the deliberative process in reaching those decisions. And she insisted that “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.”

“To say the court’s reasoning is flawed is different from saying the court is acting in a partisan manner,” said Barrett…

Oh fuck all the way off, you illegitimately be-robed political hack.

Republicans fought hard and dirty to stand up a wingnut supermajority on the highest court in the land. Because too many people still indulge in the lofty fantasies Barrett was peddling in Louisville, the court will be a counter-majoritarian lever that enables a dwindling minority of hard-right god-botherers and gun-humpers to rule over the rest of us for the foreseeable future.

Sadly, not all of the people who buy this patently absurd Mount Olympus view of the court are Republican hypocrites. Justice Breyer wrote a spectacularly ill-timed book that WaPo’s Ruth Marcus described as “an earnest testament to the nonpartisanship and professionalism of his conservative colleagues” in a column this weekend. Marcus easily dismantles the assumptions behind that description and concludes:

I don’t want to sound too acerbic about Breyer here. I like and respect him. Even more, I feel for him. If you have devoted your life to an institution, and fear for its future, it is painful to watch, no less acknowledge, what is happening to it.

I’m sure that’s true. But to paraphrase Joe Biden in an entirely different context, if you won’t help, at least get out of the way.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

82Comments

  3. 3.

    Edmund Dantes

    Barrett said the media’s reporting of opinions doesn’t capture the deliberative process in reaching those decisions.

    ^^^^ stop shadow docketing some of your most important decisions and actually hearing the cases fully with briefings. Then actually write out full blown opinions so we can actually read about all the support for your decision, and there might be less of it.

    problem is you got lazy and won’t even do the base level work that Roberts does to give some deniability to the Breyers and other elite law types of the world.

  4. 4.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    Cheryl retweeted this from Elie Mystal and I think it’s about right:

    Amy Coney Barrett sitting up there with McConnell saying she’s not a partisan hack is a flex. But the flex is “Look at all the dumb media who will uncritically republish this clear lie.” She basically gave a “bad note” test and the media, again, is unable to speak to power.

    Now all MSM just running with the AP’s dumb ass frame. Republicans lie, media amplifies, version # Forever

    twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1437401571185381378

  5. 5.

    lowtechcyclist

    And she insisted that “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.”

    Yeah, it’s totally coincidental, how the outcomes of judicial philosophies match up so closely and so frequently with the political goals of the parties that nominated judges holding those philosophies.

  6. 6.

    the pollyanna from hell

    As an anti-abortion fanatic she is used to being supported by a small army of terrorists. Her chutzpah is now enormously empowered by a large army of suicide meme-droolers.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    @MattF:  Now that she has her seat, there’s not much any of us can do about it, so from her perspective giving a speech that is essentially gloating about that fact is perfectly fine.

  9. 9.

    A Ghost to Most

    They turned the Supreme Court into a christian supremacist tribunal. Now they want us to overlook it.  Fuck that.

  10. 10.

    mrmoshpotato

    Happy Monday!  It’s always great when these fucking bastards just rub the horseshit right in our faces!

    Between this and COVID still on its killing spree…  Let’s see what Paul Bronks has been posting lately.

  11. 11.

    Central Planning

    If Barrett was really concerned about the legitimacy of the court, she would resign.

    She won’t retire. She doesn’t care about its legitimacy. Q.E.D.

  14. 14.

    Suzanne

    Oh fuck all the way off, you illegitimately be-robed political hack.

    Preach.
    Grab a bottle of the BBQ sauce of your choice, pour it onto a huge plate, and eat my entire ass.

  15. 15.

    Shalimar

    “People don’t see the deliberative process behind our 1-paragraph middle-of-the-night opinion that none of us had the courage to sign.”

  16. 16.

    germy

    Meanwhile, there’s a faint hum in the background, the sound of the Jan. 6 Committee gathering info.

