SCOTUS

[Whatever4]

It is almost like the identification has nothing to do with the conflict itself,...

I've seen confederate flags on Long Island, NY. It's not so much identifying with the confederacy in these times, it's more a statement of, "I'm a racist asshole."

We have a few confederate flags in MAINE, a fact that bewilders the rest of Maine.

[Suranis]

It makes more sense when you realize the "confederate flag" has fuck all to do with the Confederacy. It's a stretched version of the Battle flag of Northern Virginia... which in reality was a 5 X 5 square, hot a 3 X 5 rectangle.

The Modern "Confederate Flag " was created in the 20s, reputedly by the Klan, because the ACTUAL confederate flags were seen as the flags of Losers. But creating a new flag out of Lee's Flag you could stand around and wave that, without feeling like a loser. So it leaped over a psychological barrier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_ ... of_America

[AndyinPA]

They are still losers.

[Chilidog]

The cynic in me says that Roberts is trying to claw back some of the court’s credibility.

Too late.

This guy laughs

IMG_9836.jpeg (14.18 KiB) Viewed 1943 times

[RTH10260]

IRS gets major power to request private tax info after Supreme Court decision

Rebecca Chen
Sun, June 11, 2023 at 6:19 PM GMT+2

How much can the IRS snoop in your business without you knowing? A lot more now, after a recent Supreme Court decision that is raising privacy concerns among experts.

Last month, the highest court in the nation unanimously sided with the IRS in Polselli v. Internal Revenue Service, solidifying the tax agency's ability to ask for documents or financial records of those associated with a delinquent taxpayer without notifying that third party.

The decision reinforced the tax agency's capacity to get information under wraps, experts say, and gives the IRS too much power and too few limits on how that information can be used.

"I think the concern would be that this allows the IRS to ultimately get access to information that purportedly is in connection with collecting taxes from taxpayer A, but then, inevitably, it is information about taxpayer B that wouldn't have otherwise been available to the IRS," Michael Sardar, tax controversy attorney and partner at Kostelanetz LLP, told Yahoo Finance.

Dry cleaner theory

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson used the example of a dry cleaner to illustrate the potential extent of this law in the court brief. In summary, she offered the following.

Think about a delinquent taxpayer who frequents a mom-and-pop dry cleaner. If the IRS believes that financial records from the dry cleaner could help in tax collection, the agency could issue summons to the dry cleaner's bank for years and years of financial statements without even notifying the shop owners.

In this scenario, the shop owners are powerless to object to the collection request.

"It is really important to give a chance for somebody to go to court and say, 'wait, I am that dry cleaner, which is just an innocent third party who's just doing regular business,'" Tyler Martinez, senior attorney at National Taxpayers Union Foundation, told Yahoo Finance.

The ruling also lacked clarity on how widely the IRS can use information obtained. Although the court's brief said the agency can only use the summons against the taxpayer concerned in the summons, experts worry that the IRS could use the same request as the pretext for another case.




https://finance.yahoo.com/news/irs-gets ... 06032.html

[RTH10260]

Steve Lehto explains above

[raison de arizona]

We just wrapped up my @JudiciaryDems Courts subcommittee hearing on the need for meaningful ethics and recusal reforms at SCOTUS.

Not a single Republican showed up.

They know the recent behavior at the Court is indefensible. Absence, like silence, speaks volumes.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... reats.html

[Gregg]

Also, Texas didn't become a state at all until 1846 (OK, ass end of 1845 ). They didn't grow cotton or tobacco. They didn't really identify with the Southern gentry that ran the Confederacy.

And no less a Texas Saint than Sam Houston told them they were all crazy when they seceded.

On April 19, 1861, he told a crowd:

Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South

[Ben-Prime]

And no less a Texas Saint than Sam Houston told them they were all crazy when they seceded.

Alas, like the Bible, the Constitution, and the Flag Code, the addresses and epistiles of the Saints are also respected only in what they bring to the table in support, and are otherwise forgotten, ignored, or dismissed.

[RTH10260]

Native American tribes hail ‘major victory’ after supreme court ruling
Justices ‘on the right side of history’ for upholding protections for Native American children against removal for adoption

Maya Yang
Thu 15 Jun 2023 18.38 BST

Native Americans, tribal leaders and top Democrats hailed the US supreme court’s decision on Thursday to uphold federal protections for Native American children against removal from their tribal communities for fostering or adoption.

