Will the Supreme Court side with Bush*?

[bloom]

MARTIN GARBUS:

There is a case... with respect to how long this has gone on before. There had been a case in 1972, when Nixon tried to do the same thing. Lenny Wineglass, a very fine lawyer, argued the case in District Court. Nixon claimed that you could, for domestic surveillance, that you had a right to use executive warrants, as he claimed, the permission of the President and the Attorney General. And he said that that was sufficient. This was at a time of civil unrest, according to him, 1971, 1972. There were some bombings within the United States. And he went out, and he tried to survey, surveillance people, eavesdropping, wiretapping without judicial warrants, without probable cause.

And the United States Supreme Court said no. The United States Supreme Court said you can’t do this. The United States Supreme Court said that the President does not have that kind of power within the Constitution. He has the power to protect the nation, but this goes beyond that. He can’t violate the Constitution. That's exactly what's happening now. And what’s going to happen is: You now have a different Supreme Court. You’re going to have Roberts, probably Alito, and my judgment is they're going to uphold what Bush is doing, and in effect, they're going to reverse, though not directly, the Nixon case. It's a strategy to get past that Nixon case and to give the President the broadest powers that any President has ever had....


...I think this business about the PATRIOT Act, I think it's just a firestorm. I think, ultimately, it's going to be passed, and they are going to rely on the President's authority at the end of the day. You really don't need the PATRIOT Act if the President has all of this authority.

So, they're switching the argument. They no longer need that particular statute. This comes within the President's Article 2, Section 2 rights under the Constitution to protect the people. They have changed the battleground to bring it close to the Nixon case, which they, with this new Supreme Court, will overrule. The Nixon case was ’72. At that time, you had Brennan, Marshall, Douglas. This is a very, very different court.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/19/1515212

[Champion Jack]

1. Will the Supreme Court side with Bush*?

Does the Pope shit in the woods?

[Strong Atheist]

17. Beat me to it by a long shot! nt.

[AlinPA]

2. At least 5-4, Bush**-Rove. They own that court. (Or maybe I should

say whoever owns Bush** owns the court)

[mikehiggins]

3. How would a strict constructionist court decide in favor of such

an unjustified expansion of executive power?

Sounds like they'd be making new law, not interpreting the intent of the founding fathers.

Certainly, nothing in the record supports the establishment of a monarchy.

[asjr]

7. If Alito joins other Scotus members, we can

kiss our rights goodbye.

[myrna minx]

22. I was thinking the exact same thing this morning.

How can the the "strict constructionist" SC justices even uphold the Patriot Act by their own standards? Wouldn't that make them activist judges? :shrug:

[madinmaryland]

4. Is it possible that the Dems would filibuster

Alito, if this scenario happens. In order to keep o'connor on the court?

[Mz Pip]

5. Jophn Roberts is a big fan

of executive power, so I suspect Bush can pretty much do whatever his lying little ass want and Roberts will say it's ok. Scalia and Thomas will go along. Not so sure about Kennedy though.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Even though a majority of the Supremes are Bushazoids,

at the same time, they are very protective of their powers under the Constitution. If you boil Bush's position all the way down to the bones, the result is that the judicial branch is effectively gelded by the all-powerful executive branch. The Supremes like their power, too, and I doubt they'll give it up easily. And if Scalia remains true to his theory of Constitutional originalism, he will be hard put to find an implied exception in the Consitution that gives the executive branch the power to ignore the Fourth Amendment, or any other provision, just because the President fucking feels like it.

[Silverhair]

8. LOL !! How did Bush get to be POTUS in the first place? NT

[bloom]

10. yeah

That is what makes me wonder - if they would do that - why not give Bush* more power. Esp. if they didn't see it as taking away from their own. You have to wonder - what kind of deals - what kinds of blackmail could be involved.

[flordehinojos]

9. the supreme court is bought and paid for by bushco,inc.

[spindrifter]

11. SOTUS is part of the system of

checks and balances. Siding with the executive renders them powerless.

[Norquist Nemesis]

12. Does a bear shit in the woods?

Same answer to both questions.

[bloom]

15. That answer

makes more sense than "Does the Pope shit in the woods?" (See post #1)

[peace frog]

13. Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?

Junior is counting on Scalito to replace O'Connor, his Get Out Of Jail Free card.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

14. This is more than politics-it is a play for power

if the Supremes agree with Bush, then they have lost a lot of their power of judicial oversight-for this will set a precident.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. Exactly. The Supremes would be effectively neutered if they agreed with *

on this issue. Under the Constitution they are equal to the executive branch, and I can hardly imagine they'd want to cede that power, even to their good pal George.

[bloom]

18. maybe they would feel like it would give them more power

like they could decide anything however they wanted - regardless of what the Constitution said. :shrug: ???

the government would be one big free-for-them.


Of course they would have to keep like-minded people in control - since they wouldn't want someone they disagreed with to have power like that.

[Norquist Nemesis]

19. Oh, they still have plenty of work with Corporate suits

to keep them busy. Let KingGeorge handle the War on the World and SCOTUS will take care of empowering the oligarchy. :sarcasm:

[No Exit]

20. Don't forget congress can always correct the law after a bad supreme

court decision.

Yeah, I know. You feel so much better now... yeah, so do I.

But... we may have at least a partial democratic congress a year from now... I can't see any reason why congress might want to give even more power to the executive branch. The branches are supposed to be competing branches--co-equal, yada yada yada. (This has not been the case with the republican rubber-stamp congress, but that COULD change.)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

21. Actually, that's not always true.

If the Supremes declare a law unconstitutional, Congress can't just re-enact that law. The Supremes have the final word over what is or isn't constitutional, so Congress can't just override a decision by the court.

[Odin2005]

23. Congress can take away SCOTUS's authroity to ge appeals to on that issue.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. How?

[Odin2005]

25. The Constitution does not give SCOTUS authourity over apeals...

That was given by legislation early in our county's History under the 1st Congress (the Judiciary Act).

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

26. But in Marbury v. Madison the court held it had the power

of judicial review. An act of Congress that purported to restrict that power would probably itself be overturned as unconstitutional, with Marbury as precedent. I don't see the Supremes ever giving up that power to Congress.

[No Exit]

27. If a law is unconstitutional, congress doesn't need to have it.

I did not mean to suggest that every supreme court decision was subject to being made powerless through congressional action. Obviously that's not the way the checks-and-balances system is supposed to work. I was simply referring to the ability of congress to check the power of the supreme court. That there is a vice-versa ability of the supreme court to check the power of congress is also true.

Sometimes congress can figure out another (constitutional) way to accomplish its aim, and pass a law which accomplishes it w/o running afoul of the constitution.

But I was referring to court decisions made on the basis of "the legislature has not clarified this" or "it is up to congress to change this, but as the law stands, we must (fill in the blank)."

And state legislatures are free to enact laws which give WIDER constitutional protection. It's only when they impinge on constitutional protections that they may get in trouble with the Court.