    SCOOP: Jan. 6 committee instructed telecom and social media companies last week to preserve records of Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — positioning the probe at the Oval Office. @GuardianUS t.co/FZNXzbaYJ4

    — Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) September 13, 2021

  17. 17.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Edmund Dantes:

    problem is you got lazy and won’t even do the base level work that Roberts does to give some deniability to the Breyers and other elite law types of the world.

    Yeah, the problem of fundamentally partisan judicial philosophies and outcomes was there even without the shadow docket. Just, as you say, given a patina of legitimacy by the written decisions.

    stop shadow docketing some of your most important decisions and actually hearing the cases fully with briefings. Then actually write out full blown opinions so we can actually read about all the support for your decision, and there might be less of it.

    And also agree that the use of the shadow docket for substantive, precedential decisions is an abuse of their powers.  It’s really a big step into the majority effectively saying “we can decide whatever we damn well want to decide, we don’t have to show you how we arrived at those decisions, and if you don’t like it, screw you.”

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    Fight for 15!! Biden’s SCOTUS Reform commission’s 180 days are up soon.

    It’s going to be a busy week on Capitol Hill, and a slog to October 1. RollCall:

    Pelosi said committees involved would advance their pieces of that legislation by Sept. 15, and they got busy doing so the week before Labor Day.

    As part of the two-track strategy, House Democrats set a Sept. 27 deadline for a floor vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Progressives have balked at voting for that if not coupled with the larger measure.

    Schumer likewise has set a Sept. 15 deadline to assemble the reconciliation package, telling reporters last month “we’ll see where we move after that.” On a press call on Sept. 8, Schumer said, “Senate Democrats have been working around the clock for weeks and months with our House colleagues and the Biden administration on the Build Back Better agenda.”

    The broader bill will likely contain several disputed issues.

    Democrats have pinned their hopes on passing a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants through the budget reconciliation process — a policy change that has been stuck in partisan gridlock for years.

    Among other items Democrats want to include: enhanced child care subsidies; a new paid family leave program; clean energy incentives; affordable housing funds; an expansion of Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision benefits; and more. Such provisions could provide Democrats with a critical victory to motivate voters ahead of next year’s midterm races, typically a time when the president’s party loses congressional seats.

    Given the Senate’s 50-50 split, there’s an expectation that Senate panels likely won’t mark up their own versions of the reconciliation pieces, but rather will work with their House counterparts on the package that eventually comes out of the House.

    Don’t expect an agreement until the last possible moment – that’s the way these things always work. But something will get done, and if past is prologue it will look much more like what Nancy and Chuck want than what S&M want. But everyone will be able to claim victory. “The $3.499T reconciliation bill is less than $3.5T and I can support it…”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    Remember all those books right-wing justices wrote to defend their liberal colleagues when they were being attacked by the right?

    Yeah, me neither.

  22. 22.

    germy

    We’re apparently playing the “Things you can’t make up” game this morning. So Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett (speaking at a center named after Mitch McConnell, introduced by Senator McConnell) worries that the Court is seen as "a bunch of partisan hacks."

    — Dan Rather (@DanRather) September 13, 2021

  25. 25.

    Cermet

    The inferior court that she pretends is also just – in the sense that a fair fascist kangaroo court that rubber stamps thug theology dressed up in brow shirt storm trooper fashion would be nonpartisan. It does represent the jim crow party taliban-protestant beliefs that she and others on the court long for the rest of the country to follow.

  26. 26.

    neldob

    I remember Kay writing that we should preface each Supreme by the name of who nominated them. So Trump Coney-Barrett, etc. Seems like a good idea to me.

  29. 29.

    WereBear

    Amy Coney Barrett expressed concern that the public sees the U.S. Supreme Court as a partisan institution.

    Puh-leese. That entire navy has sailed.

  30. 30.

    Matt McIrvin

    When Barrett was confirmed, Donald Trump held a great big victory-lap party at the White House to celebrate that she was going to kill Roe v. Wade. The party ostentatiously ignored COVID masking/distancing protocols as a big old middle finger to Anthony Fauci and the liberals, and it became a COVID superspreader event.