Following the announcement of the court’s 7-2 decision, several tribal leaders commended the supreme court’s ruling, calling it a “major victory for Native tribes, children, and the future of our culture and heritage”.

In a joint statement, the Cherokee Nation principal chief, Chuck Hoskin Jr, Morongo Band of Mission Indians chairman, Charles Martin, Oneida Nation chairman, Tehassi Hill, and Quinault Indian Nation president, Guy Capoeman, said: “It is also a broad affirmation of the rule of law, and of the basic constitutional principles surrounding relationships between Congress and tribal nations.

“We hope this decision will lay to rest the political attacks aimed at diminishing tribal sovereignty and creating instability throughout Indian law that have persisted for too long.”

The statement added: “By ruling on the side of children’s health and safety, the US constitution, and centuries of precedent, the justices have landed on the right side of history. ”

Gary Batton, chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, also praised the ruling, saying in a statement that the Indian Child Welfare Act “remains a critical part of protecting Native American heritage and tribal sovereignty. We are glad to see the supreme court recognized the important benefits of ICWA and allowed the law to stand.”

Deb Haaland, the secretary of interior and first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary for a US president, welcomed the decision, saying: “Today’s decision is a welcome affirmation across Indian Country of what presidents and congressional majorities on both sides of the aisle have recognized for the past four decades.”

President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris also hailed the ruling, with Biden saying:“I stand alongside tribal nations as they celebrate today’s supreme court decision. This lawsuit sought to undermine the Indian Child Welfare Act– a vital law I was proud to support … The touchstone law respects tribal sovereignty and protects Native children by helping Native families stay together and, whenever possible, keeping children with their extended families or community who already know them, love them, and can help them understand who they are as Native people and citizens of their tribal nations.”

Harris called the decision a “victory of tribal sovereignty and Native communities”.

The Democratic senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Indian affairs committee, also celebrated the ruling.

“Scotus just validated what many have been saying for generations: the Indian Child Welfare Act is the gold standard of child welfare policy. This decision upholds the constitutionality of this law, respects tribal sovereignty, and protects the best interests of Indian children,” Schatz wrote in a tweet.




https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... d-brackeen

[Dave from down under]

Who dissented?

[bob]

Who dissented?

The obvious:

► Show Spoiler

Thomas and Alito.

[MN-Skeptic]

Oh. Good. Lord!

A very long tweet thread reporting on a column Alito now has in the Wall Street Journal. Apparently Alito has been accepting rides on private jets and ProPublica is about to report on that. Alito is trying to get his side out first. Read the thread linked below!

[raison de arizona]

Truly amazing logic skills. Glad this guy is on the Supreme Court.

"It would have gone unused if I hadn't accepted it" is in fact a general property of gifts, Sam

I am sorry but this has simply broken my brain. That Alito wrote this and the WSJ published it.
Alito's logic implies if you call up an airline, and they have an empty seat on a route you are traveling, the presumed value of that seat is zero dollars.
This guy is a SCOTUS judge!

I'll remember that next time I need to fly. I'm sure it will work for me as well.

[MN-Skeptic]

You know, it's been a LONG time since I got my master's degree in business taxation, but back then they talked about fair market value when evaluating gifts given/received.

But I guess the fair market value of a seat on private jet falls to zero as it's about to depart.

Sure.

That's the ticket.

[chancery]

https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/ ... 960760833

Andrew Weissmann
@AWeissmann_

Just gotta love a Justice arguing that he had to take the bribe otherwise the money would have gone to waste.

Welcome to lawlessness.

Chris Hayes
@chrislhayes

I LOVE the notion that the seat on the private jet would have been empty so it doesn’t count. That’s how you know you’re dealing with a straight-shooter with good judgment.

[Gregg]

You know, it's been a LONG time since I got my master's degree in business taxation, but back then they talked about fair market value when evaluating gifts given/received.

But I guess the fair market value of a seat on private jet falls to zero as it's about to depart.

Sure.

That's the ticket.