    We’re supposed to regard this majority as humble callers of balls and strikes.

  31. 31.

    Another Scott

    What I find infuriating about this is that there are lots of things that the SCOTUS does that are unanimous or nearly so and they actually do work together and have sensible rulings.  In that sense, she is right – they are non-political and do their jobs.  But that’s like saying that everyone, including axe murderers, likes ice cream…

    When it comes to GQP orthodoxy (money = speech; everyone gets a gun everywhere; corruption is fine unless there are demands for suitcases full of money; the POTUS can do what he wants unless he’s a Democrat; there is no right to vote and have the vote be counted fairly; minorities, women and non-CIS people have to lump it; ‘christianity’ uber alles, etc., etc.) they bend over backwards to find the most RWNJ path in an opinion and expect the rest of it to accept it, because everyone likes ice cream.

    It’s clumsy, transparent, slight of hand and disingenuous bad-faith claptrap.

    Fight for 15!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    Betty Cracker

    @Matt McIrvin: Exactly. In a sense, that ostentatiously partisan victory party was more tolerable than this hypocritical “nonpartisan” bullshit. Now Barrett is attempting to piss on our heads and tell us it’s raining.

    Not gonna work, lady — you owe your lifetime seat to the machinations of your openly corrupt party leaders, so you have to marinate in that filthy illegitimacy. You don’t get to make the rest of us pretend we didn’t see it.

  35. 35.

    Kay

    If you have devoted your life to an institution, and fear for its future, it is painful to watch, no less acknowledge, what is happening to it.

    Maybe someone could tell him it isn’t about him?

  36. 36.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    We’re supposed to regard this majority as humble callers of balls and strikes.

    Roberts’ whole balls-and-strikes notion is bullshit in ways that have nothing to do with partisanship.  The district courts are quite capable of making the balls-and-strikes calls correctly, with backup from the circuit courts if they call one wrong.

    The cases that make it to the Supreme Court are more analogous to asking, “what the hell should the strike zone even look like in this area of law?”

  38. 38.

    Barbara

    The fact that a sitting justice feels the need to deny this is simply additional proof that it is true. Otherwise you let your opinions do the talking. I mean, she is appearing in public with a SITTING SENATOR who for naked political reasons blocked a duly elected president from filling a vacant seat. Fucking ACB you might wish we were blind, deaf and dumb but we aren’t.

  39. 39.

    germy

    uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/update-uscp-s-january-6-internal-investigations

    Violations were sustained and disciplinary action was recommended in six cases;

    • Three for conduct unbecoming
    • One for failure to comply with directives
    • One for improper remarks
    • One for improper dissemination of information

    Another case about an official who is accused of unsatisfactory performance and conduct unbecoming is still pending. The administrative investigation started after a criminal investigation, in which charges were not filed.

    USCP internal investigations, including any recommended disciplinary actions, as well as personnel matters are not public information.

    (Six Capitol police officers are being disciplined.)

  40. 40.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    Yeah, I think we’re going to face an onslaught of “let bygones by bygones” propaganda, which we always face whenever the Republicans score an illegitimate victory over us.

  41. 41.

    Kay

    They’re leaving “the institution” in worse shape than they found it, which IMO takes them out of the “institutionalist” category, unless they’re institutionalists who suck at protecting the institution and failed, in which case we don’t need their scolding lectures.

  43. 43.

    Barbara

    @Kay: ​

    Maybe someone could tell him it isn’t about him?

    Yep. Not about you. It’s really hard to give up power, but that doesn’t mean we have to respect you for it.

  45. 45.

    lowtechcyclist

    OT: if the Christianists are in the least bit troubled by Trump’s speech to the Moonies, I sure haven’t heard about it.

    Cult, schmult – all that seems to matter to them anymore is whether they have the correct politics.  And the Moonies are easily far right enough to please the fundagelicals.

  46. 46.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    “Justice Barrett” is an oxymoron. As is “Justice Kavanaugh”. As well as “Justice Thomas”, “Justice Alito”, and “Justice Gorsuch”.