An empty seat yes, but once someone sits down in it, not so much.

[MN-Skeptic]

I have a real cheap subscription to the WSJ right now and I'm enjoying reading some of the responses to Alito's "opinion" piece in the WSJ. A couple of readers have asked if Alito will be reporting the fair market value of a full page ad in the WSJ now thanks to Murdoch.

[raison de arizona]

Clarence Thomas’ Latest Criminal Justice Ruling Is an Outright Tragedy

But that’s only because a lot of people may have not been following the slow-motion disaster that has been unfolding in one of the less followed cases, Jones v. Hendrix. Jones involves a highly technical sounding, but practically significant, issue about when federal courts may correct wrongful convictions and wrongful sentences.

Essentially the case involves this scenario: What if it turns out that the federal courts that heard your criminal case made a mistake? And as a result of the courts’ mistake, you were convicted of something that isn’t actually a crime at all (because federal law doesn’t prohibit what you did), or, as a result of the courts’ mistake, you were sentenced to more time in prison than the law says you can be sentenced to? Can a federal court later correct the error in a federal habeas corpus proceeding when you challenge your conviction or sentence?

Today, the court, in a 6–3 opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, answered that question with a no. For people watching this catastrophe happen in real time, the result is not surprising. But it is a catastrophe nonetheless. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her powerful dissent, the opinion “unjustifiably closes off all avenues for certain defendants to secure meaningful consideration of their innocence claims.”

As a result of this opinion, people with illegal convictions and sentences—people who are legally innocent—will be stuck in prison for no good reason because the courts screwed up, not because they did. The law certainly did not require this result. And the Jones debacle carries a few warnings about the nightmare at One First Street.

One is that the Jones majority is part of a larger trend of the Supreme Court believing that the court (and all federal courts) are above reproach and can do no wrong. Take Justice Samuel Alito’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on Tuesday night, the one that insisted he was entitled to take free personal jet trips from hedge fund billionaires with business before the court (and also to not disclose said trips) because otherwise the personal jet seat would have gone empty. Or look at the months of gaslighting about how the influence and access campaign directed at the court’s Republican-appointed justices is all well and good because of course the justices are above reproach.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... aster.html

[Volkonski]

Supreme Court Hands Biden a Win on Immigration

https://www.newsweek.com/supreme-court- ... 1687540029

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Biden administration to restore guidelines that would order Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport immigrants who pose a national security threat.

The court determined in an 8-1 ruling that the Republican state attorneys general in Texas and Louisiana lacked standing, or legal right, to challenge enforcement policies by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes instructions for ICE to detain and deport certain immigrants, with a focus on those who committed serious crimes, according to the majority opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

"In sum, the States have brought an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit. They want a federal court to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more arrests," Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, while Justice Samuel Alito dissented.

"Federal courts have not traditionally entertained that kind of lawsuit; indeed, the States cite no precedent for a lawsuit like this."

[RTH10260]

Harlan Crow on collision course with Senate over Clarence Thomas gifts
Finance committee focusing on tax treatment of billionaire mega-donor’s gifts to supreme court justice

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
Fri 23 Jun 2023 11.00 BST

The rightwing billionaire real estate developer Harlan Crow is facing a possible showdown with Senate investigators looking into the financial arrangement behind lavish vacations, private flights and other perks that were given to the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas but never publicly disclosed.

At the centre of the Senate investigation are questions about the tax treatment of the gifts – which could be worth millions of dollars – and what Crow’s financial treatment of those expenses might reveal about the true nature of his relationship with Thomas.

A lawyer for Crow admitted in a recent letter to Senator Ron Wyden, the Democratic chairman of the finance committee, that it was his understanding that expenses associated with luxury flights and yacht trips for Thomas were paid back to Crow’s “family entities” at rates “prescribed by law”.

But the lawyer – Michael Bopp, a partner at Gibson Dunn who specializes in representing clients in congressional and government investigations – did not provide any information about who made the payments, and when.

It is, for example, unclear whether the reimbursement payments were made by Crow himself or another party, and whether they were made contemporaneously or only after the lavish gifts became public.

Wyden has accused Crow of “stonewalling” basic questions about his gifts to Thomas and his family and said that Bopp’s most recent letter “raises more questions than it answers”. He has also said he is discussing next steps to compel Crow to respond fully to his questions, including by subpoena.