    Her name, now and forevermore, as far as I’m concerned, is “Amy Covid Barrett”, with no honorific before her name.

  47. 47.

    Kay

    No one should criticize her. If we do we’ll be subjected to 500 whining articles about how she’s a victim.

    The courts speaks thru orders. Ignore the rest of their editorializing and campaigning. It doesn’t matter.

  52. 52.

    laura

    That bish can keep scrubbing her hands, but the blood will not ever come off, and she can look forward to an entire lifetime of having her role and her decisions called out for the illegitimate bullshit they are until she’s dead and buried. And if she doesn’t like it, she can step on down. Speechifying while draped in the not quite dead corpse of Mitch McConnell is one hell of a look for a gal trying to convince our media betters that she’s not at all the partisan extremist hack that errrybody can plainly see that she is.

  56. 56.

    Kay

    I wish one of the students would stand up and say “but this is all bullshit, correct? I mean, you issued some orders. Can’t we just read those?”

  57. 57.

    Kay

    Here’s their work. Judge it.

    The application for injunctive relief or, in the alternative, to vacate stays of the district court proceedings presented to JUSTICE ALITO and by him referred to the Court is denied.

    They shouldn’t ask for more than that and you certainly shouldn’t give it to them.

  59. 59.

    Steeplejack

    Ted Lieu on Twitter: “Dear Justice Barrett: You voted to not strike down an extreme Texas anti-abortion law that on its face violates Roe v. Wade, the current law of the land. And you did it hiding behind the shadow docket. You want Americans to think you aren’t being partisan? Who are you kidding?”

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: This was a bit discouraging:

    Several supporters of abortion rights demonstrated outside the Seelbach Hotel, where the private event was held.

    I’m sorry to hear that this hack, her fellow possessor of stolen property Gorsuch, and the inadequately investigated screaming rage-baby Kavanaugh can publicly visit any city without attracting a large crowd of protestors.

  61. 61.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: There’s a long history of the Moonies being friends of American conservative politicians and political figures. They’ve never been particularly embarrassed.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    I haven’t read any of the comments yet, but I have to declare my undying love for this sentence and for love and respect for Betty Cracker for writing it.

    Oh fuck all the way off, you illegitimately be-robed political hack.

  64. 64.

    laura

    @Kay: Well, I read the order and am back to judge it…..and it is not good work. Alito relies on a Lochner era sovereign immunity case (Jones) to legitimize the vigilantism baked into SB8 and then uses an brand new  “complex procedural antecedents” burden that the plaintiff’s couldn’t address because they are ginned up bullshit that by design overrule Roe as the fatal flaw in the requests for relief and then attempts to reassure the reader that he hasn’t just rendered the constitutionality of Roe null and void when in fact, it’s as plain as day that’s exactly what he’s done along with the rest of the partisan hacks on the court.

    Hot partisan garbage that can be seen from space and no secret that the longing to return to Lochner is the very essence of the trump court.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    “The media, along with hot takes on Twitter, report the results and decisions. … That makes the decision seem results-oriented. It leaves the reader to judge whether the court was right or wrong, based on whether she liked the results of the decision,” Barrett said.
    “And here’s the thing: Sometimes, I don’t like the results of my decisions. But it’s not my job to decide cases based on the outcome I want.”

    It’s a kind of stupidity. She can’t even imagine that actual women were affected by this decision that day and every day since. The affected women aren’t part of the discussion and I have seen ONE news article that even bothered to ask them.
    The word count comparison between the elite lawyers ruling and commenting and the actual women affected would be so lopsided as to be ludicrous. They aren’t heard from.
    Imagine if this had been a gun ruling, where they upheld a law banning guns. We would be FLOODED with gun nut protestations.
    It’s because it’s women who are affected and primarily low income low status women. That’s why they’re never heard from. They won’t even be asked. Who cares?

  67. 67.

    SFAW

    @bjacques:

    If Bony Carrot had any more gall, you could divide her into three parts.

    Very nicely done

    ETA: Had I been more on my game, I would have asked if those were the weenie, weedy, and weaky parts.

  68. 68.

    azlib

    I think she doth protest to much. She should have declined the nomination if she did not want to be seen as a hack.

  69. 69.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @azlib: No, she should not have been a hack I’d she didn’t want to be seen as a hack.  She got a lifetime appointment; she doesn’t need to be a hack.  For comparison, Harry Blackmun was seen as Burger’s mini-me when he was appointed, but he chose to be something more.  Being a hack is a choice.

  70. 70.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Omnes Omnibus: Also, using the shadow docket for something this big is a hack move.  Roe is a big deal; if you are going to end it, have the courage to step up and do it.  Don’t skulk around in the darkness and the suffocate it in its sleep and then complain that people think you are the kind of person who skulks around in the darkness and suffocates things in their sleep.

  71. 71.

    Ksmiami

    @Barbara: ding ding ding… Perhaps if we keep fighting and making sure the Slimy 7 don’t get into the latest DC hot restaurant etc thru shunning and pressure, they will relent a bit- until then, they are my enemy.

  73. 73.

    gene108

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR:

    Her name, now and forevermore, as far as I’m concerned, is “Amy Covid Barrett”, with no honorific before her name.

    Her name is Mrs. Jesse Barrett.

    Before feminazis took over everything, in the 1970’s, this is how traditional Christian women, who respected traditional Christian marriage were addressed.

  74. 74.

    JaneE

    The fact that she could make this statement in public without apparent shame just proves to me that she is truly a partisan hack.  She might as well put up a billboard saying “We are bought and paid for by the Republican party”.

  75. 75.

    Librarian

    @Kay: What she means is that she will overturn decisions, like Obamacare and Obergefell, and impose her ideology, no matter what chaos it causes in the country, and she will not give a shit. She is a sociopath.

  77. 77.

    RaflW

    Am I wrong in thinking CJ John Roberts has remained extremely quiet and is keep his head down through all this? I don’t give a fig about his feels, but he has managed, with McConnell + Trump’s help, to be presiding over a disastrously partisan court.

    The damage is well under way already. Will it matter? I honestly do not know. I think the country will unravel quite a bit further, wether the Scotus maintains the fiction of neutrality or not. But what is happening there now is shifting from problem to accelerant, and that really really bothers me.

    So, really, even as he can’t shift who is in the other eight seats: Fuck CJ Roberts. He’s got the petard he thought he always wanted.

  79. 79.

    pajaro

    If this is the way she feels, presumably she would feel the same about a court that was four persons larger, with serious judges appointed by President Biden in the 2022 Court Enlargement Act. /s/ There would be no reason for her to assume a larger court could not issue unbiased decisions, right?

    Somewhat more seriously, one of the things that people here (for very good reasons, BTW) don’t always appreciate is that for many, even most, of the Court’s cases– resolving commercial disputes, dealing with arcane issues of criminal or civil procedure, for example–they do actually function like a real court. So I can understand (although not appreciate) how someone like Breyer can convince himself that the Justices aren’t a bunch of political thugs. But, on the cases that actually make a difference to most of our lives, they are the nakedly political actors that we all know them to be.

  80. 80.

    Bumper

    So, I’m going to share a bit of personal info, which I’m normally very reluctant to do.  Twenty years ago I was a law student at a top tier law school, where many of the professors had many connections with the Supreme Court.  At the time, the belief that there were partisan influences at work in decisions was not uncommon – lots of people outside of the court could see it and I remember discussions around the school.  But people – law professors, no less – who had connections with the court, including as clerks, seemed unable to see this.  My con law II professor was one such and he was as liberal as they come (I forget who he clerked for).  When this topic came up in class one day, he absolutely insisted the same thing that Barrett is saying today EVEN regarding Scalia and Thomas decisions.  The students were in disbelief and challenged him but he couldn’t see it.  There must be something going on there that they wrap themselves up in these ideas and seem so out of touch with what outsiders see.

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