The Oregon senator launched his investigation in the wake of a series of stories published by ProPublica that detailed Thomas’s beneficial relationship with the Republican mega-donor.

The investigative news outlet reported several instances in which Thomas was a guest on Crow’s yacht, the Michaela Rose, including trips to Indonesia, New Zealand and Savannah, Georgia. He also reportedly regularly made use of Crow’s jet for other travel, including one trip to New Haven that would have cost about $70,000 on an equivalent jet. Thomas earns a salary of $285,000 a year as an associate justice, a salary he has previously complained was too low.

Nor was Crow’s largesse limited to expensive vacations and trips. ProPublica also reported that Crow companies bought property from Thomas, his mother, and his late brother’s family, and that Crow Holdings LLC also paid for private school tuition for Thomas’s grand-nephew, who he previously said he was raising “like a son”.

Ethics experts have said Thomas broke the law when he failed to disclose the gifts on his public disclosure records. Crow has denied trying to influence the justice and has said he offered similar hospitality to other close friends.

For tax lawyers like Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, knowing how Crow’s companies – which made the payments to the private school and own the jet and yacht – characterized the expenses would provide much greater insight into how Crow viewed his relationship with Thomas.

If the businessman had the payments categorized as business expenses, for example, it would contradict assertions by Crow and Thomas that the trips and other gifts were based merely on the pair’s longstanding relationship. Instead, it would imply that Crow believed the expenses could boost his companies.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... reme-court

[bob]

The court determined in an 8-1 ruling that the Republican state attorneys general in Texas and Louisiana lacked standing, or legal right, to challenge enforcement policies by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes instructions for ICE to detain and deport certain immigrants, with a focus on those who committed serious crimes, according to the majority opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Left understated is that the plaintiffs went judge shopping, and of course filed in Drew Tipton's courtroom. And the 5th declined a stay pending appeal.

[RTH10260]

Justice Thomas renews attacks on landmark First Amendment decision in fiery dissent

Devan Cole
Updated Tue, June 27, 2023 at 8:40 PM GMT+2

Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday renewed his yearslong attack on a landmark First Amendment decision, with the conservative jurist again calling for the Supreme Court to revisit the “flawed” ruling in the 1964 case.

The decades-old case, New York Times v. Sullivan, created a higher bar for public figures to claim libel and has been a bedrock of US media law. But some conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, have frequently taken aim at it, arguing it provides too much protection to news outlets.

As part of a separate case decided Tuesday, the majority invoked Sullivan when it wiped away a lower court decision upholding the stalking conviction of a Colorado man who sent hundreds of messages to a woman over Facebook. The 7-2 ruling said it would suffice for prosecutors to show that the speaker was aware that his speech could be viewed as a threat and that the speech was reckless, even if not intentionally threatening.

In a fiery two-page dissent, Thomas criticized his colleague’s use of the Sullivan case, saying they were wrong to apply it to the matter at hand and calling again for the high court to take another look at the landmark ruling.

He said his dissent intended to “address the majority’s surprising and misplaced reliance on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan,” and quoted from previous dissents he’s penned in which he has called into question the 1964 ruling.

“It is thus unfortunate that the majority chooses not only to prominently and uncritically invoke New York Times, but also to extend its flawed, policy-driven First Amendment analysis to true threats, a separate area of this Court’s jurisprudence,” Thomas wrote.

“It’s not surprising that Justice Thomas is once again beating his drum to revisit Sullivan – one of the modern Court’s most important First Amendment precedents with respect to press freedom,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “But today’s lineup reaffirms that he appears to be in a minority of one on that point.”

Thomas has issued similar public critiques of Sullivan in recent years, including in 2019, when he wrote that the 1964 ruling and “the Court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”



https://www.yahoo.com/news/justice-thom ... 26634.html
(original CNN)

[raison de arizona]

“It’s not surprising that Justice Thomas is once again beating his drum to revisit Sullivan – one of the modern Court’s most important First Amendment precedents with respect to press freedom,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “But today’s lineup reaffirms that he appears to be in a minority of one on that point.”

Thank [deity of your choice].